I’ve been planning to blog about Uncle Buck since last weekend, when I gathered with family and they gave me his yearbook. But other things to write about came up. So here it is, the birthday of the Marine Corps, and tomorrow is Veterans’ Day. And Uncle Buck was a Marine. Pacific Theater. WWII.

Good timing. Almost makes me believe in Divine Providence. Which I do believe in. Except when it comes to real life.

Years ago, one time when we were visiting his house, Uncle Buck handed me a red book. “This is the story of my unit in the Marines,” he said.

I should have realized what a big deal that was. Uncle Buck never talked about the war. Never.

I looked at the book for a while, but didn’t get much out of it. I’ve felt guilty about that ever since. Especially since he died of cancer in 1978.

Last Saturday, when I went down to Faribault for the burial of Uncle George and Aunt Martha, I was given the red book. It turns out to be pretty much what it looks like—a school yearbook. Only the school was Marine boot camp.

And it leaves me pretty much as ignorant as I was before.

I asked an aunt on Saturday, “Do you know where Buck fought in the Pacific? What battles he was in?”

She thought a second and said, “No, I really don’t. He didn’t talk about it much. I think he might have been at Wake Island. But they kept him out of some of the fighting because he’d gotten that Dear John letter. So he wasn’t in all the battles with his unit.”

The yearbook doesn’t help. I really shouldn’t have felt guilty about not getting much from it when he showed it to me. The name of the unit was the 9th Replacement Battalion. They trained at Camp Elliott, near San Diego in 1943. I can find no mention of them on the internet. For all I know they were dispersed to existing battalions after finishing their training.

Uncle Buck is still a mystery.

I remember him as a tough guy. A quiet man who never knew what to say to kids (never had any of his own), and who drank and smoked a lot. If I remember the story correctly, he met a girl in Australia while in the Pacific and got engaged to her. Then she sent him a Dear John letter, as mentioned above. He saw combat—somewhere. Eventually he contracted malaria and was discharged. He had recurrences of the malaria for the rest of his life. After the war he married a girl my grandfather didn’t like, converting to Catholicism to marry her. Everyone agreed he was a different man after the war than he’d been before.

We tell stories about our warriors. We make movies about them; build statues. We try to preserve some memorial, to let them know that we understand that they lost something they can never get back for the sake of the rest of us.

But we can’t really know. All we can do is say thanks, and give them what honor we can.

Semper Fi, Uncle Buck.

To all you veterans, thanks.

By way of Blue Crab Boulevard, from Eject! Eject! Eject! Make a Choice.

The temperature got up to 70 today, just to mock my depression (of course if it had been cold and rainy, I’d have thought that was mocking my depression too. I have an extremely broad mockery threshold).

Congratulations to any Democrats who wander in here. You won fair and square, and you’ve earned your celebration.

I myself find comfort in the following thoughts:

1. In any story, you’ve got to have setbacks. That’s what builds the plot. That’s what keeps interest up. In real life, setbacks are what keep us from being complacent. And the Republicans have been pretty stinking complacent over the last couple years.

2. Think of who the new congressional leadership will be. These are people eminently qualified to hang themselves, given adequate rope. And they’ll have rope a-plenty now.

My prospective renter came to look at the house today. He strikes me as a pretty good fit, a quiet guy, around my age, with professional credentials, who works with a Christian service organization. Likes to read. Likes to mow lawns.

He’s going to pray about it and get back to me. If you’re not overwhelmed with more important stuff to pray about, you might shoot up a quick prayer over this decision.

There is hope on the horizon.

I’m not talking about the elections (more on them below). I got a call this evening in response to my ad to rent out my spare room. A guy will be coming over tomorrow evening to take a look at the place.

The downside is that I’ll have to straighten up tonight.

A little.

Don’t want to give a false impression.

I voted bright and early, on my way to work. The polling place was a Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod church.

Why doesn’t the ACLU sue over locating polling places in churches?

No doubt it’s somewhere on their list. Maybe right after they force cities to stop granting building permits to places of worship, since such commerce between church and state puts us at risk of theocracy.

I remember how my parents used to sit down with pen and sample ballot in early November, and decide together how they’d vote. That was because Dad tended Democrat and Mom tended Republican, and they didn’t want to “cancel each other out.”

That thought troubles me. It’s an easy exercise for married couples. They have somebody right there to reconcile ballots with.

But I’m single, so my opposite number is out there somewhere in the community. I probably don’t even know him (or her). He (she) is likely canceling my vote right now, and I can’t do anything about it.

Makes it seem pointless to vote at all.

No. That’s not right.

But if it’s not, why did my parents bother?

My brain hurts.

Go out and vote if you haven’t yet, and if the polls are still open when you read this.

Unless you’re canceling me.

First things first: Vote tomorrow. I won’t tell you how to vote. Since I know I’ve been fully as successful as CBS News in keeping my political preferences secret, I feel confident I remain non-partisan, fair and balanced when I advise you to vote as your heart tells you I would vote.

Look—I know that only a meteor strike on the North Side of Minneapolis will prevent a former Nation of Islam member—an associate of Louis Farrakhan’s, supported by CAIR—from being my congressman, and I’m still voting. So you can certainly make the effort.

Sharia law is probably next thing. You think the ACLU’ll complain when that happens? I can hear them now—“What’s the problem? It was just Christianity in government we were worried about. The Constitution doesn’t say anything about Islam.”



I finally figured out where to vote. I got a map in a city mailing, telling me which precinct I was in, and I noted that it did not jibe with the information I’d gotten from the Secretary of State’s website. I called city hall and got the answer (I think). Naturally, my polling place is the one farthest away from where I live.

Brother Moloch spent last night in my spare room. I took a half-day off work and drove him to the airport today. He’s in the sky now, winging his way to Tanzania to visit the Youngest Niece, who’s spending a semester there. Her chief supply request? “Bring Gummi Bears.”

I can imagine the Man from Macedonia telling Paul in the vision: “Come over to Macedonia and help us. Bring Gummi Bears.”

(By the way, I’ve always wondered at the people who ask how Paul knew the man was from Macedonia. Hello? The guy said, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” You’ve got to figure he wasn’t Belgian.)

Moloch broke in my coffee maker for me. I bought the machine months ago, when my cousin from Norway came to visit. You can’t host guests from Norway without offering them coffee. Coffee is the Norwegian national jones. You know why the Vikings turned into Scandinavians, why they went from the terrors of the world to the dullest people in Europe (the dullest continent)?

It’s because they finally got coffee. “Ah. That’s better. Somehow I don’t feel like fighting anyone anymore. I feel like wearing clogs and making furniture with nothing but right angles.”

But my cousin didn’t drink coffee. This created an instant bond between us. We are both Unworthy, Uncaffeinated Norwegians.

My secret shame (well one of my secret shames) has always been that I didn’t drink coffee. All my grandparents drank the stuff. My parents and all my uncles and aunts drank it. But my brothers, Moloch and Baal and I, we never picked up the habit. We never saw the point.

Until Moloch became a pastor. Lutheran pastors are required under some obscure provision of the Book of Concord to drink coffee. What are you supposed to do, go to Mrs. Olson’s house (if you remember Mrs. Olson, don’t say anything. You’ll only prove you’re as old as I am) and say, “Oh no, I don’t drink coffee. Got any tea? Moxie? Single Malt Whisky? Absinthe?”

You’ll drink coffee and like it.

In fact, after a while, you’ll be screaming and breaking out in hives if you don’t get it.

The whole Ted Haggard thing makes me sad. Not only for its own sake, but because it strikes a nerve around here.

I wasn’t actually involved with the church body I now work for, back when it happened, except in the sense that the church I grew up in had joined up. I got the news from a friend (now a former friend) who derived considerable pleasure from the discomfiture of those disgusting pietists.

It was several years ago now, back when the Very Large Lutheran Church Body Which Shall Remain Nameless was coalescing like a lump in a batch of Cream o’ Wheat (“Hey! You guys don’t believe anything anymore, and we don’t believe anything anymore either! No reason we can’t do whatever it is we’re doing all together!”). Lots of churches that hadn’t gotten the Postmodern Memo were looking for a new affiliation, and our group looked pretty good to many of them. We (and by “we” I mean “they,” because I wasn’t involved yet) were doing great, adding congregations almost on a weekly basis.

But the scandal threw all that in the dumper for a while.

The president of our fellowship, a man widely liked, respected and admired, was discovered to be living a double life. He was, as it turned out, a secret bisexual. He couldn’t hide it anymore when his wife was diagnosed with H.I.V.

I came on staff some time later, when the wounds were beginning to heal. But the pain remained; the betrayal was far from forgotten. The man himself was still alive when I came in. He was a member of my church. I never met him as such, but I saw him often, a tall, gaunt man whose skin was darker than his genetics had intended. His wife had already passed away by then. He had repented and accepted discipline. He was on the sidelines, off the roster. I never heard him speak.

I know two of his daughters, both of them members of my church. Lovely, smart, godly women. I can’t even imagine the kind of emotional suffering they’ve been through.

I don’t have much point in writing this, except to remind people of the personal tragedy that accompanies scandals of this sort. Somebody’s in a lot of pain today, and could use your prayers.

Cartoonist Doug TenNapel has reached a million hits on his blog, and (if I understand correctly) has retired from posting. Good luck, Doug. I’ll miss you. Your blog was one of my daily treats.

Another treat (though not daily) is Yucky Salad With Bones, a Minnesota blog. It’s not the kind of blog I ordinarily like, being mostly day-to-day reports of family life written by the mother. But this woman has such a mordant sense of humor I can’t resist her. She’s my kind of gal. Unfortunately she’s already married.

I’m not doing Halloween. Instead of putting out a pumpkin I’m hiding my house light under a bushel. I have two main reasons:

1. I consider it prudent for any unmarried, middle-aged man to avoid contact with children as much as possible.

2. The Wiccans have pretty much appropriated the festival, aided and abetted by Christians. As I’ve said before, I don’t believe in magic and I don’t believe in witchcraft. But that doesn’t mean I want to encourage these people. I can remember when Halloween was fun. I can remember a lot of things that aren’t true anymore.

I pretty much agree with Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost. Especially on Jack Chick.

Happy Reformation Day!