The Manitou Incline

 

I have to be honest and say, I just don’t understand people getting tattoos of the Incline.  But then, I don’t get most of the tats people get nowadays. Back in my time, I’m old, tattoos were mostly gotten by Military men and they had significant meaning, like being in a battle tested unit or a personal achievement like being a parachutist. 

I know times have changed and people have too and it’s not my place to judge anyone’s values, unless of course they were going to marry my daughter!

After further reflection, I came to realize that the Incline draws an endlessly diverse range of people, all of them converging on this hill from a different point in their lives. Each with their own reason for challenging the mountain and each will have their own poignant moment when they reach the top. Some will quietly cherish the accomplishment, some will now have some more bragging rights, and some will have little stairways inked onto their skin. 

Sorry about the tat meme again, I can’t help it. Seriously I do not mean to belittle anyone, I read all sorts of reasons why folks are here, from heartbreaks to celebrations, to injury rehab, to battling cancer or addiction and every other debilitating disorder. 

If you came in celebration, I wish you a lifetime of happiness, if you are battling demons’ I wish you strength, you’ve already got that if you’ve climbed 2768. If you came searching for something, I hope what you find will give your life direction. 

If you’re one of the health nuts that do the incline on a regular schedule, or a group of guys or gals who think it will be great fun, or a family trying to do something together, good on all of you. It’s great to do something that is a challenge. 

My story, the incline came to my attention on a FB feed, probably because I travel to New Mexico each summer. With no team required it was it my kind of personal challenge. I told myself I have to do that and in 2023 I made my pilgrimage to the top. I was 74 years old at the time. Spurred on by my success I started training for a bike rally, I needed to be able to do 35 miles in 3 hours (on gravel trail) to qualify. That’s when I found out I have very little Cartlidge in one of my knees. 

At the turn of the calendar to 2025 I was now approaching 76 and I have been doing ok with my worn knee. I use a compression brace whenever I do most physical activity. I have been going to the gym regularly and started thinking, I want to do the incline again. While staying in the northern New Mexico mountains I started hiking to acclimate my one foot above sea level lungs to my present 8000 foot environs. 

There’s a little back story here, Here in New Mexico when I look out my window I see a fairly good sized mountain and I’ve long wondered what it looked like on the top. So, this one morning I chose a hiking path that passed the base of the mountain. So, I’m walking along checking out possible portages up the mountain. Suddenly I stopped. There it was, my path up the mountain. It was mostly 45 degrees up a dirt and loose rock incline for about 800 feet. Then there was the vertical rock cliff at the top 200 feet, I didn’t have a plan for that yet but I figured I’d find my way once I got up there. 

I made it to the top, found what I estimated was the high point, stood on a rock and took a picture of my feet. Like the Manitou incline the return was longer and much more complex than the accent. I actually enjoyed the challenge, my wife not so much. She had called me because I had been gone so long and wanted to know if I needed rescuing. 

My success on Bear Mountain (local name) rekindled my need to reclimb the Manitou incline. I don’t really know why, I met the challenge on the first climb, maybe after my knee problems I just wanted to prove I could do it again. Maybe I’m just trying to deny that I am aging and will never have all the adventures I dreamt about in my youth. 

June 10 2025 at about 7 am I was once again standing at step number one of the Manitou incline. Two years older now but even at 76 I thought I was in better physical shape than in 2023. I knew it was going to be a long slow accent for me. I paced myself, took occasional breaks, stayed hydrated and in about two and a half hours I once again felt the joy of stepping on 2768. (There are 2768 steps on the incline)

Unlike my first trip when I was in pain during the descent, I enjoyed all three miles of the Barr trail . My knee’s held up well, my thigh muscles didn’t complain as much as they did on the last time. The mountain scenery is majestic, it was a good day!

I don’t think I’ll be back, but who knows. I’m looking at some interesting Rail Trails I would like to try, so that’s next on my adventure list. First, I need to find a good Tattoo artist! lol

Tommy L. Waggoner

 

L-R Tommy Waggoner, Larry Midash, James "Spanky" Devine

This is a post I wrote in anticipation of my visit to a friends grave. We were almost to Lafayette Indiana when Millie and I came down with Covid. We had to canceled our visitation for now but I still plan on visiting someday.

Fifty odd years ago Tommy Waggoner and I spent our days hanging out the open doors of a Huey gunship. Up front we had a really capable aircraft commander, James “Spanky” Devine and a rotating series of co-pilots. During flight Tommy and I were doorgunners, we used infantry M-60 machine guns, they were hand held so we could shoot over or under the Armament pods on the sides of the helicopter, the pods held the rotating barreled machine guns and the tubes that held the aerial rockets with their high explosive warheads. On the ground Tommy was the Crewchief and was responsible for maintaining the aircraft, I was the aircraft armament repairman and took care of all the weapons systems on the aircraft. In reality we were a team and helped each other, often working late into the night and neither quitting until we were both done.

We fought together, we worked on our aircraft together, we drank together when our day was done and we rolled out of our bunks too early in the morning to do it all over again.

Doing it all over again was dedicated air support for the MACV-SOG launch site at Quan Loi in Vietnam. SOG was an acronym for Studies and Observations Group or Special Operations group depending on who was asking. 

Our launch site mostly covered the southern terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. Cambodia was officially neutral in regards to the war and we weren’t supposed to be there, but neither were North Vietnamese. This made for some rather exciting times.

Our mission was inserting teams of basically mercenaries (lead by two army special forces men) into the Jungle’s of Cambodia. We then stood by for “if” and more often “when” they were discovered by the enemy. We would then scramble our aircraft and get them out. This was often easier said than done. 

This never crossed my mind when I was young and immortal but every time we scrambled for an extraction, we were going in shooting and there was a force on the ground that would be shooting back. No wonder we were such a tight knit group, well that, and we aviators lived in the compound with the SOG people, flew camouflaged helicopters, carried whatever personal weapons we wanted, and had very little Army supervision. (Our aviation company with all the NCO’s and officers was located on a different airfield) This is the world that Tommy and I lived in.

When our tour of duty was over, I was sent to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah Georgia, I became the Sargent in charge of the ground crew on an aerial gunnery range. It was part of a school to teach helicopter pilots how to fly and fire the weapons systems on the new Huey Cobra gunships. Tommy was sent to Fort Rucker in Alabama where he served out his military service as a helicopter mechanic.

Tommy, along with Pete “Tex” Dworazcyk and Steve Stroman, two of our friends from Vietnam drove up to Savannah and spent a weekend with me once. We all had a great time reminiscing, drinking and promising to stay in touch after our time in service was over. We didn’t, we all went our separate ways, I don’t know what happened, maybe we needed to forget, maybe we just went on with the business of chasing the American dream. I think if they had the internet back then things might have been different, maybe not.

I did try to find Tommy and Tex and Steve in the early days of the internet, but was unsuccessful. It wasn’t until about ten years ago that I found out Tommy was gone. He died of cancer in 2001, he was only 48 years old.

I have wanted to visit his grave for a long time, I’m not sure why, I guess we went through so much together in war that I need to make this visit to his grave, to thank him for everything we did together, for being my friend and to say goodbye. 

The dead guard story

 This is something I wrote in 2008. It is a true story, it happened in Scottsboro Alabama.

I once made a wrong turn and ended up at the end of a long narrow road with nowhere to go except through a guarded gate at some kind of industrial complex. No problem I’m thinking I’ll just get directions from the guard and get him to let me enter the complex where there is room to turn the rig around.

 

As I approach the guard shack I notice that the outside of it is covered with dead bugs which I guess had been attached to the shacks lights. Even the ground is covered with dead bugs and there are no footprints or any indication of human activity. The bugs crunched under my feet as I approached the guard shack, it’s getting spooky now. Inside the guard was dead.

 

 Well he looked dead actually he was the most realistic dummy I’ve ever seen, It was so freaky I didn’t even think of getting his picture; I wish I had as evidence that this is a true story. Retreating back to the rig I drove through the gate to turn around, no alarms went off, nobody appeared to see what I was doing inside the complex, the whole place seemed abandoned, there was not a soul around. We didn’t linger, just turned the rig around and got out of there.

April 30 1970

April 30, 2015
I don’t remember the point in time that I wrote this, but it was clear to me that it was a long time ago. I know today my writing style would not wax poetic nor would I have been so verbose. At the very least I now know how to use spell check! I posted it on the internet someplace; I’m thinking it may have been on the original 195th website when it was hosted by Spike Eskin. Anyhow an old friend of mine, Donnie Hines was an administrator of a Gun truckers website and found it while searching my name on the web. He contacted me and asked my permission to post it on their site. I am reposting it today unedited.
Some Stories Dec 16, '01 7:40 PM
by gunner for everyone
We were talkin about SOG teams on another site..I had this story a friend of mine Larry Midash had written.....thought you might enjoy readin it.....gunner


April 30, 1970: The day before President Nixon's "official" invasion of Cambodia it was business as usual for the 195th Assault Helicopter Company. We had a MACVSOG team on the ground in Cambodia and we were sitting just across the border at Bo Dop, a Special Forces "A" camp (A-341). These small outposts were dotted along the border between S. Vietnam and Laos/Cambodia. They were manned by a civilian irregular defense group (CIDG) made from the local ethic people. Generically called Montagnards, they were ethnically indigenous to the region. They were all considered inferior by the uptown S. Vietnamese. They were advised, led by and loyal to a small contingent of American Special Forces troops. Although our mission was not directly connected to theirs, we shared a kind of camaraderie. Our SOG teams (Special Operations Group) were manned by a motley crew of Yards, most appeared to have come from the northern regions. Some were rumored to be former NVA. (Does the word mercenary come to mind here?) They were led by two SF Americans, a team leader and radio telephone operator. We both operated in remote enemy controlled areas with little contact or assistance from the mainstream military establishment. If the terrain allowed, most "A" camps had a short dirt runway, and they let us park our helicopters along side them. This permitted us to be as close as possible to our teams in Cambodia, should they be detected and need to be extracted This was not only a matter of convenience, our "B" and "C" model gunships overloaded with armament, needed a runway to become airborne.
This was all very hush hush back then; it was Nixon’s secret war. We were based in a fenced compound on a small base called Quan Loi. We all had to sign documents insuring our secrecy and were told not to fraternize with the base residents. Some military standards were relaxed, and we often wore mixed uniforms and everyone had his own unauthorized weapon. Our helicopters were painted in jungle camouflage while OD green was still the norm for everyone else. Of course none of this officially existed, we didn’t crossed the border everyday. We called it "going over the fence".
Unbeknown to us the area around Bo Dop was not business as usual, the NVA knew something was in the wind and they were on the move. Our area of operation across the border was part of the southern terminus of the Ho Chi Min supply route. Although geographically Cambodia, it was occupied and controlled by the North Vietnamese Army. They somehow knew about the pending incursion and were moving out. They not only retreated north along the HCM trail and west deeper into Cambodia, but some of them went east across the border into S. Vietnam.
And so it was, the CIDG patrol set out that morning on a routine security sweep of the area surrounding their camp. Little did they know that this day would be anything but routine and they would soon be in dire straits. The terrain to the west and north of the Bo Dop was heavily forested, but enough light filtered though the trees that the forest floor was a "jungle" of vegetation. Although it offered excellent cover if you wanted to infiltrate the AO undetected, it is not conducive to rapid transport. The area to the south was lightly forested, you could see through the trees to the ground in many places and there were large open fields of tall grass. This is the direction the patrol took and that morning it was also the path of a large force of NVA regulars who were moving enmass through the area. The inevitable happened and the little patrol soon made contact with the much larger enemy force. The heavily armed NVA soon had the local militia pinned down and surrounded.
Back at the airstrip we were close enough that we could hear the gunfire as they tried to fight their way out. The machine guns of the enemy had them firmly pinned to the ground; any attempt on their part to maneuver was met with fierce gunfire. The SF commander of the base asked if we could help them. There was no hesitation on our part, we immediately cranked up our gunships and flew the short distance to the fight. The patrol leader, a SF Sargent gave us his position and the coordinates of the area he wanted us to suppress. We rolled in doorguns and miniguns blazing, Spanky, our pilot punched off a salvo of 2.75 inch rockets each armed with a 10lb HE warhead. We were followed by our partner gunship, a hog armed with a 40mm grenade launcher and 2.75 rockets. The enemy did not break contact, you could never tell whether they would melt away or stand and fight. Today they decided to fight. We set up a racetrack pattern each helicopter circling around to start it’s gun run as the previous ship was pulling out of it’s dive. With the visibility the terrain provided the enemy machine gunner teams could duck under cover during the gun runs and start shooting as the helicopters passed overhead. This shielded them from the blanketing fire of the miniguns. It was now up to the doorguners to suppress the enemy machineguns as the aircraft climbed out of its dive. Every run resulted in a machinegun duel. They also had enough visibility to fire RPG’s (rocket propelled grenades) at us. They looked like black baseballs. Kind of like a pop fly to center field, except you don’t want to catch it. We expended all our ammo and still the enemy remained entrenched around our comrades. We flew the short distance back to Bo Dop where we had a portable refueling station and a small cache of ammo. We quickly rearmed and returned to the siege. We resumed the attack, the enemy persevered, they had these 20 men surrounded and wanted blood.
Our weapons systems were getting hot and dry. My M-60 machine gun jammed when a shellcasing didn’t eject and it fed another shell on top of it. Just as I opened the receiver to clear it the live round cooked off from the heat. My visor protected my eyes; the powder flash peppered the lower half of my face. My gloved hands stopped most of the brass, but one of the casings shot forward and bounced off the inside of the windshield. I squeezed a half a bottle of LSA (a milky white lubricant developed for the M-16s) into the receiver to cool the gun and lubricate it. I gave the other half to my partner in the left door Tommy W. affectionately called "the Germlin". We were firing almost none stop as there were targets everywhere, and they were all shooting back at us or so it seemed. My 60 started to slow down; I looked at the gas chamber under the barrel. It was glowing red! I cleared the gun and brought it inside the copter, even with an asbestos glove I could not touch the barrel. I used my spare barrel to knock it out of the receiver. When it hit the LSA splattered floor it sizzled like a steak on one of those preheated serving plates. One of the miniguns stopped firing; still spinning it was dumping unfired ammo. I knew the problem was the safety solenoid, the next time we rearmed I used safety wire to lock it in the fire position. This meant any time the barrels were turned it would fire, there was no way to clear the gun before returning to friendly territory. This was somewhat dangerous because to clear the gun you had to remove the bolt cover and clear the live rounds, but you never knew if a bolt was about to fire and the smallest movement of the barrels would fire off a round. I also dumped a half a bottle of LSA into each minigun to lubricate the bolt rollers. The fight continued.
We had used up all the HE rockets from our supply at the airstrip. The only thing left were fleshette rockets. These are a 2.75 rocket motor with a canister type warhead. It is filled with 6000 hardened steel darts (each one of the aprox. one inch nails had four tiny fins at the tail end). We had never used them before, as they were not very effective in the thick jungles of Cambodia. They had been out here so long we were not even sure if they would fire, but we loaded them in the rocket pods anyway. It was all we had left.
These rockets called for a different firing strategy; you had to be high enough that the rocket motor burned out while still in flight. At motor burn out a small charge pushed the darts out of the casing. A red powder they were packed in would signal this to the pilot, allowing him to adjust his altitude on the next run for proper dispersal of the darts.
We called our friends on the ground and told them to take cover and made our first run a conservative distance from them. The team leader on the ground gave us adjustments for our next run "Hit them again" he said " I can hear them screaming". We made our next run, "THE’RE RUNNING, THE’RE RUNNING, HIT THEM AGAIN, HIT THEM AGAIN!" the RTO was ecstatic. We opened up a hole in the enemy line and the reconesence patrol wasted no time in making an excape. They carried all there wounded out with them, miraculously none were KIA.
Nobody stuck around to make any body counts or gather any intelligence. We were clearly outnumbered and considered ourselves lucky to have come away unscathed. After the incursion into the "Bode" started the next day it became a small incident and was largely forgotten. I think I remember it so well because it was my 21st birthday.

Winston Churchhill

Poignant quotes from two speeches the British Prime Minister delivered during World War 2.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

 

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

On Socialism

It is a damn shame that our youth has been so cheated by the education system that they don't appreciate what EVERY COUNTRY THAT HAS TRIED SOCIALISM has turned into - a failed nation with death and destruction everywhere. And the only winners are the "leaders" who rape the wealth of the country and leave it as an empty shell while they move to a capitalist country and enjoy their newfound gains.

The words of Patrick Henry

The words of Patrick Henry are apropos: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" -----