They say when you are over the hill you pick up speed.

Maybe that is true. Certainly, the visibility improves as you roll over the crest. Some of us are over the great divide of the Holidays. Kevin McCarthy is not, at least until noon when the new Congress is sworn in. One of the crucial indications was over in the land war currently in progress in what we are still calling “Ukraine.” To celebrate the New Year, the people in the western part of the that nation launched a bunch of shiny new weapons on what used to be the eastern part. They used a system called “HIMARS.” That is a way of saying the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, a neat truck-mounted contraption designed by the humanitarians over at the Lockheed-Martin corporation.

There was a litany of other New Year’s stuff to report. Rockets were launched shortly after the chime of New Years, on the Gregorian calendar, anyway. That accounts for some of the confusion here at Big Pink. The other one on the Julian calendar contributes to the uncertainty. As you may recall, the Julian calendar was used in Europe before the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1582. There had been a dispute about the length of time contained in one revolution of our planet around the sun.

As we have all discovered, the decimal dust left after “365 days” mounts up. It accounts for the argument this morning about what day of Christmas it is. We are getting to the end of it, or at least near it. This morning the productive taxpaying version of the social order is back to work. There isn’t another holiday coming before Doctor King’s on the 16th, though there is an opportunity to honor the 15th of January with Holiday Rules. That is when Russia ceded Livonia and Estonia to Poland. We knew Livonia as a Detroit suburb along with the Polish one, Hamtramck, and they had been at peace for quite a while.

We are not worried about that, although we understand there are some Russians, or at least one of them, who is still concerned. In response, there appear to be others. Here at Big Pink, we now look at the slope of the month of January, ready to fly down into this strange new year.  Many people are sitting blankly at their desks, wondering what it was they were engaged in before the week between Christmas and the New Year. Splash and Loma were arguing about whether the 3rd of January was the ninth or tenth day of Christmas.

There is an ecclesiastic dispute about whether to count Christmas Day as the first. Others claim it

would be rational to not count the actual Nativity. They prefer to begin the dozen days on

December 26th. But by the time we get to the long end of the holiday, with all those maids doing

something productive and the Lords Leaping around, we understand a bit of confusion is also part

of the continuing celebration.

Which goes for two or three more days. We suspect it will be three, if Splash gets to count. But

the rest of us, a bae majority, think that getting back to the notion of “Happy Hour,” capitalized or

not, is the way to swing into the spirit of the New Year, which is already starting to show some

routine wear and tear.
We have been at it for almost 72 hours, which at the 67,000 miles per hour our spinning globe

travels is already a bunch.

Here in 2023, now that it is real, we have adopted Splash’s holiday philosophy. Since we are no

longer “on the clock,” we decided to take care of some personal business. I bade farewell to the

Writer’s Section just after lunch. “I came in a little late today” I told them. “So, I am going to take

off a little early to compensate.”

It was necessary time, since we were going back to The Base. If you don’t live near a military

installation, or have reason to go on one, you would be surprised at the process. Twenty years ago

they briefly stopped having guards altogether. We understood it was a ‘cost saving’ initiative.

Then came the 9/11 attacks and what followed. The GWOT, as we learned to call it, was our

longest nation conflict. which was alleged to be a war on terror. Like the brief absence of guards,

the Base briefly bristled with squat green all-terrain Hummers filled with watching soldiers

holding machine guns.

Given those extremes, the drive to the base had an amount of anxiety. We had lost it altogether in

the transition from town to Farm. Our first attempt to visit resulted in a scenic tour of most of

Arlington, that bit of left-over District of Columbia viewed as ungovernable on the left side of the

Potomac River. In fact, it was so unruly that it resulted in a different war. It was shorter than the

GWOT and probably cheaper. But in terms of casualties, it set a standard not equaled until one

they took to calling The Great War.

You know how these things go. The current war- the one in Ukraine- seems to be an attempt at

recreating the horror of others and is succeeding.

We set that aside, concentrating on finding the Army Post at Fort Myer. They have changed the

name. The new one has a ‘hyphen’ as well, and could even merit two of them. They stopped at

Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, though since they also rolled Ft. McNair into the agglomeration

created in 2005. The original hyphen came since the same place was carved out of the Custis-Lee

Plantation during the Civil War. The latter part of the hyphenated owner was Robert Edward Lee.

He happened to be leading an Army in opposition to the other Army he had been offered to

command. With the obligations of his post, he was out of town and his property seemed to be a

logical place for the dead of the Army he chose not to command to be buried. Some of us have

that plan as well, unless they run out of plots sooner.

DC being what it is, Union dead were interred in General Lee’s garden to ensure that the

Commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia could not come home again without a

few reminders of incorrect thinking. Fort Myer gets first mention, since it supports the Old Guard,

the Third U.S. Infantry, protectors of Arlington Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknowns.

There are ceremonial reasons to visit, of course, but also practical ones. The “JB” is also home of

the Commissary and Exchange complex, the gas station and the Class Six Store, the home of

discount, tax-free beer, wine and spirits. These could be hyphenated as well, since they are critical

services for the active and retired communities. The occasion of this visit demonstrated how long

it has been since we shed the uniform of our nation. We were approaching the expiration of

tobacco supplies.

Down at The Farm there is no alternative to the Commonwealth system of regulated sale for both

tobacco and wine, conveniently located five miles from our property line. In two separate chains

of distribution. Many places they are located in adjacent spaces in strip malls. The military

establishment was much more efficient, and they are conveniently in the same place. Regrettably,

we ran out of tobacco products on the very same day the liquor sales reach a seasonal high on

New Year’s Eve.

There were some new aspects of the ritual of access. The guard- only one of him/her, they/them-

has no interest in the photo embossed on the identification card. The back of the card has nothing

that could connect the rightful owner of the plastic rectangle to the owner, but does have the

ability to be scanned. So as we cruised the route the computer had recommended. The Sentry just

wanted to scan it. We do not question the various manifestations of the institutions we served. The

card was turned around, the hand-held scanner was presented, and we were waved through the

gate and past the lane that flags vehicles and presumably drivers for further search. We have

already made that mistake.

They do other things on Post, too, things unique to the military. A Dispensary. A modest Dental

Clinic. And a grab-bag of other personnel support activities. The Pass and ID Unit is one we

probably could have left behind years ago, expect for regular re-provisioning of controlled

substances. It is hidden back behind the Officer’s Club swimming pool in a quaint turn-of-the-

century brick structure typical of those on the Post.

The whole base enterprise is designated a National Historic Site. It is an operation run with a

leisurely pace completely in keeping with the historic designation and the efficiency we have

come to expect from the non-combat components of the Army. We were pleased we did not

require renewed identification, although we did possess sufficient identification to prove whom

we wished to identify, in case the clerk at the Class SIX store chose to “card” us, using either side

of the “card.” Quite outside those possibilities was the challenge of having all the consumables we

wished to purchase in a facility that combined all of them.

Which meant the line at the cash register included Active Duty young people (they/them) in

uniform and civilian garb, retired men still with erect bearing and shopping carts filled with

bottles of various colors and sizes, and perhaps a dozen vigorous women each of whom held

exactly two bottles of decent wine, one for each hand.

We may have missed some pronouns in that first adventure of 2023, and may have got a start on I-

395 , but one thing we remembered suddenly and clearly. Never go to a Class SIX store on the

afternoon before

a holiday, unless you have plenty of time to chat in the line that snakes past the racks of beef jerky

and whatever that other stuff is. We were only in for 27 years, so there wasn’t time to learn

everything. We should have remembered about New Years Eve, though. At least the part at the

Class SIX Store.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com