16 August a day to remember ....

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the day Elvis died and the moment I heard it and what I did afterwards. He died on 16 August.

I was visiting an undergrad friend from my home town, 2nd floor Douglas in the old Honeycombs, waiting on my girlfriend to drive over from Columbia College so we could walk across the street to Stuffy's. Someone yelled "Elvis is Dead!" down the hallway. I walked downstairs and called my Mom to let her know ... Elvis had asked her out the year she was Miss Memphis and she had declined because she had just met my Dad who had transferred back home from Arkansas to be nearer Mom and QB at Memphis State ... she cried a little. He was a big deal to that generation especially the Memphis crowd. My girlfriend also called her Mother who was a huge Elvis fan and also a super beautiful woman in her own right ... my mother and her Mother had attended the Elvis concert at the Carolina Coliseum just a year earlier, together, and Mom had someone gotten front row tickets and Elvis somehow handed them a sweaty scarf .... true story. I habe witnesses, my old girlfriend, dead now, her mother still has the scarf according to what my mother told me this morning. Mom always said if her arms would have been two inches longer that scarf would've been hers like Elvis meant it to be because she was sure Elvis remembered her ... lol, women.

A couple of years later I would join the Army the night we learned of the hostages being taken in Tehran Iran ... joined to go fight the Ayatollah assahola Khomeini. There was a recession happening at the time, inflation was running rampant, very weak POTUS ... tough times. Gas prices through the roof, interest rates were nuts. 21% to buy a house. The dollar didn't go very far. No jobs to be had to speak of .... and it was an afront on America, marching those hostages out in blindfolds. So a lot of us young men joined. Something eerily similar about now and then ... can't quite put a finger on it.

All these decades later repercussions are still being felt. Kabul fell again today, 16 August, after all these decades ... weird. We were propping the Taliban up at that time to fight the Soviets ... I mean it literally began a couple of months after I joined in '79, the Iranian thing reverberating throughout the region led to the USSR invading Afghanistan .... all these decades later, today 16 August, Kabul falls again. Iran still involved but now China rather than Russia ...

Weird.

So I was Airborne, a Jumpmaster, Paratrooper, etc., ... today, 16 August, is actually National Airborne Paratrooper Day. Kismet

Most of my time in service I was stationed at Fort Bragg but I did do a couple of tours in Vicenza, Italy with the 509th Airborne Combat Team .... not far from Venice, which was sort of our little hang-out where we would pick up tourist girls who couldn't speak Italian and needed tour guides, it was our place ... Venice was our place to party. Like shooting ducks on a pond for American Paratroopers back then.

One day we are there and we're walking around St Mark's square with some girls we had met in Mestre the night before and there is this small camera crew filming this gal in a gondola underneath the Bridge of Sighs ... Valley Girl type, dancing and singing. We couldn't really hear what she was singing but we asked who she was and, come to find out she was American and they told us to remember her because she "was going to be a big deal one day." So they told us it was her birthday and we were invited to this little party later if we wanted ... we forgot about it. She wasn't that impressive from a distance, kinda weirdly dressed. We partied with our Swedish girls and went to Lido di Jesolo with them the next morning where, lo and behold, we run into that same gal's film crew at this bar on the beach ... a topless beach. The gal was not that pretty, we didn't really talk to her, kinda hairy actually and we were a little older, she seemed very young and immature ... so we ignored them and kept going. Had a blast with our Swedish girls.

A year or so later a couple of us rotate back to Bragg and we're in the Day Room watching this new MTV thing and .... ho li fuq it's her! The gal we saw filming and singing underneath the Bridge of Sighs ... here she is on MTV singing this song "Like a Virgin."

We laughed ... we all tell that story at every reunion. It's a true story. I have witnesses. Oh, and the gal's birthday? 16 August.

But none of that is why I am here old friends.

A couple of years ago, on this day 16 August 2019, I made a bet with (speaking of Air-borne) RoyalAir about that POS SOB muschamp. Muschamp made a muschump out of me ... RoyalAir was right and I was wrong. I came back to eat my crow because on this day in 2019 I posted the following statement and I could not have been more wrong ... RoyalAir, you were better than 100% correct.

God Bless you. I saved it, put it in my calendar thinking I would be the correct one ... but boy oh boy was I incorrect. I am a total dumbass. I do hope that Shane does well. I will be pulling for him as, with most of us, we are eternal optimists for The Gamecocks.

I hope this post finds all of you doing well, being prosperous, healthy and enjoying life.