On a More Serious Note

A life changing experience in Nürnberg

 I took a little break from writing and today I am feeling a little reflective.  While I listen to the Allman Brothers Band seminal 1972 Eat a Peach album I want to tell you about an experience that happened to me when I was a young, impressionable soldier in Nürnberg that made a lasting and profound effect on me and how I viewed the world, life and the human condition.  As we grow up, we have many experiences that influence shape us and prepare us for what's to come.  Some of these things are wonderful and some of them aren't but we learn something from every experience in our lives, and if we take these lessons to heart, they makes us stronger, better people.

After my adventures upon landing in Germany and finally arriving at the hospital in Nürnberg, I started to settle in, do my job, explore the city and make friends with my fellow soldiers at the hospital.  The barracks for male single soldiers were in a wing of the main hospital building.  The women soldiers, known at the time as WACs (Women's Army Corps) had their own barracks in a separate building.  In the wing of the hospital that our rooms were in, on the first floor was a room that every Army barracks had, called the Day Room.  It was a kind of lounge, usually with some comfortable chairs, a pool table, some tables for board games and card playing and if you were lucky, a television.  It was a place to hang out and relax with your buddies, and there were usually a few people in the room doing just that.  

So one day, shortly after my arrival, I went down to the Dayroom from my 2nd floor room to see what was there.  A couple of guys were shooting pool and I asked if I could play the winner.  I wasn't a very good pool player, but I thought it would be a good way to meet some people that I would be living and working with for the next year and a half.  In a few minutes the guys finished their game, and a short, stocky guy with a friendly smile would be my opponent in the pool game.  I introduced myself and the guy told me his name was Jimmy, as he shook my hand.  As we banged the pool balls around the table, we talked, and learned the basic things about each other.  When you are in the Army, you move around a lot and meet new people regularly, so it's just a natural ritual to exchange information with new people all of the time.  Jimmy it turns out was 29 years old, 10 years older than I was.  He was an Italian American from Brooklyn New York.  I told him about my Italian mother and immediately we shared a common bond.  Jimmy was a medic and he worked in the dermatology clinic at the hospital.  After we finished our game, I lost of course, we sat down to talk some more.  I immediately took a liking to Jimmy, he was friendly, cheerful and smiled a lot.  He told me he had been in Vietnam, a draftee when he was younger, and he was an airborne infantry soldier and he had been in combat in the war.  He said after his discharge he had floated around working in various jobs back in Brooklyn, and after a time he decided to go back in the Army.  He had been in Nürnberg for more than a year when I met him and he had been back in the Army for a few years by this time.  His rank was Specialist 5.  The same pay as a sergeant E-5, but without the responsibilities or authority as an NCO .  I told him some things about my life, and after a time we parted ways and went off to do other things. I had made my first friend in my new home.  I felt good about my new friend, an older guy with some life experience, and we had hit it off right away.  Because of the nature of the Army, the need for teamwork in pressure filled situations, and the constant moving from place to place, you tend to make fast friend quickly because you share a unique, common experience.  The only environment that even comes close in the civilian world is working on the police force, fire department or in EMS.  An often high stress, fast paced, stressful environment. These kind of jobs cause the workers to form tight relationships, and you depend on and trust each other completely.

As time went on, I would frequently hang out with Jimmy.  He took me into downtown Nürnberg for my first time and showed me how to use the streetcar to get there and we saw some of the sights in the beautiful walled Altstadt, or 'Old City', full of medieval buildings and a large, imposing castle on the northwest corner of the high wall that protected the city centuries ago.  After a time, Jimmy found a little basement apartment right around the corner from the hospital and he moved out of the barracks.  We were allowed to live 'off post', an Army term for living 'on the economy' as long as we maintained a room in the barracks, and appeared for inspections and such.  This was a luxury that isn't allowed on too many Army bases.  Because it was unofficial and only married enlisted people received money to pay rent, the soldier had to pay rent out of their pocket.  Jimmy's apartment was quite small.  It was in the basement of a 2 story building that had about 8 regular apartments on the normal floors.  You went in the front door of the building, went down ta flight of stairs and through a door into a short hallway.  In the hallway were 2 doors on the left and one on the right.  The first door on the left was a very small narrow kitchen with a stove, refrigerator, a sink and a couple of cabinets.  There was just enough room left for a small table and 2 chairs.  The 2nd door on the left led into a small room with a single bed, a 2 door wardrobe called a schrank in German, a comfortable chair, a set of bookshelves, and a small oil fired heater in a corner. A sort of living room/bedroom There was a good sized window in the opposite wall, and there were small steps in the outside window well that led to the front yard of the building.  The bathroom was down another hall in the basement. The opposite door from Jimmy's rooms were for another larger apartment which shared the common bathroom.  At the end of the hall where the bathroom was, there was a door that opened on to a staircase into the back yard of the building.  It was a small cozy apartment, for one person, and the freedom and peace and quiet out of the barracks, and the proximity to the hospital made the little apartment very attractive in spite of it's small size.  The monthly rent was quite low.  In time it would become my living quarters, but we'll get there in a bit

In time my friendship with Jimmy grew, he was an intelligent guy, he had a lot of stories about his life and he had a great sense of humor.  However he never said much about his experience in Vietnam.  Because he was 10 years older than me, and I was a young guy far from home, Jimmy became a kind of mentor and role model to me.  He introduced me to his friends, other medics in the hospital and all older than me.  There was John, he worked in the OR as a tech. Joe worked in the urology clinic and we called him pee pee Joe for obvious reasons.  Everett was a big burly guy from Arizona, a respiratory tech, he would become another good friend of mine.  Everett was a little younger than Jimmy.  We would hang out as a group or with 1 or 2 others.  We went into town often, hung out at Jimmy's little apartment and other activities.  Everett had an apartment about a half mile from the hospital behind a nice little gasthaus that was run by a Czech guy named Ulrich that had escaped from the communist country and made a new life in Germany. We would often go to the gasthaus to have a beer or two and have some well prepared, basic German and Czech food.  

Now I need to explain something about the environment of the Army in Germany at the time.  The draft ended in 1973 and the Army had become all volunteer.  The Vietnam war was unpopular as was military service at the time.  Because of the need to fill the ranks, the Army would take almost anybody that wanted to enlist.  A high school diploma wasn't needed, the minimum IQ score to join the military was quite low, and at the time some judges offered lawbreakers the choice of going to prison or joining the military.  In other words, although there were many good soldiers, they weren't attracting the best and the brightest at the time.  There were lingering problems from the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s, and often there were clashes between black and white soldiers.  Drug use was rampant, everything from smoking marijuana and hashish to users of intravenous methamphetamine and heroin.  A strong sedative and hypnotic drug, methaqualone, marketed under the name Quaalude was very popular.  Inn Germany it was sold on the street and known as Mandrax otr 'Mandrakes'. There were many soldiers that either casually used drugs or were addicted to the stronger dugs.  Hepatitis B, a viral infection of the liver which can be transmitted by sharing needles used to inject drugs was a big problem in the military at the time.  It was a wild and crazy time to be in the Army.  The problems were particularly prevalent in the combat units in Germany.  Their obvious mission was to protect Western Europe from a Soviet invasion so they trained a lot but they also had a lot of down time to get in all kinds of trouble.  Because we had a real world 24/7 mission at the hospital we were quite busy and didn't have as much trouble as some units, but we also had a lot of young soldiers that liked to have some fun when they weren't working, and they also needed some stress relief from a difficult job.  My friends and I were no exception.  After a couple of months, my 2 baker classmates and I were pulled out of the bake shop and we became cooks.   They put some more senior cooks in the bake shop to replace us and enjoy the easier schedule.  We had an exhausting schedule.  We had 2 shifts and worked 12 days in a row and then had every other weekend off.  On the weekend we worked we put in 14-15 hour days and worked about 120-130 hours in our 12 day workweek. 

Some of my little group weren't into using any drugs.  I had other friends that used many dugs, one friend of mine was a pretty heavy heroin user.  The most popular substance with the casual drug users was hashish.   I knew far more people that smoked hash then the ones that didn't.  It was easy to get and came in several varieties.  I had smoked an occasional joint before I joined the Army, it was the 1960s and 1970s after all.  I think I was around 16 years old the first time I tried 'pot' as it was called back then.  I liked to get high on occasion but I also wasn't stupid and I stayed away from hard drugs.  When I first came to Germany I wasn't interested in smoking hash, it was much stronger than pot at the time.  But after a few months, I decided when in Rome, do as the Romans, and I started to smoke hash.  We would smoke in the barracks, we would smoke in parks, and we would smoke it in people's apartments off post.  It was just a normal thing.  We would have occasional 'Health and Welfare' inspections in the barracks but it wasn't hard to hide whatever drugs you might have had.  Occasionally somebody would get caught with something, but if it wasn't heroin or a large amount of hash, the punishment was light.  Jimmy liked to smoke hash and he and I and other friends would sit in his little room and listen to music, talk and smoke.  It was a good time!   I had some other friends, and as a group we would go to an apartment one of them had, on a Friday night after work.  We would all have a '20 cent piece' a 10 gram piece of hash that cost $20.00 at the time hence the name.  I would bring bread, lunch meat, and cheese from the hospital kitchen, my friend Rick would buy a bottle of an over the counter stimulant, and there was always a case or 2 of bottles of good beer.  We would sit around the kitchen table, put our chunks of hash in front of us, Rick was in charge of the liquid speed.  We would all have a beer and somebody would pull out the board and game pieces for the game 'Risk', the 'Parker Brothers game of world conquest.'  The board was a map of the world and the object was to roll the dice, move your armies and the winner was the person who had defeated everybody else's armies and took over the world.  It was a fun game involving strategy, making and breaking alliances and generally having fun.  We would start around 7 or 8 p.m. and play successive games until 6 or 7 a.m.  The entire time we would smoke cigarettes and pass around the hash pipe or bong, eat baloney and cheese sandwiches washed down with beer as Rick would judiciously add drops of the liquid speed to our beer glasses.  In the meantime there were non stop records playing from Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Cream and all of the great rock music from that era. It was a great time.  Sometimes I had to work on Saturday and I needed to be there at 5 a.m.  I had worked a ten hour shit on Friday prior to going to the party, I would be smoking hash and drinking speed laced beer all night and then get up from the table at around 4:30 a.m., go change my clothes and work a 14 hour shift. When I got off of work I would go to my room in the barracks and crash after working a long day, partying all night and working an even longer day with no sleep in between.  Oh too be young and dumb again!  

When I wasn't engaged in the all night Risk parties, I would go to Jimmy's place for a more sedate experience.  Just Jimmy and I, we would talk about life and other things, get mellow with some black hash (my favorite!) and have some beer and just chill out.  We would go to jimmy's little kitchen and cook something to eat at the little table there.  Jimmy had a great collection of record albums and we would listen to music.  Sometimes I hear a classic rock song nowadays and in an instant I am transported back to Jimmy's little living room sitting in the chair and Jimmy stretched out on the bed, stoned out of our minds, and enjoying life. Jimmy also had used LSD or 'acid' many times in his life.  He enjoyed the intense experience.  He asked me several times if I wanted to try it and eventually after a lot of thought, I decided I would.  Jimmy gave me some insight as to what I might experience, and said it was good to have a guide who had experience with acid to help on the 1st trip.  So one evening, Jimmy had some tiny black micro dot acid, and we each washed down a miniscule tablet with some beer.  It takes some time for the acid to work it's magic.  We sat there talking for a while as I patiently waited for the acid take effect.  After about an hour I started to feel something and about an hour later I was having a full blown acid trip. I've done a lot of things in my life, dabbled in a number of drugs, and I have to say there is nothing quite like an acid trip.  Your entire reality is completely topsy turvy, your mind goes in strange places and for a visual thinker like me, you see some incredible things.  For example,  the wood grain on Jimmy's little schrank became magnified and looked like rivers flowing down the surface of the wood.  Yeah, things like that.  Your thought are going a mile a minute and time dilates so minute can feel like an hour.  This is not a sport for amateurs.  Everything was going fine that night, I was hanging on for the ride and Jimmy was my stabilizing influence.  Then some people we knew, unexpectedly came over, 2 or 3 of them.  We all smoked some hash together and drank some beers.  In retrospect, smoking hash and drinking alcohol while on my 1st acid trip probably wasn't the best decision I've ever made.  At some point I found myself on the floor huddled in a corner and getting a bit paranoid.  I felt that the others were staring at me and talking about me.  I felt the need to get out of the crowded room and get some air.  So I asked Jimmy for his keys so I could get back in the building and went upstairs and out to the street, taking deep breaths of the clean night air.  I started to walk down the little quiet street.  I knew the street well, a few months earlier, I had shared an apartment further down the street for a couple of months with a coworker that was waiting for his wife to join him in Germany.  The street was only a couple of hundred yards from the hospital.  After walking about 20 yards, suddenly I had no idea where I was.  With my heart pounding, I quickly turned around, recognized Jimmy' building and ran back as fast as I could, unlocked the front door with a trembling hand, and ran down the stairs and into Jimmy's living room.  I went back to my corner and huddled there in a fetal position and tried to be invisible.  After a short time the other people left and Jimmy noticed my obvious distress.  He calmly offered me a big glass 1 liter beer mug full of water and said that I should have some.  My spinning brain told me that Jimmy wanted to help me.  I took the water and it was amazing.  As I swallowed the water I was back in the real world.  The minute it had gone down my throat I was back in wonderland.  But I started to feel better.  Then Jimmy started telling me about green monsters.  He said that everyone is afraid of green monsters and the worse thing to do is to try to fight them or run away from them.  He told me the best thing to do when a green monster knocked on the door to your brain, was to open the door, say hello and invite them in. Tell them to take a seat and talk to them and make friends with them.  In my drug addled brain I took this to mean that I should just relax and everything would be fine.  So I let the green monster in for a nice chat, and I slowly calmed down and just enjoyed the trip.  By now we were about 5 or 6 hours into the trip and it had felt like an eternity.  We had hit the peak and now we were slowly coming down.  We went to the kitchen and made some food.  we talked for a few more hours and at some point near dawn, I started to feel somewhat normal, and completely exhausted.  It was an incredible experience, wonderful, crazy, enlightening and terribly frightening all mixed into an experience that I will never forget.  When you ride a horse for the first time, and you get thrown off, you have to dust yourself off and get back on the horse or you will never ride one again.  You have to overcome the fear.  So I tripped again a few more times, and I knew what to expect and had great trips.  I even went to a movie theater in town and watched the film Tommy, starring the rock band The Who that had recorded the world's first rock opera that was then made into an amazing film.  I had seen the film after it's release and seeing on acid took it to a whole new level.  Especially Tina Turner's amazing performance as the Acid Queen'!  

If you think this experience was the point of this long story, it isn't.  I needed to lay the necessary background to give some context for the events that followed.  But now I need a short break.  I think I might have induced a little flashback relating the story of my first acid trip and some of the other crazy things I did back then.  

Part 2

After a few months I had settled into a routine.  Lots of work, lots of parties, some sightseeing and travelling to some other cities in Germany and other countries in Europe, either on a weekend trip or occasionally taking some leave for a longer trip, and more work.  By now I had made many friends that worked in all different parts of the hospital.  I made a good friend, Woody, who was a licensed practical nurse (LPN), an enlisted job.  He worked on one of the wards.  I knew a female soldier, Patty that worked as an x-ray tech.  Another good friend and eventual neighbor of mine was a mortuary tech, Scotty, I have some stories about that for another time.  There were many other wonderful people.  In short I had friends all over the hospital.  In the Army, it's good to have a friend that works in the mess hall!  I was interested and fascinated by the workings of the hospital.  Sometimes in my off duty hours I would go to where my friends worked and hang out and learn things.  I watched my friend Everett run emergency arterial blood gas tests, a complicated procedure in those days that required drawing a blood sample from a major artery, usually in the wrist and then taking the sample on ice to the lab in his office and calibrating a machine and working out math on a slide rule to get the critical result! Nowadays it's a simple procedure that involves a tiny amount of blood from a small prick on the ear lobe that can be processed in a modern machine in a couple of minutes.  One time I helped my friend up in the x-ray department.  She had to hold a little baby still and she showed me which button to push to take the x-ray when she gave me the word.  Occasionally I would help carry a litter off off of a Medevac helicopter that would land on the helipad on the large lawn in front of the hospital, with an injured soldier.  Now and then I would help load an aluminum transfer case holding the body of a deceased soldier into a van for transport to Frankfurt, to be flown back to the US.  It was all interesting and started my interest in the medical business which influenced my job decision when I went back in the Army 12 years after my first enlistment.  As a result I eventually became a certified Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and worked in medical clinics, emergency rooms and a couple of trauma centers and on an ambulance, in addition to my primary job in the mental health clinic.  In the 19 months I spent in Nürnberg, I crammed in a few years worth of experiences, good and bad.

Jimmy and I would often meet at his place or go downtown and other activities.  Of course we smoked hash often and I tripped with him a few more times.  I worked hard, played hard and got in a little trouble here and there.  I didn't get along with some of my shift leaders and others in the kitchen, I didn't like authority figures telling me what to do and occasionally I could get a little mouthy.  I had to be escorted to the barber shop on the floor above the mess hall on more than one occasion.  We can talk about all of that another time.  

After I had been at the hospital for almost a year,  Jimmy's behavior started to change.  He was using more drugs and he wasn't his usual cheerful self.  One night we were sitting at his place and he started to talk about Vietnam, the first time he ever said more than a passing mention about the experience.  He described a fight with Viet Cong soldiers attacking the firebase where he was.  He became very agitated and emotional as he described a brutal firefight which culminated with him killing a young enemy soldier at close quarters.  He described the incident in detail, it was fascinating and chilling at the same time.  He ended the story, sobbing uncontrollably.  I was now 20 years old, and here was my mentor, my older friend, my rock breaking down in front of me.  It was a something I had never experienced before and it shook me up seeing Jimmy like that.  

This was in the 1970s and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) hadn't been identified yet.  When I went back in the Army years later I worked in mental health.  We spent time learning about combat stress which would be a large part of our job if we went to war.  In my 5 months of training we learned about various psychological disorders and about human behavior among many other things, including PTSD.  But back then I knew very little about these things.  As the days went on, Jimmy's behavior became more erratic.  Jimmy liked to play the drums  and he didn't have a drum kit so often when we listened to music, he would beat a tambourine in time to the music.  Now he was saying he wanted to sell an expensive 35 mm camera that he had for just a little bit of money, and buy a drum kit so he could practice the drums.  He spoke of some other unrealistic fantasies as well.  I was young, concerned and frightened by Jimmy's ever increasing  strange behavior.  A short time later, pee pee Joe saw me and said Jimmy hadn't reported to work for a couple of days so he went to Jimmy's place to see what was up.  He said when he went in to Jimmy's living room, Jimmy had punched a hole in the schrank door, circled the hole with a brown crayon and had scrawled the word 'feces' next to the hole.  Joe said that  Jimmy hadn't shaved or showered for some time and appeared to be confused and disoriented.  He convinced Jimmy to come to the hospital with him.  Jimmy was examined in the ER and was admitted to the psychiatric ward on the 4th floor of the hospital.  The preliminary diagnosis was schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder.  In retrospect, Jimmy's schizophrenia probably stimulated his PTSD from his experience in Vietnam  Of course I was devastated by the news.  As soon as I able I wanted to see my good friend Jimmy.     

The next day I went to the 4th floor.  Jimmy was in a 2 man room, obviously on medication and lying in bed.  He recognized me and we chatted briefly.  He made sense at times and other things he said were incomprehensible babble. One of the nurses on the ward told me he was being given Thorazine, an anti psychotic drug commonly used at the time, that had many bad side effects.  It was known as a 'chemical straight jacket' and it basically turned the person into zombie.  While it controlled potentially dangerous behaviors, a person taking Thorazine speaks slowly, they show no emotion and they have a flat affect.  The drug causes the person to walk with a slow, shuffling gait, much like the movie zombies, known as the Thorazine shuffle.  While this person looked like the Jimmy I knew, I couldn't see any of his old personality.  I wondered where Jimmy had gone.  Needless to say, I was very upset and hated to see my good friend this way.  I went to visit him as often as I could.  One day I went into his room and he brightened up when he saw me.  Then he started to giggle and told name he had been bad.  I asked what happened and he told me another friend had brought him a few grams of hash, and he had eaten it.  Here was my friend drugged up on Thorazine and now on hash as well. He continued to giggle.  At least he appeared to be happy.  A couple of days later I saw him a gain and this time he appeared to be agitated and angry.  I asked him what was wrong.  Jimmy told me that he had trouble with his roommate.  He said the night before he had turned out the light in the room because 10:00 p.m. was lights out time and bedtime.  He said his roommate got out of bed and turned the lights back on.  Jimmy told him he shouldn't do that and got out of bed and turned the lights off again.  His roommate turned them on yet again.  I told jimmy I could see why he was upset and asked what happened next.  Jimmy said that his roommate turned the lights back on for the 3rd time.  "So I punched him in the face, what else could I do, he wouldn't listen!"  Jimmy said angrily.

A couple of days later it was Thanksgiving. I had just turned 20 years old at the beginning of the month.  I had been working in the hospital for almost a year.  It was the 1st holiday since I had been there that I had the day off.  For all of the prior holidays that I had to work, I asked why I had to work, that maybe I would like to have a holiday off as well.  I was told they wanted to give the married cooks the day off to spend with their families.  While I understood that to a point, I wasn't happy about it.  I was told that after Thanksgiving weekend, Jimmy was going to be medevaced back to the US for further treatment.  They said that for the patients that were able, they would escort them to the mess hall to take part in the traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner.  The Army always goes all out on Thanksgiving day to provide a traditional sumptuous holiday dinner to soldiers far from home, even in wartime, out in the field.  I asked the head nurse if I could go with them and have dinner with my friend.  She said sure, no problem. So on Thanksgiving day I put on the only suit that I had brought with me, I fastened a bowtie around my neck and I went up to the 4th floor.  In a group, several nurses and medics, about a dozen psych patients in their pajamas and standard Army hospital blue bathrobes, and me, went down to the mess hall.  We got our trays and went through the chow line.  We got our shrimp cocktails, plates full of turkey and all of the trimmings and the traditional pumpkin pie as well as other desserts.  We all sat at one long table, most of the patients were well medicated to control their behavior.  It was a scene straight out of the novel and film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  Actually Jimmy bore a strong resemblance to the star of the film Jack Nicolson.  I sat next to my friend, it was a bittersweet moment.  Jimmy docilely ate his dinner and I tried to control my emotions, knowing I would probably never see my good friend again.  In the Army you get used to saying goodbye to close friends but not under these circumstances usually.  It was probably the saddest moment in my young life up to that point in time.  I'm not ashamed to admit that tears are rolling down my cheeks as I type this more than 45 years later, the memory is etched into my brain.  It was the first really difficult thing I had experienced in my life, thousands of miles from home, my family and my close friends.  I spent many more Thanksgiving holidays in the Army years later but under much better circumstances. 

The experience I had with Jimmy really shook me up at the time.  Of course I got over it, I dealt with the loss.  I dealt with the experience of watching somebody that I knew, my mentor that I respected, that I looked up to; go from a great guy, always cheerful  smiling and laughing about everything and having a lot of good times, to a shuffling drugged out human being.  In the months that passed after that Thanksgiving and to this day, I've often thought that I would have rather he had died then to have succumbed to a serious psychiatric illness.  Schizophrenia is incurable.  Today there are better drugs and therapies available.  People with schizophrenia can live near normal live in many cases.  Back then Jimmy probably lived in an institution for the rest of his life, drugged to the point that he was merely a shell of a person.  I often wonder where he went and what happened to him.  I imagine given his age he might have passed away by now, it would probably be the best that could happen.  I have fond memories of our too brief friendship and our many adventures.  I hope you found peace Jimmy, wherever you are my good friend.

I learned a lot from my experience with Jimmy.  I learned that things can change in life quickly.  Up until that point in life I was lucky.  I hadn't lost anybody close to me to accident or illness.  I had a fun, mostly happy childhood and a great safe and secure family environment.  I knew how lucky I was for that, and my experience with Jimmy woke my up to the ugly side of life.  I learned how to deal with and overcome a traumatic experience, pain is a good teacher.  Of course later on in life through my jobs and other things, I experienced many ugly things.  Between my work in mental health and in the medical experience I had, I have seen, heard and dealt with absolutely horrific things.  I've lost family and friends and all of the usual things that happen in life.  I drew on and built from this first real life trauma that I had and it started me on the road to become the strong and resilient, self reliant person that I am now, and it allowed me to live the life I've lived.  Nobody gets the ideal life they would like, everybody has to deal with painful events.  We can succumb to the vicissitudes of live, give in to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and become angry, bitter and depressed, or we can try to learn from these experiences and do the best we can with what we have and try our best to make the most of whatever life throws our way.  We won't always succeed and we all have our limits, but we can try hard. That's been the driving principle in my life that has gotten me through some very tough times and led to many wonderful adventures.  It all started when I was a young soldier in Nürnberg, Germany with my friend Jimmy.   

Here is a photo of Jimmy on one of our outings