I’ve been traumatized, you’ve been traumatized, all God’s chirren been traumatized

A cyberfriend named Linda (I don't know her last name) who blogs from Hueytown, Alabama, said earlier this week that her friend Tommy, who was in third grade during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, remembers that his school gave out dog tags for all studemts to wear. Linda was horrified and asked Tommy what he had thought anout that. Tommy replied matter-of-factly that it was to identify the body.

Linda was a junior in high school in 1962 and renembers wanting dog tags to wear as jewelry, but she never got any, nor did her school give any out to students that she recalls.

I was 21 years old in 1962 and was in the Air Force, so I had dog tags, real ones given out by Uncle Sam himself, and Tommy is right, they are used to identify dead bodies after a military engagement. Dog tags are notched, and I remember being told during basic training that whenever the body of a soldier (airman, sailor, whatever) is found, the notch of the dog tag is placed between the dead person's two upper front teeth and his lower jaw, and the butt of a rifle is kicked or rammed against the lower jaw to close the mouth. This act drives the dog tag into the skull, under the nose, and the procedure ensures that the body and the dog tag stay together and do not become separated in transit. I distinctly remember the training instructor telling us this, and apparently it happened routinely during World Wars One and Two and the Korean Conflict. You don't forget being told something like that. The image is gruesome and haunting, as in indelibly imprinted in the mind.

Before the Cuban Missile Crisis, I had been stationed at an Air Force Base in Florida for more than a year, but in September 1962 I was transferred to Strategic Air Command Headquarters outside of Omaha, Nebraska, to receive training to become a computer programmer. Having received the training and then writing computer programs for three years for the Air Force helped me get hired by IBM when I left military service in 1965.

"Be glad you're not here," one of my Florida buddies wrote to me. "Everything here is chaos and madness and upheaval. Many more planes and personnel have been brought in, and all the barracks are full to overflowing. A lot of tents have been put up in the open areas between the barracks buildings to try to handle all the additional people."

I wrote him back, "What do you mean? I'm out here at Bull's Eye Air Force Base!" It seemed clear to me that any of the Soviet Union's Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) launched out of Cuba -- fortunately none ever were -- would be aimed at key military targets like the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia; NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) Headquarters under that mountain in Colorado; and yes, SAC Headquarters where I was in Nebraska, not a field in Central Florida or an elementary school in Alabama.

So Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life went on, and the crisis passed. But it rains on the just and on the unjust, into each life some rain must fall, life is what happens to you while you're making other plans, and other discouraging expressions. Crises come and crises go. As Rosanne Rosannadanna (Gilda Radner) used to say on Saturday Night Live, "It's always something."

Today is one of the good days. At 5:37 a.m. EDT, Spring arrived this morning. The vernal equinox occurred. Day and night are of approximately equal length. God's in His heaven; all's right with the world (except for a few million deaths here and there due to the ongoing pandemic and a few despots and tyrants who cannot be ignored).

You simply must celebrate the arrival of Spring by watching this (4:37) .

In conclusion, I would like to quote something my mother used to say. "You may not be able to keep the birds from flying overhead, but you can keep them from making a nest in your hair."