Are We There Yet?

For my pilot readers, yes, that is Jeppesen CSG-1P Slide Graphic Computer (E6B as we knew it as student pilots) used by Spock to figure the time before impact. I wonder if I still have one.

In a few weeks, as soon as the doc gives the OK, I need to get back out and get a checkride in an airplane for currency. I don't fly often but it's a skill set I not only enjoy, but don't wish to lose. Even if it means a checkride.

For, like any pilot, I hate taking exams.

Written or otherwise. I think it started in early school years when I got a question really wrong.

The question was: "Where do women mostly have curly hair?

Apparently, the correct answer was Africa.

Checkrides are the one part of the job that I think most civilian commercial and military pilots hate. Doesn't matter how many hours you have, how many missions you've flown. And they don't get any easier. Doing maneuvers to perfection while everything on the airplane seems to fail, one after another, while a check airmen is peering over one shoulder and those stripes on your uniform are resting on the other. It never mattered how many years I'd done it or the fact that I'd never failed one, taking that first step into the briefing room to start the oral, my mind would go completely blank. Circumstance and fear had a way of subtracting information from my brain with surgical precision.

Yet somehow, when the first question came up, everything resusitates, not by sheer brilliance but simply from the fact that I'd studied my rear end off for weeks ahead of time. To this day I can still draw the entire electrical system of a 727 on an unfolded cocktail napkin.

I think it looked something like this.

click to enlarge

On Recollection

"It has been said that crowds are stupid, but mostly they are simply confused, since as an eyewitness the average person is as reliable as a meringue lifejacket." -Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals

If I personally were to have a choice of witnesses to a tragedy to talk to, give me the child. Their view is simply what they have seen, normally unclouded by judgement, history, politics and expectations. Certainly intelligence bears into it and the developmental differences of the child. The child also needs be of an age where they can remember and describe events, understanding the difference between the truth and a lie. But they often pick up on things that the adults miss even if, in and of itself, it might not be admissible in a legal setting. Sure the technical detail is not there and children can often mix reality with fantasy, but often the heart of what they experienced is ascertainable, containing details often lost to others.


Those that piece together such places, unfortunately, have had to use such recollections before. You can watch all the TV shows you want, but unless you are a first responder or LEO you don't really realize what it is like. Air laden with smells of fuel perhaps and smoke, stale sweat and the dense coppery smell of death close up. The frantic sounds, shouts and fluid movements of water or people, trickling down to a slow drip as the EMS vehicles move away. Sometimes in a hurry, too often not, the sound expanding away from the hollow rumbles of voices left behind to glean the concrete fields of evidence, searching for words and actions that explain.

Sometimes there is a crowd, sometimes in that crowd is a youngster, looking around, taking it all in, while the adults eyes are frantically forming words in their head while look for a TV camera, or swaying in shock, zombie-like, eyes closed in almost drugged immobility.

A child's recollection is simple, not so much words, but sounds, smell, movement, direction,things others might have missed. With a parents hands hovering near, those movements we all know of protection, it will be asked if the child could give their remembrance, just as was done with any adults that were present, letting them make a statement of what they remember, to define the things already known. Sometimes their statements, made with simple words and hands, are startling in their detail; details that confirm the tangibles that are known at that time. Tangiles that can become evidence. With that the search for truth continues.


For some adults do not do so well in recollection. An event to one person is seen in a totally different way than another. Both believe they are totally accurate and it's often hard to derive the reality from their truths. I've read accounts in the newspaper of events I actively participated in, only to shake my head in wonder at how very inaccurately it was portrayed, the words written for sensation and effect, not for accountability. I've seen it in a court room, a place where even in the scrubbed emptiness, the smell of spent violence, lust, graft and vengeance are discernible. Where even in the quiet you feel the reverberations of badgering and bitterness, sinners and saints, actors in a role, while we the public hope for that one legal expert that can see through all of that to do what is right based on reality, not motivation.

But getting to the heart of the matter is difficult. Look at the media, at some of the written chronicles on the Internet of recent tragedies, and the variances in discussing the same person or event, the same bit of history. Some are honestly detailed yet succinct, while others, especially when they feel they or their cause have been wronged, are so outside the realm of what happened that they do nothing but provoke incredulity.

Tragedies bear their own truth and it is usually NOT what is in much of the mainstream media.

Life is never easy, and finding out why things happen as they do remains something that haunts the edges of not just a crime scene, but our very lives. We want to know, desire it. Yet, unless we look at events with the clear eyes of a child, unmotivated by greed, political leanings or prejudice, we may find that the words we read, the blames being made, are no more sweet deceptions.

How about a Little Coffee with Your Cookie

Molasses Cookies With Espresso Sugar.

The sugar is from the amazing Artisano's in Indianapolis. I don't know if they ship, but their flavored sugars are something as are their other products. I tried the onion sugar sprinkled on some aspargus, drizzled with olive oil and roasted(mmm) and then had to figure out something to do with the espresso sugar I purchased. It's not table sugar mixed with finely ground espresso powder, it's chunky sugar crystals infused with espresso.

I made the recipe up, so there was no telling what the end result in the lab was going to be. I was cooking in a friends kitchen and I promised I wouldn't create too much mayhem. It didn't start well.

First off I broke the spatula.

Me: (walking into living room with object) "Mayhem has begun"

Friend: (laughing) "What!? I've had that spatula 20 years! That spatula survived college parties!! (meaning, that spatula survived pre med students and tequila).

Me: "Well, let me explain scientifically.

(No, wait. That's the plan for an impending date.)

Me - "It just, uh. . . broke".

I was forgiven when the first batch came out of the oven.

Soft, crisp just around the edges, a little chewy in the middle, but not too much. Flavored with nutmeg, Vietnamese cinnamon and ginger with the slightly sweet undertone of espresso, and rolled in more crunchy expresso sugar.

A lot of molesses cookies harden into little kevlar pucks on day two. Day two these are still soft. I have a feeling there's not going to be a day three.

click to enlarge photos

Sharks with Lasers

"You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can't be done. Can you remind me what I pay you people for? Honestly, throw me a bone here." — Dr. Evil (from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery)

Lasers. Occasionally misspelled "lazer" in fiction. Actually the name "L.A.S.E.R." is an acronym of "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation", since that's what lasers do.

The majority of us learned about lasers from TV. Laser weapons and Hollywood. Laser weapons on TV hit high on the cool scale but how real is it? Remember, Hollywood science rules and the energy weapons depicted usually move at the speed of light. In actuality, energy weapons move a lot slower than the speed of light (and sometimes slower than the bullets on the same show). The Hollywood ones can also be dodged. You're seen it, our hero sees the person aiming the ray gun at them and going for the trigger in in that split second he's able to hide behind a rock or whatever. If the bad guy is hit, he is instantly zapped and vaporized. If the good guy is hit, he just stumbles back a few feet. There were all kinds of such weapons in the movies. Retro ray gun was the death ray. Real handguns bowdlerized into energy guns were TV's version of space age family friendly firearms. A lot of it was simply made up, a lot of it was technology even now, terribly outdated.


But TV physics is TV physics. There's a common misconception that laser beams cauterize wounds, but trust me, real laser wounds are every bit as ugly and bloody as knife wounds. Heat from a laser only makes a tiny bloodless hole on TV. NOT. In reality, it can cause the water in the body to boil, expand and rip the surrounding tissues apart, mimicking the injury from high velocity bullet impact.

Energy weapons in fiction will always have knockback (which would be OK) and recoil (which makes absolutely no sense at all), in spite of the fact that energy has negligible momentum. Of course, no matter what the laser's frequency and the medium through which it is shooting, it WILL make loud futuristic ZAP noises. But laser weapons on TV aren't a realistic depiction of how real energy based weapons would work, they're not intended to be. They are stand in's for some real guns to appease the liberal producers or more often to simply establish the show as being sci fi (and thereby higher up on the cool scale). If you look at some of the very early futuristic TV and movies, the laser bolt effects looks a lot like machine gun fire using tracer bullets. This may be that many of the artists and engineers that worked on the earliest of such films have have been relating their own war experiences in inspiring that effect, many having served in WWII.

Some later shows confused lasers weapons with plasma weapons, which fire really hot gas, not light beams.. Necessarily, plasma weapons can't use light speed projectiles as, having mass, they would be susceptible to all sorts of physics that make approaching the speed of light extremely difficult.


Plasma weapons are almost always depicted as producing ludicrous (usually green) glowing puffballs that somehow avoid mixing into the air, sometimes hand waved as magically auto generated magnetic containment. An actual plasma weapon might be as useful as a gun that shoots steam; sort of like your very own flamethrower, only hotter.

Laser weapons are here, and they're being continually refined. One of the first known to the civilian science geek was the Airborne Laser and THEL. The Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser Testbed, (formerly Airborne Laser) weapons system is a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) mounted inside a modified Boeing 747-400F. Designed primarily as a missile defense system to destroy tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs) while in boost phase, the YAL-1 with a low-power laser was test-fired in flight, at an airborne target in 2007. A high-energy laser was used to intercept a test target in January 2010, and the following month, successfully destroyed two test missiles. (1)
It's pretty impressive. The COIL, is comprised of six interconnected modules, each as large as an SUV turned on-end and weighing about 6,500 pounds. When fired, the laser produces enough energy in a five-second burst to power a typical American household for more than an hour. (2)

The cooperative Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) Demonstrator ACTD was initiated by a MOU between the US and the Government of Israel in 1996. The THEL is a high-energy laser weapon system that uses proven laser beam generation technologies, proven beam- pointing technologies, and existing sensors and communication networks to enhance active defense capability in counter air missions.

The joint program was initiated to develop a THEL demonstrator using deuterium fluoride chemical laser technologies. THEL uses a Deuterium-Fluoride (DF) laser. NF3 and C2H4 are first reacted in multiple, side-by-side, high-pressure combustion chambers using an oxidizer (NF3) rich mixture that generates free F atoms. After ignition the combustion-generated F atoms, mixed with combustion by-products and a He diluent, flow into the laser cavity. A mixture of He and deuterium is also injected into the laser cavity, and DF is generated in an excited state as deuterium reacts with the free F atoms. The laser cavity is now ready to produce a laser beam.

Can I say "awesome" without sounding like a nerd?

THEL uses both Hydrogen Peroxide and Nitrogen Trifluoride. Nitrogen Triflouride (NF3) NF3 is used as a fluorine source in high-energy chemical lasers. Two applications are THEL and MIRACL (Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser) at White Sands Missile Range. Type 70 Hydrogen Peroxide is a critical element in the Anti-Ballistic Laser (ABL) and THEL Programs. Chemical lasers are the only class of HEL able to achieve megawatt power levels at century's turn. The MIRACL is a deuterium fluoride (DF) laser operating at a wavelength of 3.8 microns that has been in operation at the megawatt level since the mid 1980s at the White Sands HEL Systems Test Facility. It suffered from inherent propagation losses at full power in the operational wavelengths. DF technology found a home in the US Army/Israeli THEL, where propagation losses were mitigated by lower power levels and a crossing target.

Lasers - Deadlier, cooler.
Then, there is DARPA's HELLADS (High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System), light enough to fit on a fighter jet or drone aircraft, yet powerful enough to fire a 150 kilowatt beam of energy.

The Star Wars laser cannon may be closer than we think.

There have been high energy laser weapons in development powerful enough to bring down missiles (i.e MEHEL Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser). However their sheer size and weight (from the cooling systems needed) has precluded placement on just the largest aircraft.


HELLADS has a unique cooling system to save weight. The high-energy laser uses a liquid that has the same angle of refraction as the mirrors inside the blaster. That way, the "ray gun" can fire away, even while it's being cooled. Currently in development, the demonstrator device will be tested and scaled to achieve the low weight specifics and size needed for smaller airborne vehicles. Then the final phase of engineering, fabricating, integrating and demonstrating the complete HELLADS weapon system on a tactical platform. (3)
This sort of compact system is getting very close to what science fiction writers since H.G. Wells have envisioned when writing about the heat rays. More recently, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote about laser cannon in their 1974 novel Mote in God's Eye:

"The intruder came from here. Whoever launched it fired a laser cannon, or a set of laser cannon - probably a whole mess of them on asteroids, with mirrors to focus them - for about forty-five years, so the intruder would have a beam to travel on... "

Solid-state pulsed lasers, which fire bursts of energy and which are lighter than fluid-based lasers, but harder to cool, and electrolasers which ionize the air so that electric current can be sent along the beam's path, are already in development. More science than we ever saw watching Star Trek as children.

In actuality, these characteristics make lasers far more effective, and terrifying as weapons than anything we see in TV or movies, sharks not withstanding. It's probably also why we're not seeing realistic laser weapons in children's shows ("I love you, you love me. ZAP !!")

Since I won't get to play with any of these such toys, I'll happily embrace laser technology as I need and can obtain to protect my world. Viridian makes one of the better laser sights on the market, hands down, and they have their new catalog out.

Why green? The guys on TV got that part right. Green is much brighter and more effective than red in most conditions. Ordinary red lasers can be next to impossible to see in most daylight conditions. The benefit of a green laser is that it is much more visible, allowing for it to be used anytime, day or night, indoors or outdoors, permitting the LEO or civilian defense or sport shooter to track the target point quicker and more accurately. Additionally, because green lasers are so much more visible to the human eye, you can actually see a very intimidating visible beam in low-light conditions.
Nothing knocks the fight out of bad guys like the sudden appearance of a C5 equipped sub-compact. The brilliant green laser says “don’t mess with me", 24 hours a day.

For may not have to worry about storm troopers but I do have to worry about home invasions, muggers and murders. I'll take the best technology out there, and craft it for my use.

1) DoD 4120.15-L, Model Designation of Military Aerospace Vehicles. U.S. Department of Defense, May 12, 2004. (2) Grill, Tech. Sgt. Eric M. "Airborne Laser fires tracking laser, hits target". Air Force, March 21, 2007.

(3) http://www.space.com/

Dessert - A How To Guide

How to cheat at dessert.

Pistachio Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake

It uses a cake mix, and a few simple ingredients, mixed in one bowl. You don't even have to marble the batter, it does it as it bakes. With pistachio and dark chocolate, with a subtle undertone of vanilla and orange, it will score as high with your household as any time consuming creation.

click to enlarge photo, come on, I know you want to

A View From the Edge, and Back

The biopsy report came back from the pathologist today. The tumor was invasive but NOT malignant. Surgery over, no further treatment is required other than to just take it easy for a few more weeks.

I can't thank everyone enough for their prayers. Somewhere up north the sun is shining and my guardian angel will be resting a little easier after his mission today is done.

A View From the Range

In the reloading shop, high speed bovine. (click to enlarge).

The day started with a conversation about flying cows and ended up with my own batmobile. Welcome to life on the Range. I wasn't up to the blog meet, still a bit puny, though on the mend, so part of the blog meet came to me. Og, Ed Hering (Atomic Fungus), Mr B and Midwest Chick stopped by to visit with me WITH a Batmobile, still in the original packaging (to sit next to my bat phone).


There was also a get well gift of a Green Hornet Black Beauty model kit from the show The Green Hornet (known as The Kato Show in China), complete with paints, brushes and some model glue (either for the model or for the fact that Indiana is a dry state on Sunday), two Gina Koch books, and a bag of Midwest Chick's infamous brownie cookies.

Yes, we DO accept cookies (especially these).

Throw in some pie from a nearby restaurant, some conversation involving, knives, gun shows, oversexed oompa loompas (don't ask) and it was, as always, a good time. Good friends, good fun, and laughing so hard we hurt.


Now tonight, conversation with family and just hanging out with my favorite airman, and dreams of another day. Life didn't turn out the way I planned lately, but boy is it still good.

SHINY! Saturday Food Porn

h/t XKCD

I'm starting to get bored, I'm starting to want to get out of the house and go to the range.

SHINY!

Even better, I'm hungry.

Let's see, ham in the freezer, in the fridge just staples, butter, onions, milk, some various cheddars. Oh yeah, this will work.

Homestyle Mac and Cheese

Start with some smoked ham sauteed in butter and some caramalized onions.


Next a roux made from scratch and poured all over the top. This isn't your average roux. In addition to half and half, it has garlic, nutmeg, parsley, kosher salt, and a dash of Crystal Hot Sauce.


And BAKE!

if you don't click to enlarge these photos you may regret it.

Feedback page: Would definitely make again.

You Know Who You Are. . .

Infinity

Fate lies within some blades of grass,
the cosmos in the morning dew.
Tread infinity as you blindly pass,
and lose what you never knew.
Brigid

A HOTR Blast from the Past - Never Grow Up

For J. -

Most of you have read about some of these childhood toy memories, but home from the hospital, on the mend, I wished to post it again. Not just my new readers, but for a dear friend, who, though of a different toy generation, remembers well the joys of hope and imagination.

When I got home from the hospital there was a couple of packages waiting for me, sent from a secret squirrel friend posted far away, yet arriving in time for my return. The return address made me smile, the contents even more so. The Far Side. Pinky and the Brain! Cool!!

I enjoy the technology of my age, yet, like many, long for simpler times, when work had value, when a handout was a gift and not a right, when guns were part of most outdoors families, and toys were.. . . well. . . .COOL.

I admit, I'm just a big kid, no matter how many years have gone by, and when I see vintage toy stuff, especially vintage toy gun stuff, I have to stop and look at it.

I, for one, know what to do with a G.I. Joe Action Soldier Figure.

I had to go to the toy store recently, for there are still children in my life, of family, of friends.

I had to say. The girl toys just well. . . . BITE . Whining babies, assorted full breasted little dolls with silicone lips mostly dressed like hookers and an assortment of pink kitchen appliances. I even saw, heaven help me, padded bras for little girls. No, please no.

Why can't you get the kids a good old Sonic Blaster anymore? Nothing like a toy that perforates the eardrums the old fashioned way. Blame it on the cold war or The Man from Uncle, but in the later part of the sixties, when I was small, we had some of the best boys. Dangerous life threatening toys that put the BOOM in baby boomer. The sonic blaster was one of the best, a pump-action gun that fired a big column of air towards distant enemies of the state. Sit in a room full of 40 and 50 somethings and say "Sonic Blaster" and I guarantee at least 3 guys will smile and go "FOOOOMMM! We took out spies, treacherous piles of leaves and that stack of trash that was hiding hippies or a rabid squirrel.

The Sonic Blaster is still gone but some things never change, even though now it's a Conservation Club or LEO range where the noise is made.

Some of the vintage toy stuff is just junk. You can't say you've really lived, til you've truly and embarrassingly had your wallet stripped of cash from buying some foolish thing. Remember the "Sea Monkeys". I had no problemm feeding that family to the residents of my aquarium. We all get ripped off. Sometimes its the eBay item that never arrived, or that cheeseburger and coke you got at the drive through that you discover miles away was a granola parfait. For some folks it's that rude awakening that the free gas, easy mortgage and easy life promised by their political candidate was just smoke and mirrors.

My Dad went through a phase later in life, bless him, where he would buy us all stuff he saw on TV. The Pocket Fisherman, The Cap Snaffler, and my Mom's personal ("you bought me WHAT for my birthday") favorite, "The Smokeless Ashtray".

Mom got on the bandwagon as well, and one of the items I got for my room was the "Singing Bird Clock". It wasn't the Audubon one though, but a cheap imitation. Every hour the clock would erupt into a very realistic and loud, song of some exotic bird. So you could tell by the sound what time it was. Thank God it had a light sensor on it so you weren't woken from a sound sleep by the Warbling Wino or the Red Headed Double-Breasted Blanket Grabber at 3 am.

But there was one gift I just didn't know WHAT to do with. It was the "Car Duster". It looked like a small fluffy mop on a long stick. For "dusting" your car. I lived on 100 acres in the middle of the heartland - DUST was not my problem. So I couldn't resist. I took my trusty 4 x 4 out and got it as absolutely, positively muddy as could be humanly done without bodily injury. I had to occasionally get out and scrap a small peephole out of the front windshield so I could see forward to get home. Than, after it all had sufficiently dried, I posed, holding said "Car Duster" in hand in front of the vehicle for a photo for Dad. Mom said he laughed til he had tears in his eyes but he didn't buy us anything from the TV any more.

We never learn. . . some of the lessons are funny. Some are painful. But all come down to the basic human want to find something unique. To own it, and even better yet, to share it with someone you love without them thinking it's stupid or cheap or corny.

When my Mom was near to leaving us, I remember my Dad sitting there with her in the hospital, the sadness lapping at the edges of their life. She had survived a deep risk-taking lifetime, moments of grief intertwined with times of joy so intense she could no longer remember, only to have cancer come for her when her life was still full.

I remember my Dad sitting with her, as she asked for a cigarette, and I hear the whispered words "smokeless ashtray" and my Mom erupted into such peals of laughter that for the moment we all forget where we are and how little time she has left.

Even the silly can provide a memory that stays.

But some of the finds and memories are classic. I was lucky in that my parents grew up in rugged Western mountains with traditional values. Guns for the law abiding were just part of their world. It started with the Daisy, and then when I was old enough to handle and respect a gun for what it is, I learned all about recoil and bolt action from Dad's 8 mm Mauser and took out many a green Seven-Up can at the gravel quarry with Mom with the .22.

We had toy guns though from the time we could walk. As well as some other neat toys, the advantage of having an older brother and frugal parents - hand me down play stuff. Old toys weren't discarded, but they were simply kept to be passed on to siblings, nieces and nephews.

One of these was the Tudor Electric Football Game in your house? Picture the concept. You put eleven players into position. You flip the switch and the whole field begins vibrating and the players start jostling around on the L.A. earthquake-prone gridiron for position. Quick -stop the game so you can place the felt ball on the little base of your favorite player and turn that switch on again. Your player has an opening! He's going for it! The crowds on their feet - what the hell? He's changing direction. He's running the wrong way! SON OF A BITCH!

Fortunately, since this happened almost every time, the little rule book allowed you to call the play as "dead" rather than have your favorite running back reenact Jim Marshall's 1964 run against San Francisco which my Dad complained about for the next 20 years. Though despite it really not really being as great as advertised, we still had fun with it, if for the potential risk of electric shock, if anything.

Another toy I liked - weathered from use but working, albeit with the risk of second degree burns, was the Creepy Crawlers Thing Maker.

What a wonderfully dangerous toy this was, cooking bugs and things in an open hot plate. They litigation-proofed it in the 90's with safety controls that would ensure it cooled before you handled it, but not in my day. That wonderful smell of cooking goo, filling the house with the warm ambiance of plastigop and the electrical sizzle as the plate hit the cooling tray! This toy didn't just get 100 watt light bulb-warm like the wimpy Easy Bake Oven, it got HOT! We wore the small scars around the neighborhood like a badge of honor, like the ones from the Lawn Darts. I still have one on my thumb. And frankly, nothing spelled fun like honing your aim by whacking your younger brother right in the forehead with a piping hot stink bug.

Then were were models, always models, planes, trains and automobiles. Lego's to build whole empires, and the best one of all - the Erector Set. Though we weren't able to build a helicopter, as the early ads so proudly claimed, we made a few good powered rocket launchers and a hoist that could lift a cat. (Not a good idea.)

But the classic one was the Daisy Air Rifle. I had toy guns. From the time I could walk, or run actually, wearing my six-shooter and my little cowboy hat. I knew what they were, and the difference between a real one and a toy one. And guess what, I made it to a responsible, tax-paying adulthood without committing a felony.

Our folks had to get us toy guns, otherwise we'd make a gun out of a Popsicle, Legos or even a banana if that's all we could get our hands on to defend ourselves against outlaws and rustlers out in the back yard of the West. Some parents say toy guns make a child warlike. But lacking a gun toy, I more than once grabbed a plastic action figure around the knees like the butt of a pistol, pointed him head first, and said "BANG!" My folks, thank goodness, never bought in to that "nurture, vs nature" nonsense and let me choose. I played with the toys I wanted to.

Still do.

My favorite gun of choice when playing soldier as a youngster was Topper's Johnny Seven O.M.A which was handed down from an older brother, still in working order. Johnny Seven had all of the essentials - gun, helmet and combat phones. The thing that made this line special however, was the gun. This baby was a yard long and chock full of the things that boys/men (and the occasional redheaded girl) love to this day - gizmo's galore! The O.M.A offered seven weapons in one. It launched a grenade, fired an anti-tank rocket, shot an armor-piercing shell, chucked an anti-bunker missileshot, 10 bullets as a rifle made a rat-a-tat-tat sound as a tommy gun AND had a pistol that detached and functioned as a cap gun. The stock was also detachable and the O.M.A. had a built in bipod, which was handy since the thing weighed about 5 pounds. Maybe I should have found another one of these rather than laying out $1600 for an AR15 with accessories.

My favorite sidepiece though couldn't be found on any shelf at the toy store. It was the Weller soldering gun kept in the neighbor's garage. It was black and sturdily futuristic looking with two lights that would glow when you pulled the trigger and a tip that would make this Outer Limits kind of humming sound and got really hot, hot enough to melt plastic and burn paper. It was a decided step up from the Wham-O Air Blaster. Though it really did a number on Barbie's arm when we tried to give her a tattoo with it to impress G.I. Joe.

Green plastic army men were a perennial favorite. My older brothers had to order them from the back of comic books when they first came out. Originally introduced in the 1950's by Marx, they would order them from brightly colored ads in the back of the comic books. When I started collecting mine from the rack at the grocers they had hardly changed in design. I bet any one of us, whether we are 60 or 50 or 38 and holding could remember "crawling guy", "throwing the grenade guy"," minesweeper guy", and "bazooka guy", all in the classic cardinal green army style.

I enjoyed getting mine at the store but I envied my older brothers who got theirs, hundreds of plastic soldiers delivered in a real footlocker (genuine U.S. made cardboard). Our dad's generation had to be content with conducting warfare with hobby shop metal soldiers which were purchased in limited numbers due to the price. We, the product of the consumer friendly late 60's and 70's, could buy whole legions of little men to command. There were so many you didn't have to worry about losing one or two to the dog (he's got me Frank! Arghhhhh) or leaving one behind enemy lines when Mom called supper. You always had more. You knew that although there would be a skirmish that involved firecrackers and some Private inevitably losing his head, you had backups. Reliable, dependable.

Unlike most toys now, they were simple. Two to three inches tall, no moving parts, nothing painted or stuck on,but they didn't do real well in heat (Sargent Miller meets Colonel Soldering Gun didn't do so well). But they did hold up well, pretty bullet proof other than that. Girl toys were OK, but for the cost of some silly Barbie dress I could get a bag of hundreds of soldiers to deploy after school got out for the day. And play we would.

Now it seems you have to push the kids out the door to get them to play outside. Not us, with a coat, some soldiers, and a couple of dogs, we watched carefully for that first break in the snow. We knew the signs that told us spring was almost here, that first slice of spring sun bursting from the sky, opening cold fissures in the landscape. Snow had been fun, but we were tired of the many days of snow, stampeding flurries of twenty below that swirled around the family home with all the spontaneous elegance of a brawl, keeping even the hardiest kid indoors. We couldn't wait to get out in the sun, with the landscape to ourselves. Out where entire wars were fought and domains were challenged, melting snowballs flying from the last remnants of snowy forts, ancient strategies drawn out with mittens on a battle plain of white and green as we gathered our troops around us.

Summers were anticipated glory. We'd be out after breakfast and play all day, with kids gathered up from around the area, a posse of potential. We'd drink from the hose if we got thirsty and ripped more than one pair of knees out of a pair of jeans, which our mothers would patch, not replace. We exposed our bellies to the sun, offered up skinned elbows to the skies, gaining confidence in our movements, in ourselves, breathing deeply, nourishing ourselves on the scent of grass as we laid out battle plans worthy of Clausewitz.

Our imaginations were not provoked by PlayStations or GameBoys. Our play burst out of something within our own minds, shouting forth as we charged the next hill, darting past "throwing grenade guy" with "bazooka guy" to take another hill. To us, with the agile minds of children, it was all real. We scurried between small valleys and miniature cliffs. An empty Styrofoam cup with the end cut out with our pocketknife became a tunnel, a scoop of dirt became a foxhole. Overhead all we could see was the drowsy bowl of the summer sky, filled with possibility and tinged with smoke from battlefield fires that only we could see.

The sound of the barrage was both remote and near, our childlike voices providing the sound effects, a vibration in the earth sensed with our minds, rather than felt, as our battalions moved onward, taking more ground.We advanced until we reached the neighbor's yard, a pristine landscape where the war had not reached, where there would be no quarter given, where soldiers were not to pass and disobedience would be death. Step foot across that boundary and tear up Mrs. Copenhagen's prize flowers, and there would be no mercy. We stopped, gave our wounded some water from the hose and retreated back towards the house.But like most of my generation of the West, we loved to be outdoors. We learned to fish and later to hunt, a continuation of the early childhood games we played, except this time the strategy did not involve small soldiers, but involved steelheads, and the only make believe "counting coup" we did was the "one that got away" stories.

It had been a good battle. We lost some soldiers, yes, but the summer day flowed endlessly. We were immortal, the clouds rushing by faster than our troops could advance. Glorious days. Only the sound of the dinner bell would bring us in, dirty and hungry and aching to be outside again.

Yet, there's a playground which I pass on my way home, small, built at the edge of one of the subdivisions on the south edge of town. I rarely see children in it. Perhaps the kids have all grown up and moved. Perhaps they're indoors. Kids want to play electronic games, videos, TV, all of which capture their attention within the confines of a home. I'm lucky that my friends children are always up for outdoor play, chasing Barkley, having a snowball fight.

Certainly, as children, we had our indoor activity. There were times when the cold and the rain kept even the range cattle looking for cover and for those days there were trains and books; fun learning about tools with Dad in his wood shop. Dad would set up Lionel trains in the garage and the joy of small plastic action figures would continue, Cowboys and Indians attacking the train, sometimes with some Army soldiers serving in the ranks. The outdoors made us strong, made us self sufficient and capable. Yet it preserved in us, enough laughter to help us get through the really difficult times. All of us made a career out of serving our country in the military and/or law enforcement and we're probably the better for it.

Back home recently and digging in Dad's yard to tend tend his vegetable garden for him, I unearthed a tiny plastic soldier, and that tiny battered warrior, recreated a flood of memory of childhood days when my younger brother and I played for world dominion out in the back yard. The touch of its small battered form brought back the scent of the earth in our back yard, the shade of the apple tree that sheltered us, the warmth of the sun.Was this little figurine simply a forgotten toy or was he buried in some forgotten childhood military honor? Like anything long lost, he spoke to me of why we remember things and why they are important. I wrapped his green plastic form carefully in a tissue and brought him home, bringing him back past the eyes of TSA, one last covert mission to bring him home, where yes, games are still played.

There's one to play around here with me today. But I can watch Barkley and G-Dog playing in the snow out back. The trees watch down on us, like sentient commanders, as the wind blows gently, chilling the skin, sparking my soul. That soul of a solitary soldier, true.

Even though my tastes are decidedly adult, I'm still open for that adventure of youth, when we simply rounded up some local kids and headed out each morning. We pretty well bumped, nicked and scraped most parts of our body at one time or another, yet no one's parents attempted to sue the county for having trees we might climb or the neighbors for having a pond we could play soldier around and scrape up our shins. Only a generation ago, it was different. Sure, there were drugs on the horizon and some crime and such, but we were just allowed to be kids and didn't have the world shoved in our face on CNN every night. We didn't have $300 tennis shoes and having to listen to a band called Wang Chung on the radio was the scariest thing in our near future.

We were simply kids, behaving like kids, skipping rocks in the pond, marveling in the construction of a deer stand or the rub of a pair of antlers against a tree, dragging our tired selves home with an old sheet of plywood we found that we could make a raft out of sometime. When we'd get home, dog tired and dirty, sometimes Mom would let us roast marshmallows in the living room fireplace after supper, on her good carpet, so we could continue the adventure until sleep on the blanket there, stomach full of hot globs of sweet security.

Being an adult has its advantages, but just once I'd like to go back there, to play with the Daisy and fall asleep on a blanket in front of the fire; warm, safe and loved, naive to the evil and ignorance of man.

Perhaps one of these days soon, I can.