COUNTRY COMMENTS

Quote of the week . . .

Dear Santa,

This year I would like a big fat bank account and a slim body. Please don’t get them confused like you did last year.

Our favorite Christmas shopping story of the year.

Missing Person— Husband to Officer

Husband: My wife is missing. She went shopping yesterday and has not come home.

Officer: Age?

Husband: I’m not sure. Somewhere between 50 and 60. We don’t do birthdays.

Officer: Height?

Husband: I’m not sure. A little over five feet tall.

Officer: Weight?

Husband: Don’t know. Not slim, not really fat.

Officer: Color of eyes?

Husband: Sort of brown I think, never really noticed.

Officer: Color of hair?

Husband: Changes a couple times a year. Maybe dark brown now, I can’t remember.

Officer: What was she wearing?

Husband: Could have been pants, or maybe a skirt or shorts. I don’t know exactly.

Officer: What kind of vehicle?

Husband: She took my truck.

Officer: What kind of truck was it?

Husband: A 2017, manufactured September 16 ^th , pearl white Ram Limited 4X4, with 6.41 Hemi V8 engine ordered with the Ram Box bar and fridge option, led lighting, back up and front camera, Moose hide leather heated and cooled seats, climate-controlled air conditioning. It has a custom matching white cover for the bed, Weather Tech floor mats. Trailing package with gold hitch, sunroof, DVD with full GPS navigation, satellite radio, Cobra 75 WX ST 40-channel CB radio, six up holders, 3 USB ports, and 4 power outlets. I added special alloy wheels and off-road Toyo tires. It has custom retracting running boards and under-glow wheel well lighting. At this point the husband started choking up.

Officer: Take it easy sir. We’ll find your truck.

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CHRISTMAS QUIZ Formed by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass in 1960, Rankin/Bass Productions created a series of specials that came to define Christmas for a generation of kids. The pair’s first holiday special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, made for NBC’s General Electric Fantasy Hour, is one of the most popular Christmas shows of all time, airing every year since 1964. What do you remember about these holly jolly programs?

1. What does Rudolph’s elf companion Hermey really want to be?

A. An architect

B. A doctor

C. A dentist

D. A circus entertainer

2. This Oscar-winning actor and singer voiced the character of Sam the Snowman.

A. Burl Ives

B. Maurice Chevalier

C. Frank Sinatra

D. Bing Crosby

3. Who wrote the songs in Rudolph, including the title ditty, recorded by Gene Autry?

A. Johnny Mercer

B. Johnny Marks

C. Hoagy Carmichael

D. Sammy Cahn

4. What is the name of the land filled with rejects from Santa’s workshop?

A. The Island of Dr. Moreau

B. A Place in the Sun

C. The Land That Time Forgot

D. The Island of Misfit Toys

5. This 1970 TV special has Fred Astaire as the narrator.

A. Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town

B.. The year Without a Santa Claus

C.. Frosty the Snowman

D. The Little Drummer Boy

6. The team’s next Christmas special after the stop-motion Rudolph was this traditionally animated show in 1967.

A. Frosty the Snowman

B. Santa, Baby!

C. Cricket on the Hearth

D. ‘Twas the Night before Christmas

7. In Frosty the Snowman, what brings the lead character to life?

A. The love of a child

B. A Christmas elf

C. His magic hat

D. Smoke from a corncob pipe

8. Who narrates frosty the Snowman?

A. Bobby Darin

B. Mickey Rooney

C. Jackie Gleason

D. Jimmy Durante

9. This bizarre special from 1985 is based on a novel by The Wizard of Oz writer L. frank Baum.

A. The Year Without Santa Claus

B. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus

C. The First Christmas

D. Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey

(Answers at end of column)

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December 7, 1941 – A day that will live in infamy . . .

A Pearl Harbor Survivor Remembers the Infamy

OUR WWII STORY—‘THOSE ARE JAPANESE PLANES!’

A rising sun was the first sign to Sterling R. Cale that something was off. But rather than the sun, it was Mars, the god of war, that became his uninvited and all too frequent companion in a military career that spanned from World War II through the Vietnam War.

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Cale was a 20-year-old Navy hospital pharmacist’s mate stationed at Pearl Harbor. He’d just eaten breakfast and was walking to the receiving station when he noticed something happening on Battleship Row. “How come they’re bombing the battle wagons?” he thought at the time. “We don’t train on Sunday! Must be some sort of National Guard or reserve activity” . . . But then, as I was watching, a plane came by with the Rising Sun on the fuselage, and I said, ‘My God, those are Japanese planes!’”

In that moment Cale’s life, and the world, changed. Though he wasn’t a strong swimmer, Cale walked into shallow harbor waters to retrieve wounded and dead bodies over the next two hours. “I only picked up 46 people,” he told the American Legion in 2019. “Some of those people were dead already. Some were badly burned, and I would try to pick them up and the skin would come right off their hands. Some of them were just tired because they were blown off the ship or jumped and had to get ashore. A life member of John R. Rowe American Legion Post 17 in Honolulu, Cale, 98, has told the story of his Pearl Harbor experience hundreds of times—often with tourists to the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, and the handful of living survivors who visit. “In the last 10 years we talked to 25,000 students from fourth grade up to college. We told them all about it. Japan didn’t like to let anybody in their country know how they attacked our country and our ships.”

Like most people in his generation, Pearl Harbor was Cale’s first exposure to combat. A farm boy from Macomb, Ill, Cale enlisted in the Navy with the intention of serving in the dirigible airship program at Lakehurst, N.J. But the 1937 Hindenburg disaster led to the program’s cancellation and a change in Cale’s plans. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was attached to the 1 ^st Marine Division, where he would serve as a corpsman at Guadalcanal.

“I actually treated the wounds of Japanese prisoners, the same as our Marines,” Cale said. Having had the full experience of Navy and Marine Corps life, he transferred to the Army in 1948. Two years later, his captain at the 5 ^th Regimental Combat Team asked, “Are you ready, Cale? You’re going to Korea.”

There, he was entrenched in the north, where the fighting was fierce. “We kept mowing down peo0ple coming across the Chinese river. I said, “What’s wrong with people?’ They didn’t know when to stop. The Japanese didn’t know when to stop . . . Only thing different with the Chinese is when they came across the river, only one guy would have a weapon. The rest would have farm implements— scythe, sickle, machete, hoe—waiting for the first guy to get killed so they could get a weapon.”

The enemy’s tenacity wasn’t the only threat. Explosive booby traps set by North Koreans and subzero temperatures added to what Cale described as a hell on earth. “I slept at night with a grenade in each hand because the North Koreans were coming down and slitting throats. If anybody like that came near me, I’d just have to open one hand and we’d both be gone.

In 1955, Cale was sent to Vietnam as part of a 19-member U.S. team assigned to observe the French presence there. In total, he spent nine years in Vietnam as a soldier and later a State Department official. His duties ranged from military intelligence to medical support.

Lt Col. John Gilbertson, an infantry adviser with the Cay Mai intelligence school, spoke highly of Cale’s service in South Vietnam in a letter of commendation.

“By teaching English to officers, soldiers and their families, by his knowledge of the people, their language, customs and taboos, M.Sgt. Cale was able to realize the real, intimate trust that is so often illusive in an advisory function,” Gilbertson wrote. “His model behavior and appearance, his friendly but businesslike manner with all Vietnamese peoples, has produced outstanding results from an academic standpoint, but more importantly it has meant untiring efforts to cement the bond of friendship between the Vietnamese people and the U.S. advisers representing the government of the United States, and is in keeping with the current policy of U.S. military participation in Civic Action Programs which benefit the people of an underdeveloped country.”

Cale retired from the Army as a command sergeant major and continued to work for the U.S. government until his final assignment at the officers’ club at Hawaii’s Schofield Barracks. At 83, his 57- year government career came to a close.

In the afterword of the book “Sterling Cale: A True American,” Cale’s son, Sterling V. Cale, writes, “May we take the life of one man and his family to heart, and emulate it to continue our country’s great legacy and remember the sacrifices that were made for our freedom.” Today, Cale is believed to be the last living military Pearl Harbor survivor still residing in Hawaii. His home is just a few miles from where the attack occurred.

“It’s always on my mind,” he said. “I know what happened, how it happened, (but) I can never understand why it happened.”

American Legion Magazine

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Answers to Christmas Quiz

1. C, 2. A, 3. B, 4. D, 5. A, 6. C, 7. C, 8. D, 9. B