Friday Fools Day ...

It wasn't so much a matter of knowing of cold, but my father told of a related sort of story from his time in Japan right after the war. Before being stationed in Japan, his heavy equipment maintenance and repair outfit had been in the Philippines, where they acquired some fine Philippine mahogany wood (not stringy lauan wood, sarcastically known as "Philippine mahogany"). When the unit shipped to Japan, they brought this fine wood with them. They were stationed in Kure, Japan, a waterfront city with a naval base, and they built their latrine on a dock over the bay. The "facilities" featured benches and holes in some of that fine Philippine mahogany. Since this was not a small unit, the facilities afforded multiple, um, fixtures. They left wood files on the bench, and as each man sat he was obliged to file the hole cut next to him so future users of that hold would not "acquire" splinters. Meanwhile, they also came up with some big sheets of aluminum--quite a find in post-war Japan. Some of those aluminum sheets became the roof over the latrine. Imagine a sunny day with the shining latrine roof extending over the dock out in the bay! (Also imagine the temperature on warm, sunny days. Kure was near Hiroshima, and a brewery on the far side of a hill survived the big bomb. My father's unit were allowed two bottles of beer from that brewery per week. But they were required to return the previous week's bottles and especially bottle caps. In spite of the aluminum sheets, generally metal was in desperately short supply in Japan, and the caps for those bottles wore out. So members of the unit wrote home to request their friends and family send bottle caps so they could get their beer ration. In case you wondered, they GIs knew nothing of nuclear fallout.

Having been awoken a couple of times by somebody playing the bagpipe outside, I can relate to the breath analyzer. I will say in defense of this instrument that it is particularly gruesome when it is first started up - if there is such a word for a bagpipe. Once it is doing its thing, nothing beats Scotland the Brave. Bagpipes are like salty licorice: an acquired taste.

Oh Susan I laughed so hard at so many ??????Thank you thank you really needed that. You are truly marvel, gift to us. ??????????