Of Militia and Silly Hats...

Back in the seventies, before the sense of futility set in, I was Militia. This was way the FRACK before anybody ever heard the word "Hutaree," I'll have you know, and things were a little different. My shooting instructor was a Marine lifer who ended up getting killed in Mozambique. I'm not sure I can talk about where my demo instructor came from. I won't say it was entirely devoid of Walter Mitty aspects, but there were some things we took more seriously back then, fer shur. For one thing, live fire practice often involved shrapnel. Yeah, I know now that we were all supposed to be racist homophobe misogynist KKK neo-nazis with lots of tatoos and outstanding library fines, but to tell the truth I never met anybody like that back then. I was just an angry young man.

Anyway, The reason this came to mind: I was going through some of my daughter's Facebook photos. Yes, I have a minimal Facebook account: It's the only way I can see her photos unless she emails them to me directly.

I came upon Ari the Husband's official Army photo, and dang but that's a good looking boy. Silly-ass hat, but a good-looking boy.

Then I think I got a little red in the face, because while I was making fun of his outfit I remembered something. When I was cleaning out the Interim Lair for the move here I came upon a shiteload of photographs I'd forgotten existed. And buried in among all the travel photos were some really, really old ones...

Hint: Not one of the good-looking ones

(photo of a photo)

Yeah, back then the dumbass berets were de rigueur. So I guess I can't make fun of AtH's headgear, since I was about that age. This was like 35 years ago.

And here's Joel, about to get killed for the 437th time that day...