4/20/2005 When my Dad was terminally ill, we had a scare of about a week when he was in intensive care, with pneumonia. When he was moved to the next-highest watch level, I spent a lot of time at his side; as the local kid, it was my job to take all of the shifts no one else could. Most of the time, Dad was blissed out on morphine and not really there, but one afternoon he woke up and told me this Army story.

My Old Man was in electronic intelligence in the late 1950s... he missed Korea but got moved to Washington during the Cuban Missile Crisis when Kennedy had to know everything, when one little piece of information could make all the difference. As my Old Man said, "that's where we earned our money," but the first part of his Army career "was pretty much bullshit." He had never told me an Army story before.

My Dad was a logistics genius but entered the Army as a private... he wanted to be left alone to read and think. He traded for sucky duties like KP and requisitions just so he wouldn't have to go play with tanks and camp out in the mud. My Dad, in other words, was kind of a goof-off lazy geek, and he hung out with a bunch of guys like that. This came as a complete shock to me. I wish I'd had this information fifteen years ago when I changed my major to Theatre Arts and he threw a fit.

His base was a splat of sand and nastiness and it was incredibly boring. So he and his Gomer Pyle buddies came up with a nefarious plan to amuse themselves, and drew straws to see who would execute the critical component of their vision. My Old Man, of course, lost.

Now back then, there was a term used to describe someone completely without merit, the biggest loser on Earth, the most ludicrous piece of walking phallic symbol you could imagine, and that term was "fuck stick". Much like we would call someone an asshat, or a dickwad, my Dad's Sergeant Slaughter buddies went around calling each other fuck stick. Oh what fun, it is to laugh, hardy har har. My Dad got the job of ordering a nametag through the base PX (supply store), with FUKSTIK on it. Actually, they ordered several.

Army bureaucracy being what it was, and with the multitude of ethnic names plodding through the service, they didn't even blink. Try ordering FUKSTIK on your license plate and see what the DMV says! Not the good ol' US Army. The PX called my Old Man at the barracks, "Private, your tags are in."

So he goes down to the PX and picks them up. The PX employs civilians, in this case, a very pretty brunette named Nancy. Fifty years later and on morphine, my Dad still remembered her name. She must have made quite an impression. "Name?" she asks. My father puts on his best poker face and affects a slight Swedish accent. "Fyook-Stike," he says, "with an 'F', not the PH." She smiles, locates the tags, reads them, and blushes. My Dad doesn't even smile. He pays for the tags and goes back to barracks.

At this point in the story, it's helpful to know that during the Cold War, the Army was always coming up with slogans and morale boosters. They actually hung signs over the urinals that read "Button Flies... Beware of Spies!". Imagine the worst cubicle farm motivational slogans you've ever seen... "TEAMWORK", "SERVICE", "COMMITMENT"... with the pictures of rowers and mountain climbers and shit, and you get the picture.

My Dad and his buds, being in electronic intelligence, I guess, had found out that the officers had a program called "Salute With A Greeting". Regulations required enlisted men and anyone junior to you to stand at attention and salute you as you passed. Of course, regulations also required the senior man to return the salute. Most of the officers on my Dad's base, typically, didn't give a shit about the lower ranks and didn't even know their names. The Army was trying to give the impression the officers had a soul. So "Salute With A Greeting"... snap your hand up and say, "Good-morning-Jones", or "Looking-sharp-Matthews". I mean, they actually had drills on this! If you weren't sure of the man's name, it was okay to sneak a quick look... at his NAMETAG.

My Old Man, the disciplinarian of my youth: "We divided up the base into quadrants and split up with our "FUKSTIK" nametags. At first we just hung out on the steps of buildings and waited for officers. We'd salute as serious as death, and they'd return it, trying to get a glimpse of our nametag, saying "Good-morning-ehh-ummm-Son!" and hustle away. "Carry-on-uhhh-Private!". It was pretty fun. But by the end of the day, we got bored and actually started following officers around and ambushing them. It all came crashing down when two of us accidentally saluted the same officer less than five minutes apart. We were confined to barracks for a week, which meant we could read and goof off more, which was okay with us."

Your forebears' tax dollars at work, my friends.

And in that hospital room, as my Dad dozed off again (days later he was surprised to find out he'd actually told me the story), I suddenly understood levels of family dynamic that had eluded me for years. But that's another blog, I suppose.