Category: random

It was a little before midnight Saturday, when I heard chatter on the newsroom scanner that a man had been struck by a hit-and-run driver near the University of Nevada, Reno’s campus. It was obvious from the sound of thing he was in bad shape.

A minute more and I heard someone clearly say, “Its Channel Two’s sports guy.”

While hearing that stunned me, I quickly started calling around to see if I could get confirmation of what I believed I had heard. It took another hour before some one told me what I was afraid I already knew.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t say anything as the information remained unconfirmed. I ended up going home that morning know who the victim was and that he was in critical condition.

It wasn’t until waking up later on Sunday, that not only did I have the correct information — that information had gone from bad to worse.  KTVN’s Sports Director, 41-year-old JK Metzker was dead from injuries received the night before.

I knew JK only in passing — many around me knew him better.

They all say he was not only a nice guy, a good family man and fantastic husband and father, but he also had a sense of humanity. I’m told that at the end of the day, he realized we all lived in a small community and because of that competition was only a job, but being decent was a committment.

Two things stand out in my conversations with his co-workers and friends: He’d have had a joke or a quip about all this fuss over his death — and he’d probably be the first to forgive the person who killed him.

Of course they speculate, while I report.

Meanwhile, the case continues as a 23-year-old Sparks man has been arrested in connection with the hit-and-run incident. Ryan Rhea is charged with one felony count of hit-and-run causing the death.

Rhea moved to the area from Carmichael, California after serving in Iraq with the Army’s 82nd Airborne. He has been going to college while living with his father in Sparks.

Investigators said alcohol appears to be a factor in the incident. They add additional charges may be filed pending results of blood tests.

Funeral services are scheduled for 2pm Friday, at Our Lady of the Snows on Wright Street. A fund has also been set up in the Metzker Family name and donations can be made at any Wells Fargo Bank.

I’ve been sitting on this for a long time…

“Adam was born on August 4, 1963 and passed away on Monday, January 25, 2010. Adam was a resident of Hydesville, California.” That’s all the online obituary reads.

Are you fucking kidding me?! Two friggin’ lines meant to cover 46-years of life.

Bullshit! This pisses me off and I won’t stand for it!

Adam is my brother, and I can tell you, there was much more to the man than what this paltry piece of crap obit has in it!  Goddamn it, I find it disgusting that his children and widow care so little of him they’d allow this to stand!

Okay — now  that I’ve calmed down…

They got his date of birth right, but let me add, he was born at Mather Air Force Hospital in Sacramento, California. Adam, like me, was born a military brat.

The following year we moved to Klamath, California. Adam attended and graduated from Margaret Keating School.

Adam also attended Saint Robert and Ann’s Catholic Church in Klamath. He received first communion in 1971 and often talked about being a Priest, like many young boys his age.

Eventually he outgrew the idea of becoming a priest, focusing instead on acting. Adam was talented, doing impressions of famous people like John Wayne and Groucho Marx and telling jokes at the drop of a hat and everyone had to beware of his sharp tongue.

He eventually acted in a couple of plays during high school, but found he loved weight lifting and boxing more than being on stage. It was from that discipline he would draw strength to push through the disintegration of our parents marriage.

At first he moved to Fortuna with our mother and two sisters. Eventually, though Adam chose to come live with me in Crescent City and return to Del Norte High School, where he graduated in 1981.

While attending school he maintained a steady job as a busboy, dishwasher and a sometime line cook. In speaking with Pete Kaufman, who managed Rowland’s restaurant, where Adam worked, he said he had no one else who could laugh and carry on with employees and customers and get his work done as well as Adam could.

In short Adam busted his ass.

Adam joined the U.S. Army and after completing basic and advanced infantry training was assigned to Pusan (now known as Busan,) South Korea. He finish two years of duty overseas and was transferred to Fort Irwin in the Mohave Desert, where he continued to work as a dental technician.

There is more to this part of his life that’ll be shared at a later date.

He left the service in early 1986, taking a job as a security officer with a lumber company. He held this job for over a year as he completed the basic requirements to enter college on a full-time basis.

He also got married, adopting his wife’s daughter, Jasmine, from a previous marriage. Together Adam and Sonja had two more children, Jayce and Lynda.

At first he couldn’t settle on a major, first attending the law enforcement academy at the College of the Redwoods. After graduating from the course he discovered a desire for nursing and proceeded on a path towards his degree in that.

He was sidelined unfortunately after being accused of participating in the murder of a man who  was harvesting a pot field. Initially he was sentenced to two-years at San Quentin, but due to overcrowding, served his time in the Mendocino County jail.

By the time he completed his sentence, Adam was well on the road to depression. It took him a year and a half to finally seek help from the local V.A. clinic in Eureka.

Adam was never the same though. His mood swings were wild and often times caused him to seek the self-medicating path of alcohol and marijuana.

Adam suffered another setback when he and Sonja divorced. By this time he was talking about taking off to Europe and getting lost once his children were all grown.

However, he appeared to be on the road to recovery by the time he married his second wife, Kelly. It was  “a dream come true,” he would tell me the day of the wedding.

Sadly, that dream wouldn’t last very long.

Near the end of January 2010, he checked himself into the V.A. hospital in San Francisco, suffering from severe depression. It was while there he self-administered a mixture of prescribed medication that ended his life.

While I haven’t his all the points in Adam’s life, I have shared enough so you’ll know he was far more than the two-lines given in the only obituary I’ve been able to locate for him. Meanwhile, his death has had an effect on not only me but his sisters as well.

Furthermore Adam’s friends from throughout his life are coming forward, wanting to know about him. Slowly and painfully I’ll give out all I can recall despite my desire to keep a part of him for myself.

That would selfish — and no better than he’s been given by others closer to him than me.

A Marine Sergeant wrote this in response to an Army guy who posted a comment on the Marine Corps site that he was sick and tired of “Marine arrogance”.

The Sergeant writes:

“I think that’s what makes Marines special, if only in our own minds, is that elusive Quality of Esprit D’Corps. It’s the fact that we, as individual Marines, don’t feel that we are individual Marines. When we wear our uniform, when we hear our Hymn, when we go into battle, we are going with every other Marine who ever wore the uniform.

Standing behind us are the Marines who fought during the birth Of our nation. We’re standing with the Marines who fought in WWI and gave birth to the legend of the “Tueful Hunden”, or “Devil Dogs”. We are standing with the Marines who took Iwo and Tarawa and countless other blood soaked islands throughout the Pacific.

We are standing with the “Frozen Chosin” and our beloved Chesty Puller. We are standing with the Marines who battled at Hue City and Khe Sanh and the muddy rice paddies of South East Asia. We are standing with the Marines who fought in Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom and now, are fighting in Afghanistan.

Like real brothers, their blood courses through our veins, and when we go into battle, we would rather lay down our lives than be a disappointment to them. We carry on our backs, their legacy, their deaths and their honor. We carry that for the rest of our lives.

The Marines Corps uniform doesn’t come off when our active duty is over. We wear it daily in our attitude, and our love of Corps and country. We wear it on our tattoos and our bumper stickers. We wear it in our hearts.

It’s why, no matter where we are in the world, on November 10th, every Marine celebrates the Marine Corps birthday. It’s why we’ll never be an army of 1. It’s why we never stop being Marines. It’s why, for most of us, being a Marine isn’t something we were. It’s something we are.

It’s the most important part of who and what we are. Some say we’re arrogant. We say we’re proud. We have a right to be proud. We are the United States Marines The most feared and ferocious group of warriors to walk the face of this earth.

When Americas’ enemies formulate their battle plans, they plan on going around Marine units, because they know Damn well that they can’t go through them. We are what other branches wish they were.

We are the modern day Spartans. This isn’t bragging. It’s written in the battle history of our country. When there’s a parade and the Marines march by, everyone pays a little more attention. Some say “arrogance”. We call it “pride”. It’s why, in a crowd of service men, you can always spot the Marine.”

Why are Marines special?  I don’t know.

We just are.

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When I first met my friend Kay in 1995, she had jus’ started down the long road of recovery from a having a brain tumor surgically removed. I was working as a driver for CitiLift and she was a reservationist for Reno Air.

By the time I’d pick her up from her work place to transport her home, she would be physically exhausted and nearly unable to speak. She’d be talking to me, but I’d be unable to understand some of the words she was saying.

Later on as we got to know one another better, she confided in me that she did a lot of writing after getting home. She told me it was the only way she could express her thoughts and feelings after a long day on the telephones.

In fact she became so compulsive about writing, she would use most anything available from a napkin to post-it-note. And all this material, she wrote was kept in a set of boxes she purchased through Avon.

About five years later, she became involved in a religious sect that invited her to give up all of her worldly possessions, which she did. This not only included her house-trailer and car, but all of her writing as well.

These days she refuses to write anything even though we’ve bought her a couple of journals. However she will spend 15 to 20 minutes a day texting her daughter in Las Vegas.

So go figure.

We had jus’ moved the KHIT studios from Neil Road to South Virginia. At the time I was working as the overnight jock.

As normal, I came in about half-an-hour early jus’ so I could get a pot of coffee on and so the person I was taking over for would not have to worry about whether I’d be on time or not. Plus it gave me a chance to relax prior to air time.

This particular evening I came in to find I had a piece of mail. It wasn’t often that got mail so it was kind of nice.

The woman who was on the air at the time knew I had this mail and appeared jus’ as curious as me to know what I had been sent. The medium-sized envelop didn’t have a return address, which piqued our curiousity even more.

So, I ripped it open in the control room, where we could both see what I had gotten. Out fell a pair of royal blue panties and a brassiere.

I was instantly red-faced as I picked the items up and stuffed them back in the envelope.

Two days later, and having forgotten about the incident, I was called at home to come to the station to discuss a matter. My boss at the time was hesitant to tell me what that matter was and so I drove to their with a ton of worry on my mind.

Once inside I foundI was being counselled and written up for sexual harassment. The woman I opened the package up in front off was offended and reported me.

She must have never seen a bra or a pair of pants before.

When I left my barracks room, my bed was perfectly made. There were no bumps or wrinkles in it.

The same couldn’t be said by the time I returned from class. There was a fairly large lump in the center of the mattress.

At first I thought someone had jus’ stuffed something under the top blanket, but I discovered differently once I pulled back the covers. The lump turned out to be a rattlesnake.

My heart nearly jumped out of my chest the moment I saw it. I must have looked funny plastered against the far wall of my room with my eyes as wide as saucers.

It took me less than a minute to figure out the reptile wasn’t alive. Rather it was made of plaster and painted to look like a rattlesnake.

I took it out into the hallway —  where everyone was snickering and giggling — but where no one was confessing to putting it in my bed.

One of the smaller military bases in the U.S. is located in the Nevada desert, north of Las Vegas. It also plays one of the biggest roles in the nation’s war on terror.

The airfield that now bears General Wilbur L. “Bill” Creech’s name was originally built by the Army in the early 1940s to support the war effort during World War II . A month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Army began building the training camp.

Known as Indian Springs Auxiliary Army Airfield, the base was used as a “divert” field and for air-to-air gunnery training, supporting the Western Flying Training Command Gunnery School at Las Vegas Army Airfield. The post also serviced B-17s and T-6s until March 1945 when the Army put the base in stand-by status.

When Las Vegas AAF deactivated in January 1947, Indian Springs also closed down. However the base found new life when it re-opened in January 1948, receiving its first permanently assigned Air Force unit two years later.

Come August 1951 the base became an auxiliary field once again and by July 1952 was transferred from Air Training Command to the Air Research and Development Command. The base now reported to the Air Force Special Weapons Center at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The base transferred to the Tactical Air Command in 1961, where it officially became known as Indian Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field. It was also the remote training site for the USAF Thunderbirds.

Wile practicing on January 18,1982, the Thunderbirds crashed at Indian Springs. The four pilots were performing a line abreast loop when all aircraft had a controlled flight into terrain impact along the runway in front of the base Fire Station.

By 1992, the base had become a component of Air Combat Command and remained such until June 20, 2005, when Indian Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field officially changed its name to Creech Air Force Base. The name was selected to honor Creech, a former commander of Tactical Air Command and who was also known as the “father of the Thunderbirds.”

Creech was born in Argyle, Missouri, March 30, 1927. He was commission in September 1949 rising to the rank of General being promoted May 1, 1978.  Creech retired from the service December 31, 1984, and died August 26, 2003.

By October of that same year, the 3rd Special Operations Squadron was activated at Creech joining the 11th, 15th and 17th Reconnaissance Squadrons, becoming the first MQ-1 squadron in the Air Force Special Operations Command. The Joint Unmanned Aerial Systems Center was also established at the same time.

The 42nd Attack Squadron was formed at Creech in November the following year as the first Reaper squadron. On May 1,2007 operational control of the base was moved from Nellis to the 432nd Wing  which was reactivated and assumed control of the base.

The four of us were down in what we commonly referred to as the pasture. There was John Paul Arnold, Chucky Yates, Adam and myself.

We were doing what young kids do – especially boys – roughing around, chasing each other, etc. How we all ended up together on that Saturday morning is lost to me.

What I do recall was seeing John Paul throwing rocks. I wasn’t paying much attention to what he was throwing them at as we’d been tossing rocks at trees and into High Prairie Creek all day.

Suddenly John Paul grabbed up Adam, who was only six-years old at the time, and took off running up the hill toward the neighborhood with Chucky right behind him. I watched for a couple of seconds wondering what they were doing.

“Run, Tommy!” Chucky  yelled as he continued to dash up the hill.

But it was too late. I heard a noise like a machine humming and by the time I turned to see what it was, I was engulfed in a swarm of angry wasps.

It was at that time I decided to take off running – albeit way too late. Before I knew it I was being stung in the head and neck.

Once home, I discovered I wasn’t the only one stung. Adam had been attacked and has several stingers in him, too.

I don’t know how badly Chucky or John Paul got stung as they were gone by the time I made it home.

Dad immediately took me out into the backyard and made a small mud-wallow that he started applying to my head and neck. The mud pack calmed the burning and lessened the pain.

After a few minute in this, he hosed me off and took me inside, where he and Mom proceeded to pluck the stingers from my neck and head. That was almost as bad as the initial attack.

My head and neck were swollen and covered in bumps. I refused to go outside the rest of the day or the next because I looked so funny.

Unfortunately, Dad made me go to school that following Monday – despite my misshapen head.

It was a temporary assignment to learn how to deal with life-threatening burns in a clinical setting. I was familiar with the place as I had been assigned to Brooks Air Force Base for technical school a couple of years earlier, which borders the fort.

The school was one of the most unpleasant courses I ever attended. The smell of burnt and rotting flesh seemed to follow me back to my barracks every evening and there wasn’t enough beer on the post to help drown the memories from what I’d seen.

One morning I arrived to class only to be redirected to a ward. I was told a group of Marines had arrived from Okinawa, severely burned and that I’d be part of their treatment team.

Evidently, they had been sheltered in a Quonset hut that also stored JP-4 jet fuel. One of the Jarheads forgot about the flammable materials and lit up a cigarette, which in turn engulfed the building and left 25 men fighting for their lives due to the fire.

The first thing that needed to be done for these men was to scrub the burnt, dead skin from their bodies. This is extremely painful as no one is given medication to deal the pain – after all living skin will hurt while the dead skin has no sensation – and all the dead skin has to go or infection will set in.

It’s also a slow process, one that takes a toll on both the patient and the technician doing the cleaning. I was amazed to see I wasn’t the only man in the group crying as I intentionally inflicted more and more pain to the Marine I was scrubbing.

Amid all of this horror was the bravery of these burned men. Yes, they cried and yes they cried out – but the most remarkable thing was the unity and strength they proved each other as well as us.

As we scrubbed and picked and scrubbed some more, their voices grew louder and louder as they sang over and over again the words to the Marine Corps hymn, “From the Halls of Montezuma; To the Shores of Tripoli…”

The entire week had been one snow day after another. Despite this, I decided to enjoy my time off by taking a day-trip to take photographs and see what else I could learn about Nevada.

The roads were icy and therefore slick – making driving fast a bad idea. So I took my time, stopping to snap a picture here and there.

It was jus’ before 11 o’clock that morning when I finally made it beyond Carson City and into the Valley bearing the same name. Off to my right, I saw a woman standing by the edge of the roadway — soaking wet and looking to be in a horrible panic.

As I pulled closer, I noticed a vehicle in the ditch by the freeway, it’s four tires protruding from a thin layer of broken ice. The upside down car was submerged in about four-feet of water.

I immediately stopped to help.

By the time I got out of my car and to the woman, I had a handle on the situation. She had screamed and yelled two words over and over at me: My baby!

Without waiting for any further information I pulled off my leather jacket, got the knife from my back pocket and jumped feet first into the water. Instantly I was freezing, but I couldn’t stop to think about how cold I was at the moment.

Instead I searched the passenger side of the car for the door handle. It was easy to find, but opening the door was difficult because of the mud and debris that held it in place.

Unable to open it, I waded around to the driver’s side and found it to be part way open. I ducked beneath the water’s surface and squeezed inside the vehicle.

By this time my hands and arms were so numb that I could hardly feel anything I touched. Instead I had to look for more than feel my way around until I located what I was hoping to find.

The baby carrier was upside down and resting on the ceiling of the car’s roof. I felt inside it – but there was no baby.

My mind was growing foggy from the ice-water and my lungs started to burn. So I started to back out of the vehicle.

That’s when I felt something brush the side of my head. I reached up and realized I was holding the leg of an infant.

With the baby in my arms, I scrambled out of the car and up the bank to a waiting crowd. I handed the infant to a bystander, who started CPR on the limb little body.

Someone else grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around me. I watched as the man I had handed the bay too worked to warm it up, with chest compressions and puffs of breath.

In what seemed like hours – but was more like minutes – an ambulance with its siren wailing pulled up to the scene. They didn’t remain long as they loaded up the infant and the mother and sped off to the hospital.

It took me more than two-hours to finally warm up enough to fill out the police report. Back home that evening, I learned from the local news that the infant survived — and her mother was okay.

That made the bone-numbing cold, worth it.