Pickles

Well, it's that time of year again... time to make fermented pickles (sometimes called brined pickles). The natural fermentation is what imparts the deliciously unique taste that you simply can't find in the store-bought kind.

Stuff you'll need: A wide-mouth one-gallon glass jar with a tight fitting lid, 4 pounds fresh pickling cukes, cold water, vinegar, canning salt, dill, garlic, hot pepper (optional).

Rinse the cukes under cold water. Slice 1/8" of blossom end off each cuke (this keeps pickles from going soft). Fill jar with cukes, layering in several heads of dill & several cloves of diced garlic. If you like a little bite to your pickles, add one or more cut-up hot peppers, seeds and all. Fill jar about half way with cold water. Add 3 Tbs. vinegar and 6 Tbs. canning salt. Complete filling jar with cold water. Place some plastic-wrap over the mouth of the jar and secure the lid tightly. Now grasp the jar with both hands and slowly turn it upside down, then rightside up; do this several times until all the salt is dissolved.

The pickles will be ready in about 2-3 weeks depending on temperature. You can speed up the process by placing the jar outside where the sun will shine on it. Do an occasional taste test until optimal flavor is achieved, then store them in the refrigerator. Be sure to keep pickles under the brine during fermentation. If it's necessary to add brine, use the same proportions of water, salt & vinegar. The brine will become cloudy which is the normal formation of lactic acid and is nothing to worry about.

Easy All-Purpose Summer Salad

I found this while browsing the web, and it is REALLY GOOD!

Easy All-Purpose Summer Salad

1 cup mayonnaise
2 tbsp. vinegar
1 tbsp. prepared mustard
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
8 oz. cooked macaroni
1 cup sliced celery
1 cup chopped green pepper
¼ cup chopped onion

Combine first six ingredients in a large bowl; stir until smooth.
Add remaining ingredients, folding them in to cover with dressing.
Cover bowl and refrigerate at least 2 hours before serving.

The reason it’s called an “all-purpose” salad is that the basic recipe
can be easily tweaked. For example…

Add tuna, chicken or ham and turn it into a main course entrée.
Substitute bite-size chunks of boiled potatoes for the macaroni
and you’ll have a great potato salad.
Skip the macaroni and add 6 chopped hard-cooked eggs for asuper egg salad.

My Letter to Representative Sharon Tyler, followed by her answer

Dear Representative Tyler,

My purpose in writing is to register my displeasure with the U.S. Department of Transportation intruding into state matters. As you know USDOT regularly funds additional patrols by state, county and local police departments, specifically targeting alleged DUI offenders. USDOT has made it mandatory that state & local agencies participate in these federally sponsored sweeps by threatening the loss of federal highway funds for their respective states if they do not comply.

I strongly object to this federal intrusion into a matter which should belong solely to the states. While USDOT’s motives may be noble, that is beside the point and has nothing to do with the reason for my objection. There are an infinite number of good and noble causes to be addressed in our state. That is why we have an elected state legislature to decide the priorities in addressing them. If the Michigan Legislature should decide to expend more resources on apprehending and punishing drunk drivers, that is well and good. I would then have an opportunity to express my pleasure or displeasure with that decision at the next election.

But it is very difficult for me to express my displeasure with the policies of faceless federal bureaucrats who believe they are wiser than our state legislators, and who take it upon themselves to decide what is good for me and where my tax money should be spent. This is a bad precedent. If we continue allowing USDOT unchecked authority in this matter on the basis that eliminating drunk drivers is a noble cause, who is to say what their next “noble cause” might be?

My concern applies to all federal agencies, not just the DOT. For example, it is not a stretch to envision a Department of Health and Human Services, emboldened by the DOT’s example, to limit the number of BigMac cheeseburgers Michiganians eat based on the "noble cause” that obesity must be reduced in order to control health care costs. Where does it end?

I respectfully ask if you are opposed or in favor of this federal intrusion and circumvention of our state legislature, and what action, if any, you intend to take on it. By the way, I’m not interested in a form letter stating your opposition to drunk driving. As I said, that misses the point.

Sincerely,

Thomas W. McCort
PO Box 133
New Troy, MI 49119

Dear Mr. McCort:

Thank you for your email regarding the intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of state government. It is important to me to know the concerns of my constituents, so I am grateful that you have taken the time to contact me regarding this matter.

I appreciate your information about this specific way in which the federal government is usurping state authority. Unfortunately, I believe that actions like this have been going on for quite some time. It seems that ever since the rise of the New Deal, the citizens of this country have relied less on themselves and their local units of government and more on the federal government. While I believe that there is a proper place for the federal government, it is my desire to allow Michigan to keep as much of its autonomy as possible. Please be assured that I will do all I can to work toward that end while in office.

Again, thank you for your email; I am grateful that you have expressed your concerns. It is an honor to serve as your state representative, and I hope you will feel free to contact me again with any other questions or concerns.

Sincerely,


REPRESENTATIVE SHARON TYLER
78th District
1097 House Office Building
P.O. Box 30014
Lansing, Michigan 48909-7514
Phone: (517) 373-1796

Baltimore Orials

The orials showed up at my feeder today, April 26. As is my practice, I put out quartered oranges and grape jelly for them every year beginning about the last week of April. The first humming bird of the season also arrived today and I scrambled to get their feeders filled as well.

My Cancellation of the Herald-Palladium

(By the way, they didn't have the courage to publish this letter)

Editor,

You will undoubtedly be happy to learn that this is the last time your readers will have to endure another letter from that right-wing kook, Tom McCort. My subscription to your paper will expire soon and I will not be renewing it.

I have been reading The Herald-Palladium or its predecessor The Herald-Press for nearly sixty years. While I have not always agreed with your editorial positions, they were usually well reasoned and reflective of traditional, centrist/conservative Midwest values. In recent years that has all changed. It has now reached a point that most national and world news in your paper comes from the Associated Press, an organization that has views to the left of the country as a whole, and even further to the left of most residents of southwest Michigan. I suppose your near-exclusive use of this left-wing “news” source has conditioned a portion of your readership to shrug-off the leftward editorial direction your paper has taken as well. Whatever the reason for this hard left turn, I can no longer support a publication that espouses views and values that are regularly 180 degrees opposite of my own.

When you published left-wing political hit-job editorials from the Associated Press (you call it “analysis”) on your front page, rather than on the editorial or opinion page, I viewed it as an exercise in journalistic dishonesty. But I gritted my teeth and moved on. The final straw came, however, when you endorsed Barack Obama, a man with the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate, for President of the United States.

You couldn’t even be honest about your reason for the endorsement, blaming it mostly on Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s lack of qualifications. Her lack of qualifications? That’s a good one. Since when isn’t a governorship enough qualification to be vice president? Being a governor was the only qualification Bill Clinton had to be PRESIDENT! Being a governor was the only qualification Jimmy Carter had to be PRESIDENT! But in its infinite wisdom, the editorial board of the Herald-Palladium cited Governor Palin’s lack of qualifications as one of the primary reasons for endorsing Senator Obama for president. That is a textbook example of convoluted logic.

Speaking of qualifications, have you ever editorially bemoaned Senator Obama’s lack of executive/managerial qualifications to be president? Not that I recall. But we are to believe it’s Sarah Palin’s lack of qualifications that caused you to endorse Obama. There seems to be no end to the convoluted logic. Why not dispense with the “qualifications” nonsense and just admit that an intelligent, straight-talking conservative, traditional values-type woman, who has higher approval ratings in her state than any other governor in the country, doesn’t fit the required liberal template for high office?

On a final note, I do give you credit for finally coming out of the closet and showing your true liberal colors. Now we know exactly where you stand, and I thank you for that. With all of the Chicago people moving into the area, perhaps you can maintain a niche market for your left-wing paper.

Goodbye and Good Luck,

VJ Day

Although I didn't realize at the time what all the commotion was about, I remember the day Bridgman celebrated the surrender of Japan, ending World War Two. It was August 14, 1945.  I was just 4-1/2 years old on that warm Tuesday afternoon and was riding my tricycle on the sidewalk in front of our house on Maplewood. All at once the fire siren began wailing and the church bells started clanging. Soon the bleating of automobile horns joined the din, all sounds that I was familiar with but not on a simultaneous and continuous basis. Pretty soon the town's 1942 Chevrolet fire truck came down Maplewood with its siren blaring. There were half a dozen old men riding on the truck (I say old men because most all of the young men were still in the armed services) and one of them had a fire hose in his hands. As they raced by our house he pointed the nozzle at me and gave me a good dousing of cold water. This startled me and I jumped off my trike and ran into the house to report to my mother what had happened. She tried to explain what all the excitement was about, but I was too young to understand the concept of victory over the Japanese. Mom and I went back outside where neighbors in small groups up & down the street were excitedly discussing the event.

Uncle Bill Ackerman

Napalm Delivered by The Jug
By Thomas W. McCort

My first memories of my Uncle Bill began when he came home from the war in late 1945 after flying 89 missions in a Republic P-47 Fighter-Bomber. Uncle Bill was my mother's kid brother; he was 21 and I was 4. Next to my dad, he was from that time forward my only hero. Later, I became the envy of other boys in tiny Bridgman, Michigan when Uncle Bill joined the Air Force Reserves in the early 1950's. Flying out of Selfridge AFB near Detroit every weekend for several years, he and his pals would routinely treat the citizenry of Bridgman to a buzzing of their town; first in T-6's and P-51's, and later in F-80 jets. My friends refused to believe it was my uncle doing the flying until I gave them a personal introduction one day.

Several of us 11 & 12 year-olds happened to be trudging by his house one Friday afternoon just as he was leaving for a 'Weekend Warrior' stint at Selfridge. Apparently sensing my need to prove a point, Uncle Bill, nattily decked out in his captains' uniform, called us over and began a man-to-man discussion about flying. My buddies were thoroughly charmed by this and my credibility with them was instantly reinforced. He told us to watch for him the next day, giving the precise time, direction of approach, and the number of passes he would make. Well, following that Saturday's performance, which included some dandy aerobatics, there was never again a question among the gang as to who was flying the airplane.

As I grew to adulthood my association with Uncle Bill became more like that of best friends than that of typical uncle-nephew relationships. As time passed, the 17-year age difference seemed to narrow and we actually began viewing one another as contemporaries. But as close as we were, and try as I would, I could never get him to say much about his World War II combat experiences. Then, one winter afternoon a few years ago while helping him clean his attic, a sheaf of typewritten papers caught my eye. "Aw, that's nothing," he growled, when I asked what they were. Well, the papers turned out to be the debriefing summaries for each of the 89 missions he had participated in. Later, as we sipped whiskey in his family room, I began paging through these documents, kind of reading aloud under my breath when I'd come upon an interesting passage.

Feigning a lack of interest in my reading material, Uncle Bill got up, poked the fire and pretended to busy himself with other things in the room. But as I continued muttering through the narratives, he'd throw in an occasional tidbit like, "Oh yeah, that's when Homolka got his prop shot off by German ground fire, then crashed & burned; or, "That's when Mecklenburg got hit, bailed out, and spent the rest of the war as a POW; or, "Lemee see that.... yeah, that's when my gun cameras showed a confirmed hit on a ME-262, but the sumbitch outran me and got lost in the clouds before I could do him any serious damage."

Before the day ended, several whiskeys later, Uncle Bill flew all of those missions for me again, animating them with hand flying as if they had occurred last week. He had waited 50 years to blurt it all out.

While all of Uncle Bill's missions were fraught with danger and excitement, I have selected for the following story the one in which he and seven other volunteers attacked German anti-aircraft batteries at LaSpezia Harbor, on the northwest coast of Italy, deploying a then-new weapon, napalm.

Its massive power and heavy lifting capability made the Army Air Corps' Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, or Jug as it was called, a good choice for deploying the newly developed weapon, napalm, in the final stages of World War II, and Bridgman, Michigan native Bill Ackerman was in on the action. Ackerman was a 20 year-old 2nd Lieutenant when he arrived in Italy in October 1944 with the 27th Fighter-Bomber Group.

Constantly on the move, by January 1945 his 523rd Squadron was flying its P-47's out of a hastily-constructed airfield near Pontedore, Italy and Ackerman, now promoted to 1st Lieutenant with 30 missions under his belt, was among eight pilots who volunteered to make one of the first drops of napalm on enemy positions. Here is his story as he told it to me:

It was a real experience; the ground crew had worked all night fitting two large tanks to the racks on each plane which normally held 500-pound bombs. When we went out to the line I couldn't believe my eyes; the tanks were huge. As I recall they were P-38 drop tanks retrofitted for this purpose, each holding about 300 gallons of napalm and weighing around 2,000 pounds for a total load of about 4,000 pounds, far exceeding the airplane's design maximum bomb load of 2,500 pounds. The tanks were rigged-up Rube Goldberg style with ordinary hand grenades attached to them. The grenade pins were tethered to the bomb racks and would pull out automatically when we released the tanks at a pre-calculated altitude; this would cause the napalm to detonate at just the right moment over the target.

(side bar)
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, or JUG, as it was affectionately called by those who flew it, was a workhorse -- the largest, heaviest armored, most powerful single-engine fighter plane of the war. This aircraft and its pilots were called upon to perform a wide variety of tasks. From bomber escort duty with many air-to-air combat encounters, to low level strafing & bombing missions, the JUG turned in an exemplary performance. It was truly a juggernaut, thus the nickname. In a dive, with the throttle to the firewall and the 2,300 horsepower air-cooled Pratt & Whitney engine turning a huge four-blade propeller, it could reach speeds exceeding 500 miles per hour. Unlike Luftwaffe fighters, the JUG was designed to withstand the extreme G-forces of a last second pullout at those speeds.  Many German pilots were lured to their demise in pursuit of diving JUGS, learning only too late of their inability to pull out of a high-speed dive.  While German airmen eventually learned the folly of following JUGS into a dive, it wasn't always the case. Early on, many a P-47 pilot would sucker an opponent into a chase, nose his plane into a power dive, wait until the last moment before hauling back on the stick, then go screaming across the tree tops and back into the sky, as the hapless German augured in to his death.

In my estimation, just the act of getting off the ground was the most dangerous part of this mission. The P-47 was a very forgiving airplane, but in this case there was absolutely no margin for error. Any number of minor mechanical malfunctions, like a tire blowing out, or a slight miscalculation by the pilot, would have meant certain disaster. Eight of us were assigned to the mission in four flights of two planes. Because the strip was very narrow we had to take off one at a time, circle until all planes were at altitude, then join up in formation. I was the element leader of the second flight, which meant I would be third to take off.

Sergeant Foster looked me straight in the eye and said in his Texas drawl, "Sir, I doubt if you'll get this sumbitch off the ground."

As I hopped out of the jeep and strode quickly toward my plane I could see and hear some of the other Jugs warming up. Sergeant Burl W. Foster, my crew chief, was standing on the wing waiting for me. I detected an expression of total panic on his face as he buckled me into the cockpit. Finally, with dead seriousness, he looked me straight in the eye and said in his Texas drawl, "Sir, I doubt if you'll get this sumbitch off the ground." This unnerved me a little as the sergeant was a very knowledgeable technician and knew the mechanical limitations of the Jug as well as anyone. Not responding directly, I gave him a weak smile and said let's wind 'er up. Foster and another man stood ready with fire extinguishers as I let the inertia starter howl up to speed. Getting a 'thumbs-up' from Foster, I switched on the ignition and engaged the starter. Blue smoke and flames belched from the exhaust ports as the huge engine slowly turned over, coughing and backfiring before finally thundering to life.

When my turn came, I slowly taxied my Jug to the end of the strip and nosed her into the wind. I intended to use every inch of runway to build speed before attempting liftoff. There would be no second chance. With flaps set at 15 degrees and the prop at full pitch, I stood on the brakes and ran the engine up to maximum power. The Jug began doing a little dance -- all 2,300 horsepower straining to be released. I thought it's now or never, Ackerman; get off the brakes.                                              

The Jug began rolling, slowly at first, but with steadily increasing speed. My eyes darted back and forth from the runway to the air speed indicator... 35.... 40.....45 c'mon baby, 55.... 60.... faster... faster, 70.... 75 not much runway left, 85.... 100, end of runway coming up, 110.... 115. At 120 mph I pulled the stick into my lap just as the last few feet of runway disappeared under my wing and the Jug seemed to stagger as it barely clawed its way into the air.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I coaxed her along. . . . . .

I immediately raised the landing gear to cut drag as much as possible, but the control stick felt like it was in a bucket of mush as I wallowed out over the treetops, just above stall speed. Slowly, ever so slowly, I coaxed her along, gradually gaining speed and altitude. I finally reached 5,000 feet, leveledoff and began circling with the others, waiting for the five remaining planes to join us. Still at maximum power and full prop pitch, engine temperature was nearing the red line, so I eased back a little on both and let her cool down as we circled and waited.

Finally all of us managed to haul our overloaded jugs with their ungainly payloads into the sky. Forming up in pairs, we set a course for LaSpezia Harbor, the target's location about 60 miles distant. This harbor was on the Mediterranean in the northwest corner of Italy, just below the Appennine Mountains. A sizable German garrison was tenaciously holding the area, preventing Allied ships from off-loading fuel, ammunition and other sorely needed war materiel. They also had several anti-aircraft gun emplacements, the infamous 88's, to fend off Allied bombers. Our job was to destroy those gun positions; it was also calculated that the effects of a napalm attack would demoralize the German troops to an extent that they would totally abandon the area and retreat northward to their homeland.

Because the 88's were pointed almost vertically skyward to defend against the high-flying Allied heavy bombers, our strategy was to come in fast and low, from the side so to speak, dump our loads and beat it out of there before the Germans had a chance to crank their huge guns down to a trajectory that would be effective against us. It worked very well. About ten miles out we broke off in pairs and went into a fast shallow dive. Flattening out at less than 1,000 feet above our targets, we released the tanks and sped off toward the horizon without looking back.

The Germans never knew what hit them.

As we regrouped and headed back to base we could see the destructive results of our raid. Off in the distance bright orange flames were still covering the targeted area as columns of greasy black smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air. The Germans never knew what hit them.

Our single-file landings were uneventful, but I remember that my flying suit was wringing wet as Sergeant Foster, grinning like a chessie cat, helped me out of the cockpit. Normally after a mission we were required to head straight to a debriefing session; but this time we were driven tothe tent which served as our makeshift officers club, where we found eight double shots of whiskey lined up on the bar by order of our squadron commander, Major Robert Brown.

Ackerman went on to fly another58 missions, for a total of 89, all of them presenting highly dangerous situations. His fighter group relocated several times as they moved into France and it was the first to cross the Rhine into Germany where they flew their final missions of the war out of a captured German air base near Mannheim. He received several decorations and citations for his wartime service including the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with Six Oak Leaf Clusters.

Ackerman and some of his fellow pilots were on a short rest leave in Paris when they got word that hostilities had ceased. It was May 7, 1945 -- about a month short of his 21st birthday.

Mr. Ackerman passed away on May 26, 2006, just ten days short of his 82nd birthday.