“Graduated from Whatever High School”, “Going to State Tourney” and even “For Sale” hand written messages on windows of passing cars get scant attention.  But today, a different kind of hand-lettered message not only got my attention, but it has carried over to this blog entry.

It said: IN LOVING MEMORY: Sgt. John Kyle Daggett. The white Toyota Tundra pick-up. with the Washington license plate, was going somewhere and the message went with it.  I stayed close for four or five miles while I thought about all the Sgt. Daggetts whose names should be on their next of kin’s vehicles.

When I had to exit Hwy. 205 for NE Glisan I pulled alongside hoping to see the driver, but instead I saw a decal on a side window. It was a copy of the once famous ‘Kilroy Was Here’ logo, the one that showed a nose and the top of a head resting on a fence. But this one was different.  The nose and head were there alright, but the verse said: “A Hero Was Here- JKD”.

Too bad that there aren’t another 4,000+ cars, trucks and other means of transportation traveling across America in a single line so the full impact of how many Sgt. Daggetts we’ve lost can be vizualized.

It is now August 2008, and a full three years have passed since I was motivated enough by the War in Iraq to write about it.  About all I can do now is to include what I wrote then.

Numb and Number

© Mr. Blin – August 2005

When the toll reached over 700, I thought that was a lot.
Now I read that it’ll soon exceed 1,900 men and women. Dead.
Multiply that number by 10 for those who died in their sorrow,
And that is just from their immediate families.

The brass says: “We’re going to be there for four more years.”

So we can multiply 19,000 by four times more.
What you get is 76,000.
Maybe add a fudge factor, if we are not getting the real numbers.
Now is that large enough to get us to stop raising the count?

The president won’t admit his math mistakes.

Do we need to find another 76,000?
The Spirit of 1776?  I don’t think so.
These numbers may look like penny ante when compared
To the big wars, the ones we are so proud of.  Like WW I and WW II.

Don’t bring up the Civil War; that was only about killing our brothers.

Oh, and find a number for those trying to live without limbs.
They can’t even count to ten on their fingers and toes.
Let alone know how they are going to make it all add up.
How many Moms are there in spirit at Camp Casey?

America needs to do the math.

Who counts the lives lost by Iraqi and Afghanistan civilians?
If this were a pledge drive, the red line should already be at the top.
Tell me again, how many WMD’s were found?
Oil, can be found in ‘foil,’ which is what we’ve become.

Democracy is priceless, but at what cost?

What purpose do these numbers serve?
The president says the dead soldiers served their country.
Many of their families may have a different opinion on this matter.
‘Served Up’ may be their unfortunate choice of words.

Won’t we ever learn that every lost life counts?

Here are some of their ages: 27, 34, 27, 19, 24, 22, 22 and 38.
A grand total of 213 years.  The line forms to the right.
These ages were from this week’s reported casualties.
They belonged to the 69th, 278th, 7th, 2nd and 463rd.

The Associated Press count has seven more then the Defense Dept.’s tally.
Odd that the numbers don’t match up, but nothing else does.

I’ve read and re-read those numbers from today’s Oregonian.
What do I do about my numbness with these endless numbers?
I can’t skip to the sports pages to find numbers that matter.
Ken Griffey, Jr. said it well: “ I don’t matter, those in uniform do.”

Maybe like Private Ryan, some day there’ll be a movie of this war.
A possible title: Numb and Number.
But, Jim Carey wouldn’t touch that script because it isn’t funny!
Actually what is funny any more?  We are losing our bones.

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Lois Lane rides again. This time Kathleen played the part of the news reporter who hung around with Clark Kent. She was driving us from a yarn shop on SW Alder, and we were now on our way to NW Portland. Suddenly she shouted for me to look out the windshield. I was somewhere else; occupying my own little island inside the car.

Directly in front of us was a bicycle with a shirtless rider. OK, I thought, but that’s hardly newsworthy on a sunny afternoon. What was she so excited about, I wondered. Then she shouted again: “Look at the dog on his shoulders!”

“Oh, my god,” I replied. Sure enough, a medium sized dog balanced like an Olympic gymnast on a balance beam. Without moving, it held its position as it stretched across the rider’s shoulders. No wonder I didn’t see the dog at first, it was the same color as the rider’s sporting tan.

The closer we got, the dog looked like a young Pit Bull. Maybe the driver and his dog were Siamese twins. A loose red leash was the only other connection between the two of them. I wondered how fast this bike, rider and dog could go. Maybe 25 mph would be their top speed.

I then said to Kathleen: “Where’s your camera?” Now she was multi-tasking, and Without letting up on the accelerator put the window down and reached out with the camera. She kept one eye on the prey and one on the road while she took a shot or two. Meanwhile, I felt like a patient in a dentist chair, anxious to know how everything looked. She announced that the results were good.

Our pursuit continued until we stopped for a red light and they made it through. Now we lost sight of them; for good, I feared. Suddenly the rider and his pal reappeared from an intersecting street near Burnside, and Kathleen was now playing the role of an Indy race car driver. I played the role of her sponsor, when I said: “Don’t lose ‘em.”

She managed to stay a bumper away for three or four more blocks until the rider sensed that we were close behind, or his hitch-hiker was also a ‘people whisperer.’ The bike cut sharply to the left and sprinted against the oncoming traffic, if only for a moment. The dog and rider had won, or escaped. We looked like we lost, because We couldn’t follow them any longer. In fact, we won too!

Kathleen was still excited as she relived the event. I was left to wonder if someone could teach that dog another trick, like taking pictures of trailing motorists.

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I had a view from Higgins Restaurant on Broadway that allowed me to look easily onto the sidewalk and the cars parked at the curb. When I took a second glance, I noticed that occupants of a SUV had returned to their car and were preparing to get in. The passenger pulled the parking sticker off the window and noticed that it still had some unexpired time. Looking around for something to do with it, she stuck it on a nearby pole while thinking it could be used by the next motorist who occupied this parking spot.

At the same time another car, a sleek black Mercedes, waited in traffic for the parking place to open. She also waived to signal that she saw the sticker on the pole.

So far so good; she parked and on exiting the car went directly to the pole. Whoops! She was walking around the car and out into the street, and instead of getting something from inside the car, she put the sticker on the outside of the driver’s side window. I jumped up from my seat at the table and with napkin in hand dashed out the door to play the role of a Good Samaritan.

I got her attention alright and kept it while saying that the ticket had to be placed on the curb side window or she’d likely get a parking violation. She looked at me as though I had dropped off of a cloud and didn’t have a clue.

Sensing hoplessness, I returned to the table inside.

When lunch was over I went out to the sidewalk and turned left to go down Broadway. This move brought me alongside the SUV. On, no. She only got it half right. Somehow she’d stuck the sticker on the inside of the passenger-side window, which was a good start, but the important printed information as to when the ticket expired was facing inside. How’d she do that? Portland’s parking posse could soon write another ticket.

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It almost went unnoticed as I drove up SW Clay. More to the point, it had, for some strange reason, gone unnoticed by Portland’s stick-on ticket readers. Signs at the curb and on the adjacent ticket dispensing kiosk displayed large number “3’s.” I thought that meant the maximum time allowed to park a car. I was wrong, maybe ‘3’ means weeks, or even months, surely it did not mean hours for this car. Maybe it’ll be three years before the city’s towing company decides its ticket, if it even has one, has expired.The dead, dry leaves that covered the trunk; roof and hood made the car look like a duck blind. That may explain why tow truck drivers hadn’t seen it or hauled it away a long time ago. Besides, those leaves had to have fallen during duck season in 2007. That was 10 months ago; since today is August 15, 2008. In a couple of months duck season begins again. That could push the towing date out another year.

The windows and the car’s surface were also covered with a sticky substance, no doubt from the same tree that dropped the leaves. It was so coated with this stuff that I could barely see inside. Fortunately, from what I could discern, no one lives there. I know a picture is worth a 1,000 words, so I’ll keep my comments brief and add a picture. You can fill in the other 900 words.

One question remains. Is this car a police exhibit or a decoy, a squatter’s home, a shrine, a mirage, or just one poor soul of a car that lost its way?

After all these months in obscurity I feel guilty for bringing its condition to a larger audience, not to mention to all those drivers who failed to pay attention to what’s been happening in town. But, I should give them a break, they were all heading west on Clay and likely thinking only about getting out of Dodge.

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Just how many wheelchairs are on the sidewalks of Portland at a given moment? I decided that this question could be answered with a sample by driving from SW 4th and Washington up to SW 10th and Clay and then looping back to the point of origin. No sooner had I started my drive-by survey when I stopped for a light and an elderly may, all in black (No, it was not Gerry Glanville, the new football coach at Portland State), started to cross the street. The passersby that were going in the same direction made slight lateral moves but did not ask if he would like a spare hand. Never mind, he managed to cross a number of streets before this one and he knew not to ask for or expect help, no matter how slow he was.

But his pace was almost too slow to avoid a car next to me that decided to jump as soon as the light turned green. Whew! He made it. And he `continued going south and out of view.

Why did he cross the street? He didn’t look like a chicken.

The next sighting of wheelchair-bound citizens was banded together on the sidewalk alongside SW 10th and SW Salmon. One, a young man, had neither a right leg nor a left leg. (Iraq?) One of the others appeared to have two good legs, but no feet. Otherwise he would have been walking or just leaning against the building. The two remaining members of this rendition of the four Houseless Men had wheelchairs, legs and feet. Which of those parts were broken? A quartet for sure, but maybe not a quarter between them.

What were they talking about? The weather, or whether thou go’est.

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We were going through Nordstrom’s store at Lloyd Center. As we came down the escalator a couple of young males, dressed in the latest street styles of pants and caps came into view. One of them was pushing a two-seat stroller, the kind with the seats in a single row as opposed to being side by side. The other male was walking alongside. At the top of the adjacent down elevator the men changed roles and the one who had been pushing the stroller headed alone down the escalator while the other one grabbed the handle bar on the stroller and swung it around so that the child in the front seat was now facing away from the first step. He then proceeded to walk backward down a couple of the moving steps. At the same time he lifted the stroller up while keeping the child in the front stroller balanced on the higher step while the child in the back seat was suspended in the air. The pusher was not willing to take an elevator; that would have been too much time. He showed no concern for the children’s safety.

Was one of them the father of these children, or were they each the fathers of one of the children? Or was neither one a father, just guys being ‘good guys’ who were taking the little guys out to the mall? Frankly, I think the kids were in the way today. The kids had no choice, and the young adults made all the wrong choices.

Lloyd Center near-mishaps were not yet over. As we walked near a display of dresses I almost stepped on a young girl who was laying on the floor while talking on her cell phone.

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Going west on NW Lovejoy Street I stopped behind a string of cars that were waiting for the light to change. On the sidewalk to my right side a woman with a little dog was walking in my direction. Suddenly she stopped when her pet dropped a deposit on the sidewalk. Without a plastic bag in hand she scanned the leaves on the tree overhead but they were beyond her reach. As she looked around for another solution I saw a hand from the passengers-side of an SUV reach out and hand the woman a baggie. With a quick kick the brown product went into the bag. Just then the light changed and the car began to move forward, but not before the bag was handed back to the person in the car.

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Washington Square Mall has a reputation as a ‘walker’s mall.’ I walked from the parking lot and through Macy’s which lead me to the main thoroughfare where walkers were going in every direction. I settled into a seat on a bench with a perfect view. In every direction shoppers were moving; some with packages, some with kids and a few who probably were just along for the walk.

One person who passed my spot was out of character when it comes to walking. If anyone should have been on foot, it would be this security guy. Not here. No, he’d been given a Segway scooter to buzz around on. Trouble was it made him look even taller, like John Wayne looking over a herd of cattle. Still he could still be a ‘flatfoot’ since all he did was stand in one place.

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Driving east on SW Everett I stopped at the corner of SW Naito Parkway. There was a slight wind blowing and I saw a black plastic bag move along the sidewalk until it stopped under the rear of a bicycle that was pointed to go across Naito and turn north. The light turned for me to go and as I made the right hand turn I slowed down and tried to get the attention of the bike rider. I did so by pointing in the direction of his rear tire. He took one look at me and gave me the finger. I pointed again and again, each time with more emphasis at the rear tire, but he never turned his head in that direction. Instead he continued to give me the finger. Come-on now he was over 50. As I moved on I looked in the rear view mirror to see if the bag was stuck in the sprocket and spokes. Unfortunately, he rode on without it.

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Kathleen was out of town until later in the evening so I decided to eat at 360 Degrees in East Vancouver. I asked for a window seat so I could read a ‘Drivers Wanted’ manual from Volkswagen. This is not a story about a good meal, though it was. It is a story about a dad and one of his children.

Soon after I ordered and began to try to get into the mass of information about the car a young, athletic man, with two sons, was shown their way to the table immediately to my left. When one of the two boys bolted for the front door I saw the dad catch up to him and hosted his arms high and settled him into the bench against the wall. The waitress had already set up two children’s chairs and one adult chair on the side closer to me. The boys may have been twins, both about five. I have twin grandsons, six months old

One of the sons easily picked himself up and got into a child’s chair. His brother slipped out of sight as the dad pulled out a couple of sets of colored pens and paper. The boy in the chair had no difficulty starting to draw. The other son was less interested and continued to squirm. With patience and hugs the dad gave most of his attention to the son next to him. He tried encouragement and more hugs, but it was not easy. It looked to me like this son wanted to be sure he was in a safe environment.

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