Category: History

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date November 25, 2008
2 Comments on Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

If it’s Tuesday night then you just know what I’m up to – no matter where in the world I may be located at:

1. I don’t have a cold yet. My 9TH cold in 13 months has not yet materialized. Give it a few days. It’ll make its presence known. I guarantee it. North Texas is full of germs. So are airplanes. I fly back in one this Saturday afternoon.

2. I’ll be flying to South Florida this weekend on the 21ST anniversary of my very first flight to South Florida (from the Washington D.C. area). I landed at MIA on the 30TH of November in 1987, and I arrived so late in the night that it wasn’t until the wee hours of the 01ST of December that I actually arrived at my new home at (then) Homestead Air Force Base. I was 20 at the time. That was more than a half a life ago.

3. Remember this family vacation of a lifetime that I identified in an early-September edition of these ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ ?:

America's Magnificent National Parks — Magnificent National Parks - Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, And Nevada

It’s not gonna happen. The trip has been cancelled due to a variety of logistical reasons. Now we’re planning a replacement trip for sometime during the Spring, Summer, or Autumn of 2009. I cast my vote for Bermuda (which I just mentioned this past weekend on the ‘Saturday Night Retro’). Maybe we’ll take a 5, 7, or 9 day cruise from the U.S. to Bermuda and back ?

4. Yesterday was quite the ‘Tex-Mex’ day for me. For Lunch we ate at Chili’s (not my choice), and then for Dinner less than 5 hours later we ate at a place called Mexi-Go. I delighted in the ‘Guadalajara’. That – mis amigos – is a chicken enchilada, a cheese enchilada, a grilled chicken fajita taco, rice, and beans. Oh yeah we enjoyed the standard appetizer of chips and salsa at both joints. I can’t deal with anymore Mexican food until I return back home to the Mexican restaurant capital of South Florida – Homestead 33030.

5. TOMORROW me and my brother are going to visit the place where Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John F. Kennedy exactly 45 years ago this past weekend. I’ve always wanted to visit this essential piece of world history. It’s a single event that lasted a few seconds that forever changed the United States Of America.

Those are my thoughts on this Tuesday night. I’m so glad that I could share them with you. Thank You for being a part of my Life.

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Saturday Night Retro

TODAY I flew on an airplane from Fort-Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. It was the umpteenth time that I flew anywhere. (I actually don’t keep track of all of my airline flights via an EXCEL spreadsheet.) I’ve lost track of my flying over the past 23½ years. I’ve flown first class once or twice (wasn’t too impressed), and I’ve flown most of the major airlines that are still in business today. Flying is not as fun as it used to be (prior to September 11TH 2001). This morning I left my home at precisely 6:30 AM to get to the off-site parking area at the airport by 7:30 AM to get to the terminal by 7:45 AM to check-in, get through security, and get to my gate prior to boarding at 9 AM and departure from the gate at 9:30 AM. And then there’s the 3-hour flight. It basically took longer to get from my home in Homestead to the aircraft at the airport than it did to actually fly that aircraft more than halfway across the country !

Check out this classic 60-second television commercial for the legendary Eastern Airlines of the way things used to be. Compare our baggage handlers of today with those depicted from the 1970s.

Before I turned 18-years-old and moved away from home to join the circus USAF I recall flying only twice in my life – twice to and from Bermuda on summertime vacations as a little kid during the mid-1970s. I recall Bermuda to be a fun little place out in the middle of the Atlantic – sort of a hybrid between a Caribbean nation further south and the United Kingdom further east. I wish to go back there one of these years to check it out all over again for the first time in over 30 years.

And now Ladies And Gentlemen – IT’S GO-GO TIME ! Let’s kick it old school !

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Saturday Night Retro

The month of November is chock-full of anniversaries for me. 28 years ago in 1980 me and my family moved from one side of Washington D.C. (Maryland) to the other side (Virginia). Our lives changed for the better on the opposite side of the Potomac River. 23 years ago in 1985 I moved out of the country for the first time ever courtesy of the USAF. That anniversary was actually last weekend. I flew from D.C. to London England, and then I took British Rail westward from London to Swindon. I took a taxi from Swindon to my new home at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. I did all of that just 5 months removed from my 18TH birthday.

I lived in the U.K. for some 105 fun-filled weeks. In fact this weekend is the 21ST anniversary of my departure from the U.K. – and U.S. homecoming. I would eventually arrive at – Homestead Florida !

I haven’t been back to the U.K. ever since I left, but you can bet that I will return some day for a visit. I enjoyed the time of my young life for two years over there, and I surely did ‘Live It Up’.

Here’s Australian super group Mental As Anything. They’ve been together for the past 32 years, and in 1985, 1986, and 1987 they scored the biggest worldwide pop smash of their entire career with this uplifting track that you may just remember from the ‘Crocodile Dundee’ movie. Check it out: