Tin Soldiers And Nixon Flashbacks

[dbt]

First, all respects to the Viet Nam veterans.* You who couldn't avoid the Draft the way that I did, with my II S (student) deferment. Youall who went when Uncle said it was time. I owe you and I will never be able to pay. But you shall always have my love for the debt you backed up with your own blood. This especially goes out to the Black and White Southern Boys who did my dying for me and let me run around loose in America. Your ol' Daddies may have fought for Freedom, but I be damned if y'all didn't too!

I had to go to college back in 1968. It was the only way I could avoid: 1.) my father's scorn when basic training at Fort Polk would've sent me blubbering and crawling to the Psych Ward, 2.) my father's (the WWII survivor of fucking Saipan) eternal damnation if I took the Canada Option--the very thought of which scared me shitless--and/or 3.) having to think about what two of my cousins (the drummer and the bass player of my high school R&R band--sworn to be the tightest in the county) were facing in the foxholes left by Lyndon Johnson while I couldn't find a better way out than going to college.

Thank Goddess my Draft Lottery Number came up 335 on that Fall afternoon in 1970 while I stood beside the AP teletype at KXOW 1420 and watched it chunk out the digits of doom. Looking back on that day, it becomes curious to me that I first resolved to never get my hair cut or wear underwear again, followed shortly by an obsession with B-52 jet bombers. You know; the ones LBJ, Kissinger and Nixon sent to Hanoi (and probably Laos and Cambodia) to blow the living shit out of everything on the ground while they reassured us that peace was at hand, there was a light at the end of the tunnel and that there was a Secret Plan for Peace in Viet Nam. Yeah, those B-52s.

It's been about 74 days now since I saw a pair of B-52s doing lazy circles over Little Rock. And about 48 hours since I saw the fucking THIRD of three instances of a B-52 (was it the same plane, or have there been three of the bastards?) going SW-NE over my farm in Lower Arkansas.

FWIW, the parade of FEMA trailers down Interstate 30 back in 2006 didn't bother me to this extent; and the sighting of TANKS on low-boy trailers going up and down the same superslab roughly every other day since March of this year has not moved me to much more than the occasional nervous upchuck, but the appearance of B-52s in my beloved Arkansas sky is seriously beginning to fuck with my head.

No, I can't find any reference to B-52s at Little Rock Air Force Base. But they've been flying over my house here lately and it makes me kindly nervous, as Karl Childers so eloquently put it.

Given the abundance of Viet Nam veterans and pilots on this website, I humbly ask

:wtf: is going on with B-52s over Arkansas!**

Anxiously Yours,
dbt

*I refer to the FIRST Viet Nam--and the only reason I do not capitalize the word veterans is out of near-worship and the desire to include every swingin dick (and pair a tits) who actually SERVED their country while I was trying to see if I could face being a man.

**Any and all references to tinfoil and/or conspiracy theories will get your sorry ass put on Instant Ignore. You know who you are, so lay off while I get some answers from the Vets...

[Jack Bone]

1. thanks for the heads-up...pun intended..

I live a few miles south of Grissom AFB (reserve squad of KC-135's) and I haven't seen any flying over recently. Hopefully, your B-52's are just in a training exercise..

[dbt]

2. Yeah, I've been hoping for a training exercise. (And nothing more)

but I ain't seen a B52 over this part of Arkansas since they practiced in-flight refueling sometime in 1957.