the navel times and observer

I heard a news report from somewhere that Harry S. Truman had died in an accident in Iraq and was to be buried there the weekend of Christmas. Naturally, the first thought through my head was: didn’t he only suffer minor injuries in that Jeep accident?

Naturally in real life I was referring to the November accident where Ike Skelton suffered minor neck injuries when a Jeep flipped over in Iraq, but then my brain had confused the two politicians in my head and decided to go with the one more geographically prevalent.

Because this was, in my dream, the week before my Christmas holiday, I bought a ticket and hopped a flight to Iraq, only wondering after I got there and looked upon the mountainous vista which resembled mountains near Cuernavaca, Mexico, of how exactly I managed to pass through security and even get a ticket to Iraq, much less rent a car.

The funeral site was in a large atrium resembling a barrel vault ceiling with thick marble blocks resembling a Greek temple but built over a narrow canyon. This particular mausoleum had a grassy atrium many feet below and a loft where Truman was to be laid to rest.

His casket, though I didn’t see a sign or the casket itself, appeared to be buried underneath a mound of dirt with a pathway leading into one side and a backhoe sitting idle in front of the entrance.

All I did was stand there and cry for a few minutes. I didn’t realize I had quite so many pent up feelings for Truman until that moment, and I still don’t know where those came from.

After seeing the funeral I drove across this Iraqi valley near a Saddam Hussein palace and the next thing I remember was waking up in a small car in a field facing the sea, a road, some small white Mediterranean-looking buildings and a flock of gently baaing sheep.

My first thought was “this looks like Italy.” So because I wasn’t going anywhere sitting in the field I decided to drive bumping over the field to the road and bear a left away from the buildings and came to a winding highway through dense forest.

After a little while I realized I really didn’t know where I was so I should probably find that out before driving off in a random direction. I went back to the buildings and learned I was in Beirut.

This made sense.

After all, Beirut is on the Persian Gulf and much closer to Iraq than Italy. That was particularly good because it’s a much shorter drive to Baghdad from Beirut than it is from Italy and I only had so much time before my round trip flight from Baghdad was scheduled to take me home to Joplin.

I've got a beard.

Not the Paul Bunyan 40-days-in-the-wilderness-on-locusts-and-honey beard that our friend John would have had coming back home, but certainly one that grew ... on most of my face.

Which is why I paid someone money yesterday to take a stab at sculpting it into something that doesn't look quite so Ted Kazinsky-like. It's got 2 lines that stretch from my awesome sideburns down the very lower edge of my cheeks to pool together underneath my chin. Topped off with a flavor saver and a moustach and it's pretty dern' classy.

Job up-date: Still scared for my job. I make dumb errors or leave things out and get called on them later and I am -- surprise, surprise -- probably being a little hard on myself. But not unreasonably so. After all, I'm paid to do a job.

It's also very hard to find stories during the holidays. People simply aren't doing anything. Schools let out last Friday, offices just sort of mull over last year's business and clear out the inventory for next year and we're left standing out there in the cold with a newspaper we have to put out every day with at least the resemblance of local coverage. It was hard this week to put that thing together. I really don't even want to think of having to try to pull stories out of the dirt on the ground for four days next week. Sigh.

Somebody shoot somebody, anybody. Just make sure it's in my beat and between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. And call me before you do. I'll want a statement.

... Should have been the way I addressed Caleb Smith when I became, I believe, one of the very few people outside of his family to see him in person since August.

The circumstances, however, didn't provide for the historical reference, as it was about 8:30 in the morning, I was at his grandparents' house earlier than either of us expected and the first time I saw him was when he was walking down the hall way between two rooms having just showered. There wasn't much more than a "hey Caleb" and at the moment it could have been any skinny male young twentysomething. I merely inferred that he was the only one of those in his grandparents' home in Independence.

This was after I worked my connection into getting to see the inside of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. A friend of mine is traveling across the Southeast and, soon, the Southwest part of the country with a partner in the Wienermobile, making media stops and promotional events along the way, like the radio interview he did Saturday morning dressed in a very stooge-like track team windbreaker in garish colors. The car, for the record, is not that amazing. It's got seats like a mini-van spread in a vague bus-like fashion in the cabin and great views through the dog's windows.

Ironically, the car is built on a bread truck chassis, or a UPS truck chassis, but the bread truck is more ironic.

So, job: I've passed my probationary period, which means in a month I will again have health insurance which is always somewhat reassuring.

Unfortunately, however, little else in this job is reassuring. It is quite likely my belief that I should be able to do this job perfectly, without mistakes. After all, I'm a reporter, I should be able to write facts my readers can trust. If I can't make that, than why write stories for a newspaper? I'm convinced that most of the other reporters don't make these sorts of stupid mistakes I do. The editors don't seem as stressed with the other reporters as they are with me. And they seem to expect better and more work of them.

Sadly, I don't see many quick ways to rectify this situation. I've started a new beat and frankly as I see it the only way to get to know the beat is to talk to people. Talk to a lot of people. Spend a lot of time there and become acquainted through association. I had some relationships with my sources in Barton County and they didn't come immediately. People didn't recognize me two weeks after moving in.

And I have a lot of time to dwell on these complaints (which, admittedly, are common to lots of people I'd assume) because quite frankly I don't have anyone within an hour of me that I can go to to talk with about my private concerns. I have co-workers, friendly co-workers, but I don't have many opportunities to spend time with them after work and thus I still seem to be able to dwell on them and explore them to the end of the mine shaft at home.

Which is not to say I don't have friends. I talk to my friends and/or family all the time, they just don't live any closer to me than Springfield, which is a long trip to make after the work day and in time to get some sleep before another work day.

I'm still here, just many times I wish I weren't here by myself.