A Gift for Brohammas

Dylan Dalyn has needed a proper pair of shoes since I met him. Those vulgar Pliner square-toed wheels of his will clash with an Ivy League degree. These are a little too Italian for me but they'll suit him just fine in the city of Brotherly Love and Boyds. Marked down from $478 to $79 and available in more sizes than I thought. From Ron Rider.

A Gift for Alice Olive

Alice loves photography and her Joe. And while she's all Nikon, I don't suspect anyone will notice this is a Canon lens. $24 for the 24 -105mm. $30 for the 70 - 200mm. Order from Photojojo here.

The Trad Profile Report

Click on image to see naked women

Many thanks (and 32 points) to Yankee Whiskey Papa at Boxing The Compass for this.

127th Annual Upper Class Twit of the Year

Many thanks to Main Line Sportsman and his keen memory for recalling this classic Monty Python skit. What was laughed at yesterday is tweedy fashion today. Check in next week when we'll explore Williamsburg heritage inspired by the sartorial aesthetic of Jethro Bodine.

Contestant No. 1 - Vivian Smith-Smythe-Smith, He's in the Grenadier Guards but can count up to four.

Contestant No. 2 - Simon-Zinc-Trumpet-Harris, He's an Old Etonian and married to a very attractive table lamp.

Contestant No. 3 - Nigel Incubator Jones, His best friend is a tree and in his spare time he's a stock broker.

Contestant No. 4 - Gervaise Brook-Hamster, He's in the wine trade and his father uses him as a waste paper basket.

Contestant No. 5 - Oliver St John-Mollusc, Another Old Etonian, his father was a cabinet minister and his mother won the Derby.

The Hog Killin'

When I was 12, I lived in a rural area of North Carolina where people had dirt for floors and oil paper for windows. School friends thought my family rich because we had wall to wall carpeting. In late Fall, my friends told me about hog killings and how they usually came with a celebration. I saw only one and missed most of it, but I was in awe of how the hog was taken apart.

Stewart Voegltin of the blog, Blood & Grits, has seen a number of hog killings. We were talking about how they worked in Georgia vs NC, and I asked Stewart if he'd write a story. It runs in three consecutive parts this week. I offer this short story as something to savor when you have time this Thanksgiving. There's a unique sense of place and time that you can see and smell and hear.

'Hog Killin' Time', Monticello, GA Photographer & Date Unknown

Nothing to be Gained Here
by
Stewart Voegtlin

Maddox McKibbern stopped at the hilltop and stood hunched and trembling. His breath labored. He looked on the hollow below. Winter’d come to Polk County. Big Frog Mountain loomed north. Rolling broken white rock rose out of bare scarlet and white oak held briefly aflame only fortnight ago. Thin trees scattered up the mountain’s face.

Hawk lit from its perch and dropped quickly and then climbed into cold wind. Maddox watched the hawk. He listened to his breathing and his heart thudded heavy in his ears. Dirt covered Royal Crown Cola bottle jutted from his overall bib pocket and a dead garden spider spread in flattened black wheel upon its neck.

Ahead crows stood atop oaks softened by fog. Their gnarled and ancient boughs wandered in the gray and were spectral and boundless in the dawn. Caws came jagged and taunting and carried through the hollow. In the clearing smoke rolled heavy from the clapboard’s chimney blackened thickly with creosote, its bricks piled broken and crumbling from base to its mouth loosely agape.

Horace Ayle burst from the house in overalls stiff with dirt and blood. The door cracked closed behind him. Crows lit startled from trees. Sharp black wings sailed them headlong into morning breaking sunless and white and then they were gone.

Past them and through Cohutta mountains ran rivers Hiwassee, Conasauga, Ocoee. Mountain folk tricked trout from river riffle and traded their silvery sundried bodies for salt and shot shells in town. They walked mountain wood and took rutting buck and varmint from its recesses. They trickled back to homes hidden amongst trees. Farther out was electricity and invention. Men tied tracks to earth and steam locomotives no Ayle’d neither seen nor imagined thundered across an America unknown but somewhere strangely thereupon them.

Maddox knew churches half the size of the Ayle hollow. He knew creaks of their pine pews. He’d felt the sting in ways and means of salvation. The godly fire and profound chimera of their pastors. He’d known death too—least of which through host of Ayle hog killings.Maddox struggled mightily with his memory but he recalled the killings a might bit more celebratory than they’d come over time with family thinning to disease and misfortune.

He’d known Osal and Dathan’s dulcimers and Enoch’s fiddle. Leah, Rebekah, and Edna tending to brood ever-expanding, their names stolen from Sabbath sermon and never once seen in ink. Michah and Helda, Rachel and Ruth and Ram, and Zechariah and Zion and Zebedee, and Adina and Eunice and Bethany. Their laughter high and bright as Betelgeuse, hosts of cold bare feet bouncing hog’s bladder become ball by magic and breath. Those days gone—kinder times now only tales told from a patriarch unable to give them life with words that deftly escaped him.

—Here ah church an here ah steeple, Horace Ayle said. He smiled at Maddox as he wound his mottled hands together and brought them to his face and laughed. The steeple held short and crooked in awkward lambda, Horace’s forefinger taken at the knuckle a from snapping turtle summer past on Pope Hankinson’s pond.

His feet cracked from their broken leather boots and his back pumped in rhythm spun metronomic and incessant. Maddox pulled the soda pop from his bib and Horace took it and popped the top with the butt of his knife. He tipped the bottle to his mouth and drank and it ran over his jaw in sibilant and muddy foam. Horace ran to the hog pen and poured some in the trough and then brought the bottle to his lips. Maddox heard Horace’s father Owen jabbering as he led a massive hog from the pen. Owen saw Maddox and nodded.

—Mornin, Owen said and kept his eyes hidden with his hat brim and whispered nonsense to the hog as he led him. His shotgun sat clasped in the crook of an arm. Horace doted over the hog and poured soda pop over his snout and cooed at him in a tone reserved for children fresh to the world and without notion of the life they’d been brought into. Horace turned and smiled at Maddox. His grin shattered with teeth misshapen and broken.

Owen let the leash fall and shouldered the gun. It boomed and the shot slammed over the hollow. The hog collapsed into spasms and squeals and struck furiously at the frozen ground. Heavy hooves hooked the earth and broke through to the mud below and they made sucking sounds as they pounded.

The hog held sharply to the world as it deliquesced within and without him, its awareness pulled shrieking into a darkness unquantifiable and ineffable. Steam rose from its haunches and back in a vapor that wound into ghostly helix and then was gone.

Maddox lit his pipe and drew from the stem and stared at the hog’s head and at the shot pattern—a black and smoking diadem between thin marbled eyes. Owen shucked the shell from the gun and the hull hit the ground without sound.

Maddox smoked and looked beyond the pen to the wood and the piles of river rock squaring off plot and the scores of wooden cruciform fastened with deer sinew and embellished with flowers dead and dried. Sons and daughters and their own. Owen handed Maddox a heavy brown glass bottle and Maddox drank from it and it tasted wet and sweet and of crabapples and then took his breath with power.

—Flurs pop up yonder after first killin, Owen said. Ol Pope Hankinson tell us theys crocus. Purty goshdern flurs. Theys come up right outta ground where we kill em. Like theys grown out the blood an flesh itself. Bettern any flurs I ever seen.

Owen pulled a braid of tobacco from his pocket and ripped it apart and chewed furiously. Maddox handed the bottle back to Owen and he bubbled it and spat. Owen did not talk for a while. He looked at Maddox and then looked at the bottle and then drank again from it.

—Whyn’t you elsewhere?

—Cause I’m here, Maddox said. Aint want to be nowhere else.

—Whyever not?

—Aint got no expectations. Aint nothin to expect. Reckon I’m familiar with it. Put me at ease. You put me at ease.

—Aint never understood that. I’d be elsewhere if I could. I reckon most of us would. Always struck me as queer. This wantin to be somewhere other than where we is.

Two shacks pulled together from a patchwork of scrap tin and clapboard leant amongst wire fencing set down for hens. A clothesline sagged diagonally. Drawers and britches and shirts wet and stained stiffened in the cold. Chickens hunted, pecked. Pine logs cracked and roared with flame underneath a steel tub. Water rolled in a boil and sloshed and sizzled over the sides of the tub.

Maubry Ayle stood to the porch. His head held cocked, his right eye tossed asunder from skittish hinny, its empty socket flat and gray with lid that lay upon it as a centipede static and arrow straight. His mouth split wide over five teeth crooked and brown. He yelled and motioned and then laughed as a conversation unfolded between the ears of his massive head without ever hitting the air. He stood restless and rocking and spoke to no one present but himself.

Kinard and Eugene Ayle helped Owen work. They ran rope around the hog’s hooves and hoisted the beast betwixt tripod brought together from broken hoes. Dark red blood dribbled from the thick pink head as it dangled above the dirt.

—Maubry, whynt you come on done ere? Kinard said. —Diddy gone need all are help now.

Maubry turned his back and laughed and cocked his head.

Kinard and Eugene wrapped their hands in rags and pulled the tub from the fire and scalded the hog with the boiling water. Its skin flushed and Owen worked a worn knife over the hog, shaving hairs from its heavy jowls and snout. Eugene and Kinard worked from the tail up, scraping knives over the hide.

Eugene patted the hog’s white gut and smiled. His teeth were terrific and drawn out of gums dark and brown like a dog’s. He stabbed the hog deep and quick and blood rushed fast and red from the wound. Owen moved under the hog with the pail and the blood struck the bottom of the pail and rang as it hit sounding bright and clean and then dull and full as it weighed down heavy with the warm blood. Owen turned and spat a thick wad of tobacco juice into the dirt.

Eugene collared the hog with his knife and Kinard parted the flesh at its neck and chopped at the vertebrae with an axe. Owen helped Eugene pull the head slowly from the body. They each grabbed under a jowl and laid a hand over top. They pulled and their boots backed up in the dirt and the carcass lifted slightly and gave, falling, wobbly, back into line.

Crows screamed from trees. Their cackling sounded as the cold itself, indifferent and irritable in its metastasis. Owen wiped the sweat from his forehead with a blood blackened bandana and he spanked the hog’s head. Its eyes bone white, dead.

End of Part I


Interview with author-

Stewart Vogeltin of Blood & Grits

More than anything else...What do you like to drink?
Most days I’m a beer drinker. (Nothing posh. I’m a 30-pack buyer.) But when it comes down to it—there’s nothing better than two fingers of Bourbon, neat. The cheap stuff: Rebel Yell, Old Grand Dad. Won't turn down Tennessee sour mash either. I love Jack Daniel's and George Dickel.

To eat?
If we're going to do that "last meal" thing, I'd have to say venison tartare with a few shakes of Tabasco and an ice-cold Budweiser out of the can.

To wear?
Army surplus fatigues or Levis, LL Bean chamois shirts, old sneakers. That's my uniform. If I'm in the field, it's Filson double tin pants, Pendelton wool shirt, Welch suspenders, GA boots, and my old Carharrt coat. If I've got to "look nice" it's my dad's hand-me-downs: Brooks Bros. oxfords, chinos, and Bean camp mocs. I've got all my dad's ties from the 70s and 80s, too. Really gorgeous obese ones with ludicrous hunting scenes on them—my version of the GTH thing.

To read?
I go through a lot of phases, and I'm a fickle reader, but I always return to Agee, Faulkner, Melville, Homer, Aeschylus, and The Bible. This is the stuff that gets the blood going and makes me want to simultaneously write and give up writing.

Used to read a lot of contemporary fiction and avant-garde stuff. French stuff. Really fussy writing. Now I can’t stand it. Same goes for contemporary fiction, but Larry Brown is a good one though. He passed away not too long ago unfortunately. His novel, Joe, is the finest Southern fiction written since Faulkner's Light In August. Incredibly moving and realistic.

What did you like that you don't anymore?
Politics. I was this huge political junkie throughout high school and college and even up through GW Bush's first term. I read three or four different papers a day. Blogs. Watched all the bullshit pundit shows. Argued with people about it. Now I have to agree with William Gass' assessment, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Politics: for those not in love."

Part II of Nothing To Be Gained Here and author interview continues tomorrow

Hog Killin' - Part II

Emanuel County, Georgia, 1940s, Photographer Unknown, Georgia Archives

Nothing to be Gained Here
by
Stewart Voegtlin
Part II

—Come git the head boy, Owen said. He paused and searched for his breath and rubbed slowly at his chest as if to free it. Horace cradled the hog’s head in his hands and he laughed and rocked on his feet.

—You gone take that to maw, Owen said, breathing heavily. He pushed Horace on and pointed to the house. Elsie Ayle stood at the door, hawking snuff upon the dirt. Her gray hair stood in a frightwig wiry and filthy and her breasts hung as heavy stones in a sling. She scratched at her sex and smelled her hand and wiped snuff and spittle from her lip. Behind her snakes sat piled two deep, their wire cages covered in stained quilts. Elsie could smell them and the strange musk of their skins.

—Come on boy, Elsie said, waving Horace up on the porch. She spat and took the hog’s head from him and disappeared into the dark house. A crazed lot of cats slipped from the door and stopped and marveled at Eugene and Kinard as they pulled organs from the hog.

Horace pointed and laughed and drew circles in air. He watched as a hawk floated above. Its wings teetered as it moved through ourobouros in a repetition at once banal and divine. Vultures joined the hawk and traced slow circle and dropped slowly closer to the earth and Horace pointed and laughed.

Eugene’s knife worked through connective tissue and the lungs fell and he ran the blade across the heart’s valves and plucked it from the carcass, the organ bright with blood. Kinard pulled the diaphragm with two hands and it came quick—a gore soaked cloth torn from its table. Eugene cut and pulled and spleen and liver were put into the steel tub, their shape not unlike a tortoise’s shell. The intestines rolled out and Eugene and Kinard cussed and fought with one another trying to keep them from the dirt. Owen laughed while Maddox stood and smoked his pipe, giddy and nearly drunk in the early November morning.

—Somethin, aint it, Maddox.

—What that, Owen.

—Them hogs we feed em and take after em an theys with us for years an then theys not.

—Way things work.

—Reckon so. Still aint sit right with me. How them go from bein to not bein like so.

—Aint gone there myself.

—Spose it get me right hard, Maddox. Spose it cut close on me. Soon ah gone be led out my pen and taken from bein to not.

—We all is, Owen.
—Reckon ah might could have some of what theys have. That not knowin. Somethin said for that. They aint known it comin. And then it do. When it come it jus come. It jus happen.

—Try an tell me you aint in a better place for it.

—Aint feel like it. Aint feel at all like it. Wager there aint nothin gained here.
—Here ah church an here ah steeple an open they door an seen all they peoples, Horace said, his fingers folded over and writhing in a mess of clotted blood.

Maddox bubbled the bottle.

End of Part II


Author interview continued-

Stewart Voegtlin hunting, 2020

More than anywhere else...Where do you like to be?
If it's not in a hunting blind or standing in a river fly-fishing, it's at home with my wife and 20-month-old son. He's changed my life in so many ways and made me want to be things I never thought I could be.

Where do you want to go?
To Oxford, MS to Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak. My church I've yet to attend.

Where did you come from?
The dirty south. Atlanta, Georgia. It gets a bad rap, and rightfully so. But you can drive for an hour and see nothing but mountains and water and converse with people who don't know what an i-Phone app or Kindle is. That's my idea of heaven.

Where do you wish you came from?
I used to be infatuated with New York City. But now it makes me nervous and depressed. I'm older and need quiet to think. I don't know how you stand it sometimes.

Where are you?
I'm in my den typing on a borrowed laptop while my son tears the house apart. It's time for us to go on our morning run and he's getting antsy.

Part III of 'Nothing To Be Gained Here' and author interview concludes tomorrow.

Hog Killin' Part III

Photo from, Hands on History, Great Smokey Mountains N. P.

Nothing to be Gained Here
by
Stewart Voegtlin
Part III

Jacob’s ladder fell from the sky in columns lit white and wide and vultures held high above in perpetual circle now descended wholly and their shadows danced upon the frozen ground below.

—You gone have to put them sumbitches down diddy, Kinard said. —We still aint done butcherin the hog out.

Kinard and Eugene slid their knives down the hog’s back and pulled up hunks of thick white fat. Owen placed the water tub back on the fire and the steel belly dimpled and popped in the heat. Kinard and Eugene tossed fat into the tub and it screamed and sizzled. The shadows grew in the dirt. Horace clapped and rocked. He laughed as the vultures pulled closer to the earth and the sound of the wings beat in his ears.

Horace tugged at Maddox’ overalls and held his hand out. Maddox extended his hand and Horace set a tiny tortoise in his palm and it rose from its carapace and crept and then fell to its side and flipped, its plastron bone white and forked as a wishbone broken two.

Owen limped inside and returned with a handful of shot shells. He fed two into the action of his gun. He chambered a shell. He squinted in the sunlight and his cheek bunched against the wood of the stock. The shotgun boomed and shot sprayed into a vulture’s breast and ripped through its wings and it fell to the ground.

It shrieked and mewed and its talons contracted as it died. Black feathers shook in the air and wafted slowly to the earth. The other birds beat higher into the sky and chattered and wheeled slower circles over the house. The fat bubbled in the tub as the lard rendered and it smelled salty and rich.

—Aint ah bad shot, said Maddox.

—Could put ah goshdernd blowhole in you quicker than hell, said Owen.

Maddox laughed and looked at Owen and the shotgun he cradled. His forearm was heavy and scarred—an ampersand heralding message in blue ink. & THEYE SHALLE TAKE UP SERPENTS, it said running from wrist to elbow, stilted font jagged as mountains.

Clouds became one and the white rolled into gray and snowflakes fell and dropped to the ground without sound. Owen set his gun over his shoulder and looked at Maddox and spat a run of juice to the ground and rubbed it wide with his boot.

—This’n just like any other day, Owen said. Aint no different. Even if you says you known what to expect. Aint no nothin different. Aint a thing. Just any other day.

Maddox smiled and drank deeply from the bottle and handed it back to Owen.

—You make it good then, Maddox said.

—Show me how to bygod, Owen said and turned and walked towards the house as snow fell heavy from the sky.

-30-


Author interview continued:

Can you tell me where the story came from? That and the when and the where of it?

I tend to write a lot about people killing and dressing animals and I don't think I'll ever stop writing about it. There's a sort of quasi-religious aspect to these sorts of things that gets glossed over. Like when the kid pops his first deer and gets the blood on his face and then you grill up the heart and eat it, or when the first hog of the season is butchered out and the bladder is inflated so the kids can kick it around like a soccer ball while the adults make blood sausage or cracklins.

They're rituals, and they're difficult to sit through, but they are illuminating, and unbelievably satisfying. You kill something. You honor it. It lives on through cooking, preservation, whatever. It's simple and beautiful.

'Nothing to be Gained Here' is an excerpt from a larger work (i.e. novel) called "Shaking Through." It appears here in much different form. Characters are renamed, the setting's different, the ending's different, etc.

Long story short, in the novel, the family lives in a milltown, tenant style. The mill owner sells the property right out from under the workers to the railroad so a line can be run through town. Mill shuts down. No work, little food. The family butchers out the last of its hogs and wonders where to go from there. Actually not very different from the Ayle Family in "Nothing to Be Gained Here."

Think about all the things you get out of the hog: lard, blood, meat. Even the parts you never see at the grocery store get turned into incredible food. The head and tongue turned into headcheese. Ears boiled down and fried up crispy. Brains scrambled into eggs for breakfast. Trotters are either boiled down and pickled are stuffed with potatoes and more pork and fried up. Same for the tail.

There's the liver, heart, spleen, lights. All good. We haven't even gotten to the belly or hams or ribs... These are the things we miss out on today. I hope we somehow find a way to put down the fucking smartphone and get back to where we were a 100 years ago. But I doubt it.

Natural Selection Hard at Work

Frankly, I can't help thinking that deer would be me.  For my deer friend and happy hunter, the Main Line Sportsman.

Stealing in Boston

An Affordable Wardrobe's Flea Market is on again this Sunday up in Boston. I understand everything has been dry cleaned so nothing smells like Lucky Strikes or has got bed bugs. Still, you may wanna go through the pockets 'cause you never know what you'll find.

William Bezek's Halloween: Beauty In The Dark

Against the vulgar backdrop of temporary Halloween costume stores (the 1st Pop Ups?), orange and black chotchkies and a cretinism that suits my country to it's razor bladed apple core... William Bezek's intelligent and tasteful Halloween sculptures rise above it all in their beautiful death. They're snappily dressed as well. Check 'em out at Bezek's blog here. I'd rather have a bunch of these than those silly English Christmas Carolers.

Steven Hitchcock

Steven & Celia

The Label

A writer's jacket





The Goods

Linings

Pocket Square

Brown & Blue

Cleverley Side Gusset


My favorite tattoo


No relation to Alfred. Just as well. The world hardly needs another film director but is starving for tailors. Steven started with Anderson & Shepard at 16. He's a young looking 38 but has been working the cloth for 22 years. A blogger as well -- a post on his typical day can be found here.

I met Steven and his girlfriend Celia yesterday afternoon at the Benjamin Hotel on 50th and Lex. We discussed Steven's shop on Savile Row, tailoring, goods, linings, Cleverley shoes...The usual suspects.

Steven prefers a soft tailored aesthetic and that only makes sense coming from A&S. The beauty is hidden in the details as opposed to a more obvious Huntsman or Poole silhouette. I'm a fan of both. Why be monogamous when you don't have to.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr Auction Preview

Lot 443- Louis Vuitton Steamer Trunk: Est. $2,000 -3,000


Lot 312- Westridge Guest Book 1515 Amalfi Dr. Pacific Palisades (currently home of Stephen Spielberg): 1800 signatures including Cole Porter, Cecil Beaton, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Mary Pickford and Basil Rathbone. Est. $3,000-5,000


Lot 446- Dunhill Double Sided Brief Case w/ plastic tags from Cunard Line & British Airways. Est. $150-200.


Lot 105- Mahogany Partner's Desk w/ personal photos and cartoons under glass. Est. $4,000-6,000


Lot 361-John Lobb (St James) bespoke two eyelet oxfords and boot box. One of two pair. Do not appear to have been worn. US Size apx 9.5 to 10 / D width. Est. $100-150

Lot 265- Guest Book signed by Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and 170 others. 2 July 1981. Party at Syon House Est. $400-600


Lot 315 Bolton's (Kensington, London) Guest Book signed & illustrated by Al Capp (NSFW) Est. $2,000-3,000


Lot 368- Inlaid Turkish cane. One of six. Est. $300-500

Lot 309- Rolodex. One of Two. Est. $100-200


The Trad Crew for the Preview (L to R) Paul Wilson, John Lobb NYC; Leonard Logsdail; Alice Olive, Photographer; Louis Webre, Doyle; Tom Davis, Brooks Brothers.

My thanks to the Trad Crew for their help yesterday afternoon at Doyle Auction House. Three hours were spent going through mostly apparel lots. Sizes, predictions and detailed insight coming next week. Have a great holiday weekend.

Press Only: Esquire's Blogger Showdown (and Lee Marvin)

It should be another year before Esquire asks me anything. Anyway, Max (All Plaidout) and I kick post 'Labor Day White' around here. I'm not sure where we were going with this so I doubt you'll learn anything. However, there's an incredible interview with Lee Marvin (Lee Jeans?) by Roger Ebert at Esquire here.

Separated at Birth: Wallace & Will

Something for the kids to get jiggy wit...

Pork Prep with Johnnie Trayf

Photo by Scott Shoeman



Bloggers, 13th and Wolf (left) and The Trad (always right) check out designer Johnnie Trayf's, "Primping Pork Prep" fashion show at the Holiday Inn off I-69 in Ft. Wayne, IN.

If I Were A Mormon...

Me? A Mormon?





The Horror.



Dalyn Montgomery; aka Brohammas, aka artist, aka soda pop creator, aka Mormon Bishop, and most recently, graduate student in University of Pennsylvania's MBA program, recently honored me (and Trad Dad) with a portrait on his new Tumbler that hides all evidence of my over indulgence in life's baser pursuits.



Consequently, it's nice to know if I never drank or smoked -- I would look just like a Mormon. Although I don't think I could ever wear a short sleeve shirt with a tie. Dalyn, on the other hand, really needs to do something about his shoes. Thanks, Bro.

This is going to feel like...

Michael Shaw cartoon rejected by The New Yorker



I'm in the hospital today, but wanted to let those who owe me calls and emails know that, if I don't make it, my last thoughts are of you -- and what an asshole you are.

Sgt Rock & His Faux Commandos

Jeff “Rock” Harris refuses to display his medals and honors in his Kinston home



He tries to keep the awards — three Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars, a Bronze Star, 23 Army Commendation Medals, 31 Army Achievement Medals, six Overseas Service ribbons for combat, an award from the emperor of Saudi Arabia, along with several dozen others, he acquired during his time as a U.S. Army Ranger — packed away. However, those around him refuse to let him forget how important his time in the military was.



Harris — an executive security specialist at Down East Protection Systems in Kinston, personal trainer, self-defense instructor and a bodybuilding judge — doesn’t want credit for the bravery and valor he exhibited serving his country.



In fact, he didn’t even want to have any part of a big-budget, Hollywood movie that recounted one of his most eventful and memorable days in the Army.



Hollywood



“Black Hawk Down,” based on the Mark Bowden’s book by the same name, was nominated for four Academy Awards, won two and grossed $172,989,651 worldwide after its release in late 2001. The movie, based on true events from Operation Restore Hope, takes place Oct. 3, 1993, when American troops were sent into Bakara Market in Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to capture warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s officers to stop his regime from starving the nation’s people.



U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers were sent on Black Hawk helicopters and Humvees on a mission expected to only take a couple of hours. They ended up fighting what seemed like the entire city into the next day, losing 19 U.S. soldiers in the process.



Harris, a sniper with the Rangers, came close to being one of the casualties of Mogadishu. Harris found out about the movie when Ridley Scott, co-producer and director, and his production company started hounding him for his account of the bloody day. But he refused to contribute.



“It’s not that I didn’t want to talk about it (but) it’s a sore spot for a lot of us,” Harris said. “It’s not just because we were losing people and the whole horror of it — that was the third time I went to combat, so it wasn’t a surprise for me. It was just the way it happened, what went down. … A lot of guys got out (of the Army) after that who otherwise wouldn’t have.”



Though Scott’s company kept asking for his input, Harris answered every time with a resounding “no.” Scott nonetheless promised the movie would ring true to the day’s events, be more like a documentary — and most importantly — would honor the soldiers lost in Somalia. “I didn’t even care if my name was even mentioned,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure the people who did the most there, those who gave up the most, were shown the most honor.”



Despite receiving several movie passes and an invitation to see a special screening at Fort Bragg, Harris didn’t watch the movie until he could view it on his own time. “I finally watched the movie for first time after it came out on DVD, just so I can take a break if I needed to,” Harris said. “I don’t want to say that I was pleased because it’s not a pleasing thing to watch, but the rendition of it was what (Scott) said. He kept his word about it.”



The timeline of the movie strayed from the day’s actual events, and some character-switching, including his own, stood out, too.



Man down

In a bloody scene in the middle of the movie, a young soldier’s leg is blown off, opening his femoral artery. In pain and bleeding heavily, the young man’s strained face relaxes and he dies. “That would have been me,” Harris said. “I got shot, and cut my femoral artery, but we got out the next morning. I lived, but that wouldn’t have been as good of a story line.”



Though Harris still has both legs, he sustained a scar on his leg after a bullet punctured his shin, traveled up his leg, cut his artery and hit his spine, earning him his third Purple Heart, and almost ending his mobility. “(The bullet is) still in my spine — it’s still in my lower back,” Harris said. “I wasn’t supposed to walk again. I was paralyzed for almost 20 months.”



Medical experts still aren’t completely sure how he overcame his paralysis, but Harris, a member of Grace Fellowship Baptist Church, credits it all to God. “The day I left Walter Reed (Army Medical Center), they said I would have maybe an 8 percent chance (to walk again),” Harris said. “I never accepted that. … I’m a very blessed guy.”



Harris earned his two other Purple Hearts after being shot in Panama trying to capture Manuel Noriega and after being shot again in Desert Storm. “It’s different every time (someone shoots at you),” Harris said. “It’s just as scary every time. You don’t ever get used to it.”



Aim, fire

Harris wasn’t always on the receiving end of the bullet, something that makes him uncomfortable to this day. “I have 316 confirmed kills as a sniper, and that’s only in that last three years I was in the Army,” Harris said. “Every one of those horrifies me regularly because they were somebody’s children, somebody’s husband or father.”



He still feels conflicted about what he had to do, but in the end, he knew it was his duty as a sworn soldier.“They’re bad people and they’ve done bad things, but who am I to take that away from them?” he asked. “But it was my job to do. Lives were safer because of that — but it’s never easy.”



Leave no man behind

James Murphy served in the Army as a Ranger with Harris and said he wouldn’t be alive if not for Harris’ heroic actions. Murphy recalled after he and another soldier were hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Mogadishu, Harris ran to their position and carried both of them a half-mile away “not knowing if we were alive or not.” He drove them to safety in a burning vehicle and returned to continue to fight.



“If you know him, you are privileged,” Murphy said. “If you served with him, you were in the presence of a true American patriot. If he is your friend, you should be honored. He gives hope to humanity that there are still decent, amazing people all around you.”



Just a regular guy

Harris said despite everything he has seen and the blessings he has received, he considers himself a down-to-earth person. “I’m just as normal, laid back a person as there is. I’ve just had extraordinary experiences,” he said. “I’ve got a great wife (Amanda), and I’m alive. I’m healthy, and probably much more healthy than I should be at 46.”



Harris is especially lucky after having several medical scares, including having prostate cancer four times in the past six years and a brain tumor. Harris, who is in remission from cancer, said he doesn’t mind talking about his past illnesses, but he doesn’t publicize it because of the way people treat him after finding out.



“They look at you like you’re already dead. … My overall personality is doing for other people rather than myself,” Harris said. “That’s part of my military (background). That’s the thing that it teaches you. You don’t want to be a hero, you don’t want to get credit all the time. A lot of people know me, and a lot of people know where I come from, but a lot of people don’t know my whole story, because I don’t advertise that.”



Say thanks

Harris said he takes every opportunity to thank those who have ever donned a uniform, from friends and veterans Jerry Core of Kinston, Klebear Northrup and James Anthony to Joseph Seabright, a coworker of Harris’ who is deploying next week. “I don’t pass a soldier without saying ‘thank you,’ ” he said. “I don’t tell them who I am. I just tell him ‘thank you.’ ”



Every military holiday, Harris remembers and recognizes the soldiers who fought by his side, especially the 64 in his units who lost their lives. “I will always, as long as I’m able to, recognize those guys first,” he said. “I don’t have problems talking about the stuff I’ve experienced. I think it’s good therapy for me.”



Harris said thanking a soldier and showing him or her support is a simple gesture that goes a long way. “It’s unbelievably important … just to go say thank you,” he said. “Put yourself in their position. Just a ‘thank you’ is tremendous.”



Though he has been through much in his 46 years, he has kept his faith and wouldn’t take any of his experiences back for the world. “I’m thankful everyday I went through it,” Harris said. “As hard as it was, I would have stayed in for 30 years. That was my niche, what I was supposed to be doing … where I’m at, the direction I’m in today is because of somebody else’s plan.”



By Jane Moon - Kinston Free Press



The unauthorized use of military insignia by fashion designers and retailers pales in comparison to people who fabricate military records. This incredible story ran the Sunday before July 4th in Kinston, NC and was picked up by the Fayetteville Observer. With Fayetteville being home to Ft Bragg, the 82nd Airborne Division, Special Forces and Delta , you can guess what happened.



Sgt. Rock's fraud was outed in a fascinating on line investigation seen here and here. Actually, I think Rock would find life in New York City most suitable for his character -- what little he has.



Yesterday, M. Lane, a man over flowing with character, commented on a ersatz military duffle bag, "...I could never carry something like this unless I had earned it." In an upside down world, the upside down message is, "Fake It 'til You Make It' and except for the real nut cases out there, it comes down to how you see yourself each morning when you shave. I'm just guessing, but I reckon Sgt. 'Rock' is working on a full beard.

Hipster Puppies

Genius available here


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