Christmas Day in Iraq

From: Aaron Haney

Date: Dec 25, 2006 6:12 AM

Subject: a star in the east

25 December 2006

I got up this morning at 0600 to participate in the "Jingle Bell Run" 5K with one of my colleagues, Melissa Messina. We walked over to the gym only to find it had been postponed to tomorrow morning. I went ahead and just shot some basketball for about 30 minutes or so before heading back to my room. Right now it is 0750 and pretty much no one else is up. I'm debating whether to lay back down for an hour or so or open the presents my wife and family sent.

Last night I attended my first "Midnight Mass". I've been going to the Catholic service with CPT Hudson and COL Trakowski who are both Catholic and envited me along to their service when I first arrived in country. I subsequently got drafted into the choir and was part of the carol singing extravaganza just prior to the Mass last night at 11:30. Much of the week to week music sounds like something from John Michael Talbot whom my wife loves (his music that is). Whenever someone asks me about a particular song or what to do at a particular part of the service I just shrug my shoulders and say, "I don't know, I'm not Catholic." :^)

The attached picture was taken last night on Christmas Eve beside our building. The humvee looked so stark sitting in the glow of our front entrance light. I snapped a couple of shots before I got the idea to sit the camera on a bench and set the timer. After seeing the result on my computer the story of the "star in the east" came to mind, as if I were somehow participating in that awesome event here in the Middle East, not too far from Bethlehem. I hope everyone has a wonderful day today with family and friends.

Peace, Aaron

The Lady Bug

She has a pet lady bug she keeps in a small glass jar.

The bug’s name is written there in her scrawl “Fuze”

but it is pronounced “Fuzzy” in her 1^st grade parlance.

We looked up what they eat and found “aphids”, but 

we don’t have aphids so it said “raisins,” good enough.

Sometimes Fuze flies around and crawls on the table.

She never tries to flee and is easily handled without 

protest, no biting or stinging (can they even do that?).

I think Fuze is the most low maintenance pet we have

ever had, our week together thus far.  We miss our dog.

***

The Lonely Cannibals

We are a country based 

on rugged individualism

and a consumer-based

economy w/out restraint.

As Richard Weaver said 

ideas have consequences,

so we are lonely cannibals 

eating our limbs w/relish.

***

The Great Watermelon Caper of ‘86

A friend posted a video on Facebook of a semi-trailer truck lying on its side at the edge of a highway in Pennsylvania with boxes of vodka scattered from a hole in the roof of the trailer.

This took me back in time to a similar incident when I was in High School.  It was summer time and I was out with my Dad and one of his employees on a carpet laying job.  The house was on an isolated stretch of Hwy 50 just west of Mitchell, Indiana.  On the way back home from the job we saw a semi-trailer truck lying on its side and a good deal of straw dumped down the roadside embankment.

We stopped to check on the driver and found him walking around the rig and checking on things.  We chatted with him for a bit and he told us he’d already radioed in to let his boss know what happened.  In the straw were hundreds of watermelons and he invited us to take as many as we’d like.  He told us that insurance would cover the lost watermelons that were now all up and down this hillside.  We waded through the straw and secured a good dozen or so unbroken ones before leaving the scene.  On the way home I devised a secret plan to capitalize on this bit of insider knowledge.  

After dinner I went to a local craft store and bought a sheet of white poster board with some colorful markers as well as checked out how much watermelons were going for at the local supermarket (~4-5 dollars a piece).  I went to bed at my regular time, but set an alarm for some time after midnight.  When it went off I snuck out of the house with a flashlight and drove my sister’s car back to the scene of the accident.  

By the light of my flashlight I gathered up as many watermelons as I could fit in her car and a fair amount of straw.  Rolling back into Mitchell an hour or so later I pulled into a vacant lot that I’d scoped out earlier where two highways intersected on the edge of town.  The straw I’d gathered made a nice bed for the watermelons which I laid out in rows beside the car.  I wrote in large letters on my poster board “WATERMELONS $2!”, taped it to the side of my car, and then tried to go to sleep with a blanket I’d brought along.

Sometime around 6 or 7 in the morning  I was awakened by someone tapping on my window.  “You selling these watermelons?”  

I threw off my blanket and rubbed my eyes vigorously.  My first customer!  He asked if they were good and sweet and I assured him they were.  He bought several of them and after about an hour or two I’d sold them all and drove away with about 60 or 70 dollars hard cash in my pocket.  

Back home I realized the car was trashed and I must have made up some excuse as to why I was vacuuming out my sister’s car.  Later that day she looked upset and asked in an exasperated tone “Why does my car smell like watermelon?!”

The Room on West Oak

The room was nestled at the end of the hall on the second story of a one hundred year old house with high ceilings and cast iron radiators that rattled and pinged through cold winter nights.  It was smallish but the closet was largish and there was a tall window that overlooked the wide front porch roof.  The house itself sat on the venerable north side of West Oak Street.

It was the summer of ‘85 and I was between my sophomore and junior years of High School.  It was a new town for me yet only about five miles from my old town where I’d lived from first through tenth grade.  Much of that summer was spent in anticipation of moving and getting the house ready to move into.  The personality of the place had me utterly captivated.

And this room was mine.  I stood in the middle of it and summed up the possibilities.  First off I removed the door to the closet to make it seem more spacious.  I had a desk that was not going to fit in the room proper, so the closet became my office with barely enough room to get the chair in there along with my thin frame and no room to spare.

My parents gave me carte blanche and I ran with it.  I claimed an old oak chifforobe my Dad had bought at an estate sale in order to have a place for my clothes.  I chose the carpet and bedding to match, but what tied it all together was installing a beautiful wall-sized mural of a Fall forest path scene that further extended the perceived size of the room.

A large wooden entertainment system finished out the room’s furnishings which included my Dad’s old record-eight track player combo with speakers.  The rest of it was packed full with my Science Fiction and Fantasy books (along with a sizable number of Stephen King novels) all of which comprised my most valued of possessions: a personal library.

Interesting thing about that record player.  I didn’t really have any records of my own, though there were a few eight tracks of my Dad’s that I liked.  I acquired records* when the most beautiful girl at my new school turned around in her seat, batted her eyelashes, and asked if I wanted to help her out by buying some records for their senior fundraiser.

After we moved into this house and my room had been completely transformed by my ecstatic vision, my parents threw an Open House party.  My Dad had sunk a chunk of change into beautifying this grand old home, but at the end of the day I was told by more than one adult who’d had the tour that my room was their favorite part of the whole house.

It turned into a money pit and my Dad sold it when I was in college.  And since then, like a skipping record,  there are the dreams.  It is always a house that can only be described as a mansion.  The rooms are large and limitless with hidden wings and grand ballrooms, though it is rundown and needs work.  Invariably my joy becomes tempered by the thought “I can’t afford this”... and I wake up.

***

*Sting’s “Dream of the Blue Turtles” and Billy Joel’s “Greatest Hits Volume I & II”