Al's Eulogy

I've been meaning to do this for a while.

Aug, 2013. My father is 74.  What will I say at my father's wake?

I'm not the oldest son. I'm the middle son; the fourth of five children my parents had together before the implosion of their marriage.

I wanted to tell you all the truth - that my father didn't teach me anything. That he didn't teach me anything useful, but I realized that wasn't quite true. You know, when you’re a kid and you touch a hot stove and you burn your hand, you learn to not touch a hot stove? That's how my father taught me useful things. From him, I learned how NOT to be a father. How NOT to be a parent.

I wanted him to show me how to throw a football or a baseball, but he didn't. I would have even enjoyed him showing me how to fish, or hunt, or camp. But he didn't do that either. He DID NOT show me how to tie my shoes, ride a bike, fly a kite, shave, or treat a lady. He once, when I was 24 and had just been honorably discharged from the Army, tried to tell me about the birds and the bees - dating etiquette. Which at the time I thought was too funny to try to stop him.

It may surprise you all that I would come up here and say these things. After all, my father is dead and America has a long tradition of telling only good things at the end of a person's life. Unfortunately, I have none of those things to tell and I'm an Atheist - perhaps the one thing he and I did share, although we never talked about it. For me, dead is an end game.  The beginning of a chemical and biological process where the molecules that make up or bodies decay and become the fuel for other organisms. And I think he thought that too, although to foster your friendships, he may not have said so.

You all probably knew him better than I did. I have not seen him since 2006. He did write me - two letters - in 2013 trying to attend my daughter's high school graduation. His granddaughter, whom he had not seen since she was five. I know in this day, it is probably more common as families move away - different states, different countries even - for families not to see each other or talk for long periods. But in our case, we were just a 40 minute drive apart. And that was too far; or maybe too close.

That's where you all come in, knowing him better than I - better than his granddaughter knew him. You see, he chose to spend his time with all of you. You all probably know him as a great man. Selfless. Giving of his time and energy for the many causes he enjoyed. Like the Shinn House. Town Council. Historical Society. Square Dancing. These were all pursuits he CHOSE over spending time with his son and granddaughter. Every time there was a conflict in scheduling between YOU and US, you always won.

I've often told my daughter that for her, I tried to be the kind of father that I WISHED I had. I wasn't great; I certainly wasn't perfect. But if I was the kind of dad that I had growing up? Well, these days, that's illegal. Child abuse. Child neglect. Child endangerment. Call it what you will.

I don't know what I did or said that he preferred the company of strangers to that of his family. I don't know what I could have said or done differently - although I suspect, there was nothing.  For me, my father died a long time ago.  When he let me know through his actions that I didn't matter to him.  My loss then was painful, but I got over it.  And if I can be of any comfort to you now, I can say this with certainty: you'll get over him too. May the knowledge that YOU saw the best of him bring you peace.

Bad Fiction

So... I'm reading this book, THE BOURNE IMPERATIVE by Eric Van Lustbader. I just have to laugh. It isn't SciFi or Fantasy, but you wouldn't know it by the lack of research Eric has done. In Virginia, a CIA operative has just recovered from a boat 30 million dollars - according to the author - in $500 and $1,000 bills. Whoa, wait a sec there, Eric. Those don't exist, right? Wrong. They do exist. They were never meant for circulation and now are worth far more than face value. One site has $500 bills for $2300 each. They're collector's items now. So, it is possible to have them, but they wouldn't be used as this author does, as cash.

The other part of disbelief is that Eric has these bills hanging in a waterproof satchel over the side of the boat. Again, using the internet, I found that a single bill weighs 1 gram. Let's go top end and say that ALL 30 million is in $1000 bills; not how the author described, but he didn't give an exact count of each denomination. This is "best case." $30 million would be 30,000 bills. Which would be 30kg? Or 66 lbs US measure. That's a lot of weight to hang in a satchel over the side of a boat. If you split the currency 2:1 in favor of the 1000, then you're looking at 40k bills and 40kg or 88 lbs.

And this is just a factor of weight. How much space would 30k bills or 40k bills take up? Certainly more than a waterproof satchel over the side of a boat. Thankfully, many people on the internet have tackled the space issue. One site (www.cockeyed.com/inside/million/million.html) breaks it down step by step and has pictures. 10,000 bills take up 643 cu inches. Multiply by 3 to get the smallest ($1000 bills) amount of space you'd need; basically three large briefcases.

But coming back to the fact - something Eric missed - that $500 and $1000 bills aren't circulated as US currency, you're left with $100s. That's the largest, still circulated, US bill on the market. $30 million in $100s would be 300k bills; 300kg; 661 pounds. 30 large briefcases. It would fill the cabin of the boat Eric uses in the story!

Dontca just love fiction? I think I'm going to stop reading Eric's book.

Another book I just had to put down for the same reason - disbelief- was one of Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" books. I pulled my way through two of them, but kept coming back to Reacher's childhood as a military brat.

Child has his protagonist moving every 6 to 8 months in the military. That doesn’t happen. The Government can't afford to move individual soldiers that often, not to mention soldiers with families. Sure, the soldier might be deployed into combat, but the family would stay behind. The soldier, when his combat tour was finished, would be sent back home - to the base he left.

Having served four years in the US Army, I can tell you that the shortest full-duty assignment is one year - to hardship locations (Turkey was one such location because you can't take your family; I was there 13 months). Most full-duty assignments are two to three years long. My tour on Ft Lewis was just under 2 - 1/2 years long; about 28 months. Had I declined the option to go overseas, I would have finished my enlistment in Ft. Lewis. Had I re-enlisted after Turkey, I had options for 3 year tours in England and New Hampshire (as a trainer).

I wonder how Child's Jack Reacher series could be so popular with so much bad information. It occurs to me that most people haven't been in the military and aren't from military families. The popular myth for military life is one of constant upheaval; always on the go; moving from place to place. It would seem that way, if you lived your whole life in one town, one house - you would see moving every 2 to 3 years as constant upheaval. But my childhood was closer to Jack Reacher's than most. In fact, except for the military family part, it was very much like what Child describes for Jack and his family. The funny thing is I joined the Army for stability. It was a chance for me to stay in one place for a while - after a few months each training in New Jersey and Massachusetts.

But, I bullied my way through two of Lee's books -"okay, Child's never been in the military." However, when he started writing as if he was doing a 1-hour TV show… That was too much. His characters dusted fingerprints at 9am and had results by 10:45! Ballistics before noon. DNA matches by dinner. Lee, it's a book! You can move time in amazing ways in a book. Two weeks later, I'm writing this sentence. A year went by before this one was typed. I'm close to retirement now. And golly, I was only 34 when I started typing this paragraph.

In TV land, with shows like "CSI" and "Law and Order," they only have an hour of air time. They have to move things faster, discover things impossibly sooner than reality. But in a book, you can choose to tell it like it is! It takes weeks to search a database for finger prints. It takes months and months to extract and match DNA. Crime labs are busy. They're not a bunch of Hummer-driving geeks with really expensive high-tech equipment, just sitting around waiting for evidence to fall into their laps. Like most government agencies, they're over-worked and under-staffed and short-budgeted.

I think writers have become lazy. It's much easier to regurgitate what you've seen on TV. "If the TV audience believes it, I can write it that way and I don't have to find out how long it really takes to match finger prints or DNA."
I think what Lee Child needs is a police ride-along and a day-visit to any US crime lab. And Eric Van Lustbader needs a week-long trip to the US without his handler and credit cards. Or maybe just a few minutes training in Google Searches.

[UPDATE]
I did some Google searching of my own on Eric Van Lustbader.  I was very surprised to learn that he was born and raised in New York!  How does an American by birth screw up our currency so badly?  I know, it's a work of fiction.  Point of fact, a spy novel.  There are certain things we accept in that genre of fiction.  Gravity works.  There is only one star in the solar system and only one moon orbiting planet earh. People, plants, and animals fit our normal observed world - it's not a sci-fi spy novel after all - like Total Recall.  There are some things we expect can and will be fictionalized - corrupt governments, secret cabals, super soldiers with physical and mental capabilities beyond ordinary.  But creating and using new forms of money?  Defying the laws of mass?  Sir Isaac Newton would roll-over if he could (maybe in a ghost story).  Does anyone else feel this way?  That this type of fiction should *mostly* conform to our known universe?  Please comment either way.