Burn Shine

Boudhanath - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman

My daughter is getting married this weekend and insists I wear dress shoes with my tuxedo.  This may seem like a reasonable request, but for a man who has been able to spend his entire professional career wearing only running shoes or Chacos, her concern is not to be under estimated.  In the closet behind some old suits that have not been worn for decades, I found my black, scuffed shoes covered with dust.  They are home to my feet once or twice a year, when my wife insists I dress for a formal occasion.

For four years and particularly the first of these, I spent many hours shining shoes at the Air Force Academy.  It was not how I intended to wile away spare time during my college years, but shoes shined to such a luster that they resembled black mirrors were the expectation.  A smudge or infinitesimal defect was enough to bring unwanted attention from hounding upper class cadets.
 
Fresh out of high school and oblivious to military life, my first day at the Academy passed in a daze–head shaved, each arm vaccinated a half dozen times, and enough clothing issued to fill two large laundry bags.  At the end of the day I staggered into my dormitory room and saw Jack, my new roommate, with a cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth and apparently lighting his shoes on fire.  Or so I thought.  At nearly twenty-two Jack was as old as one could be to be enrolled as an incoming freshman.  As a prior Air Force sergeant and Prep School graduate, he was wise to the ways of the military.

“Hi, I’m Jack. I’ll be your roommate for the next month during First BCT.”

“Good to meet you.  If you don’t mind me asking, what are doing to your shoes?”

“Burn shining them–you put on a thin layer of shoe polish then heat it with a cigarette lighter.  After it softens, you take a moist cotton ball and rub the shoe in a circular motion until the polish clears.  Do it thousands of times, and you’ll be wearing mirrors rather than shoes.”

It was going to be a long summer for me, but Jack was gone within a week.  Immaculate shoes and all, he was unprepared for the vicious hazing from the predatory cadet trainers, who were more inclined to put the soles of their shoes on the top of his than pay him a compliment.

Yesterday I went to the drug store and bought a can of Kiwi black shoe polish–the first in over forty years.  I thought about buying a cigarette lighter to burn shine my shoes for the upcoming wedding, but decided against it.  A couple quick applications of polish were quite enough.  No one ever looks at your feet unless they are afraid to look you in the eye.  Besides my daughter inadvertently might step on them during the wedding dance, and all that work would be for naught. 

Brushing Up

Fez, Morocco - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com

The lieutenant colonel’s thick, black hair was cut so short on the back and sides of the head that it resembled a five o’clock shadow, but he let the hair on the top grow to what seemed six inches long.  Rather than relax and lay flat, the follicles grew vertically skyward, and were then buttressed with hair gel and mowed parallel to the ground giving their bearer the ultimate flattop and the appearance of a Fuller Brush.  In the civilian world it was a look more apt to be found in a circus, but to his peers the style epitomized an officer destined for greatness.  One clever classmate coined the apropos moniker, “The Brush.”

“Mr. Sturman, drive yourself over here,” The Brush commanded in his staccato voice.

As was often the case, he had been hiding behind one of the stairwells of the dormitory, waiting to pounce on soon-to-graduate cadets, who might lose their military bearing.  The last few months The Brush was on a personal crusade to prevent me from falling into this trap, but by this point it was hopeless.  On this occasion I had decided not to march to the evening meal with my squadron but join my good friend Doug Goodman and the gaggle of intercollegiate athletes who were excused with these tiresome formalities.  It was a harmless gesture, but in The Brush’s eyes there was no such thing as a trivial disregard for regulations. 

“Yes, sir,” I grumbled, as I sauntered toward another reprimand.

“Mr. Sturman, I’m not sure there is room enough in my Air Force for you and me.  You’ve made some bad choices lately, and one of them is hanging around Mr. Goodman.  His hair is too long.  He has no military bearing and displays a horrible attitude.  Can you imagine the terrible impression, if a parent or VIP saw him strolling around the terrazzo?”

“He’s one of my best friends, and an intercollegiate athlete who happened to score 1600 on the SAT.  I could do worse for friends, sir.”

“Goodman and those friends of your’s in the 40th Squadron have ruined you.  They’re losers!  You’re as bad as the rest of those renegades.  Even your squadron patch, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” designed by your classmate Borenstein is an embarrassment to the Academy.”

I had begun the semester as a Cadet Lt. Colonel and squadron commander of the 40th but fell afoul of The Brush and demoted to Cadet Warrant Officer and confined to the cadet area until graduation. The 40th were indeed renegades, the most unmilitary of the Academy’s forty squadrons.  Between a cheating scandal two years prior which decimated the pool of underclass talent and voluntary and involuntary resignations from my class, the squadron had been gutted of the manpower needed to compete against other squadrons in the Cadet Wing.  What remained was a hard core of closely knit cadets who would rather march tours and suffer confinement than comply with nonsensical rules.  We finished near the bottom of virtually every competitive category except marching to meals where we placed third.  What a joke!  Some of the guys had purposely marched out of step to torment Captain Dephwad, the unpopular Air Force office in charge of the squadron.  How could we score so high in something we didn’t care about?  Maybe some other squadrons had the same idea and were more out of step than we were.

The Brush went on to have an extraordinarily successful Air Force career, and from what I understand conducted himself in a totally different fashion than the picayune fanatic who terrorized cadets.  We met briefly six years later when I was being discharged from the service, and he was beginning to pin stars on his shoulders.  He recognized me sitting with a group of other captains in the Davis-Monthan Officers’ Club and approached our table. During our conversation, he was charming and affable, in short a perfect gentleman.  The general wished me good luck with my new career, and I am certain he meant it. 

Why the one persona for the Air Force and another at the Air Force Academy?  In my squadron alone four of my classmates either resigned or were dismissed prior to graduation, in large part because of officers who would rather haze than lead.  All the departed were the type one would want as a wingman.  Two became successful businessmen, another an attorney, and the last earned a PhD from Princeton University in nuclear physics.  There was plenty of room in The Brush’s Air Force for them; all they asked was to be treated like adults after completing Fourth Class Year. 

Hi Ho! It’s Home from Work He Goes!

North Rim Grand Canyon - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com

One morning about fifteen of us were listening to a lecture at in a mid level aeronautical engineering class, when we were interrupted by the department chairman and his guest, a sandy haired major with a goofy smile and a bunch of combat decorations on his uniform.

“Sorry to barge in like this,” the colonel declared, “but I want to take this opportunity to introduce Major Rick, a new member of the aeronautical engineering department.”

I remember thinking, “Who is this guy?  Probably some fighter pilot who got his master’s degree from a correspondence course, then one of his general officer buddies assigned him here to teach introductory classes.”

Major Rick gave us a big, toothy smile, a couple of guffaws, and a forgettable wise crack about being here.  He did seem like a nice guy, but...... 

When the smoke settled in turned out Mr. Rick was a Naval Academy graduate, who later earned his PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Within academic and technical circles he was renown for developing the guidance system for the United States manned space program and the highly accurate and efficient gunnery protocols for the Specter gunships.  Due to the cover’s unconventional appearance, we judged this book badly.

Major Rick was a brilliant intellect, who was accessible to his students, and on more than one occasion invited them to join his family for barbecue and beer when the Colorado weather cooperated.  He was one of the few Air Force officers who understood complex technical and engineering problems and able to determine whether defense contractors were selling the government treasure or garbage.   His expertise saved the Department of Defense millions of dollars.  Although he was promoted to Lt. Colonel shortly after his arrival, the salary paled in comparison to that which he could earn in the private sector.  Money and its trappings meant little to him; he was driven by patriotism and a desire to prevent contractors from cheating the armed services by selling them expensive products that did not function as advertised.

One spring a ferocious snow storm struck the front range of the Rockies.  Traffic came to a standstill, and authorities at the Academy forbade all staff from leaving the base.  If officers or enlisted personnel lived in the outlying community, they were obliged to remain on the Academy premises until the weather improved.  Lt. Colonel Rick struggled with categorical nonsense.  His family was alone in the Black Forest area east of the Academy, and he owned and routinely drove a specialized four wheel drive vehicle, which to hear him tell “could make it to the top of Mt. Everest.”  The weather proved no match, as he drove on roads and off of them to arrive at home without incident.  That was all there was to it, or so he thought.

A few days later when the weather abated and the roads cleared, Rick returned to work and found an Article 15, a form of non judicial punishment, and a letter of reprimand on his desk.  He had disobeyed orders, and evidence of this transgression would be placed in his permanent record.  Even minor offenses play havoc with military career progression, but Rick saw his commander’s response to this minor dalliance as an insult.  He had driven home safely to care for his family at a time when all classes at the Academy were cancelled, and for this non incident he received a blight on his record. 

Rick’s bosses learned too late they should tread carefully when a talented subordinate has options.  Several months later those generous defense industry salaries proved irresistible.  He resigned from the Air Force and found his new bosses couldn’t care less whether he drove home in a snow storm.  He was an adult, and a exceptionally gifted one at that.  In retrospect was that Article 15 worth millions of dollars just to make a point?



    

On the Fields of Not So Friendly Strife

After a rainstorm on the Inca Trail - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman

On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days and other fields will bear the fruits of victory.
General Douglas MacArthur (1880 - 1964)


Intramural sports play an important part in cadet life at the Air Force Academy. Throughout the academic year there is intense competition between the squadrons of the cadet wing to determine which one will be crowned overall champion. In the 1960s and 1970s handball, a sport which requires ambidexterity, quickness, and stamina, was a very popular, high profile intramural sport.

In high school my partner Dave Sundin and I played one-wall handball. Although the one-wall game does not have the angles and variety of shots of the four-wall game, players must use both hands and learn to hit the kill shot, where the ball strikes close to the junction of the floor and wall, making it difficult for the opponent to reach the ball before bouncing twice.

As a freshman or Fourth Class Cadet, I tried out for the 23rd Squadron handball team, made the team, and became the #1 singles player. All Fourth Classmen at the Academy were exposed to relentless hazing by the upper classes, but theoretically on the athletic field there was no rank. Everyone competed on an equal footing, and upperclassmen were in some cases addressed by their first names rather than “sir.”

Near the end of the intramural handball season our team was undefeated but still had to face the tough 26th Squadron team. Their #1 singles player, Cadet Second Class McBride, an intercollegiate football player, had been a member of the 23rd Squadron for the prior two years. To say he was disliked by those in the 23rd was an understatement. He was arrogant, ambitious, and boisterous with an ego which knew no bounds. He was Napoleon in a 6 foot 2 inch, 230 pound frame.

On the day of the match I arrived at the handball court to warm up and was surprised McBride didn’t do the same. A few minutes before game time he sauntered onto the court and nodded his head in acknowledgement without saying a word. It was not surprising he took the match lightly. He was one of the best handball players in the Wing and wasn’t overly impressed by his younger opponent who weighed 140 pounds and didn’t shave. He hit a couple practice balls and then declared he was ready to play.

To determine who serves first, it is customary to lag the ball against the front wall to see which player can bounce the ball closer to the service line.

Realizing it may not be the best idea to use his first name, I asked, “Would you like to lag first, Cadet McBride?”

“That’s okay. Forget about lagging. Go ahead and serve first, Priskna.”

Obviously McBride expected to finish me off quickly, so why not let the little guy serve at least once during the first game.

I walked to the service area and glanced over my shoulder to the spectator area high above the court which was packed with upperclassmen from my squadron. It would be humiliating to get slaughtered by a jerk like McBride but worse if it was witnessed. I gave McBride one last look. He was on his heels, nonchalant, and gazing around the court.

“Ready, sir?”

“Any time.”

I drove the first serve low, hard, and with some side spin to his left hand. He couldn’t touch it. This was followed by a variety of serves to both sides: high, low, angled, with spin, and without spin. When McBride was able to return the ball, I usually was able to kill it after a short rally.

At 8-0 in the first game McBride became all business. He was on his toes, moving like a cat, and concentrating intensely but helpless. I was having one of those out of mind experiences where I could put the ball wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. There was nothing McBride could do, so he just gave up. He got his wish, a twenty minute best-two-out-of-three match. As we shook hands, I gazed at the viewers’ gallery, which now was filled to over capacity with cadets from other squadrons who wanted to see McBride’s trouncing.

That night at the evening meal I sat at attention eating another “square meal.” This was the routine. Eat in silence and hope the upperclassmen would not bother you, so you could finish your meal.

Suddenly, the Table Commandant, Cadet First Class Richardson barked, “Priskna!”

I dropped my fork and lifted my eyes from my plate to look at him. I couldn’t believe it. Rather than the usual upperclass scowl was a smile. “Yes, Sir!” I responded.

“Sit at rest, Priskna. Good job today.”

Sitting at rest was the ultimate kudos for a Fourth Class Cadet. I wasn’t allowed to talk unless addressed by an upper class cadet, but for this one meal I could eat in a normal fashion. After six months of eating every meal at attention, it felt strange to relax, look around the dining hall, and use a fork, knife, and spoon in the usual manner. It was simply one of the best moments of my life.

That evening the Cadet Wing left the dining hall and returned to the dormitories and with it my short reprieve from the fourth class system. However, the victory over McBride changed the way upperclassmen in my squadron treated me. Sometimes it takes years to make a difference, but in this case twenty minutes on the handball court was sufficient.

Under Pressure

Calafate, Argentina - Photo by JoAnn Sturman

W.R. Priskna
fliesinyoureyes.com

Most new entrants to the Air Force Academy are eighteen years old and newly graduated from high school, but a small portion of the class attended a prep school, college, or served as an enlisted person in the regular Air Force. For this reason a doolie, a derogatory term for a freshman attending the Academy, can be admitted up to the twenty second birthday.

At eighteen years old, 5 foot 10 inches tall, 140 pounds, with cheeks never touched by a razor, and a candidate for the Vienna Boys Choir, if I had any musical ability and lived in Austria, I arrived at the Air Force Academy in 1968 knowing nothing about military life at a service academy. After having my head shaved, standing in innumerable lines, and receiving bag upon bag of military clothing, I found my assigned room in Vanderberg Hall. When I entered, I saw a man sitting at a desk by the window, spit shining his shoes while smoking a cigarette. He introduced himself as Jack, one of my two roommates who would share the room.

Jack was close to the twenty-two year maximum age limit, a Prep School graduate, and a former enlisted man. While I had no idea what to do with the piles of underwear, socks, uniforms, fatigues, and footwear laying on the mattress of my unmade bed, Jack was a different story. He had neatly stowed all his clothing and was spending some extra time “burn shining” his shoes and polishing them with cotton balls.

As I would have done at home, I started to throw the clothes haphazardly into the chest of drawers next to my bed.

“Hey, you shouldn’t do that,” Jack suggested. “The reg book tells you how to fold and where to put every piece. Take a look at my drawers.”

He opened his top drawer. Every item was placed precisely where it should be. He had made the extra effort of placing a cardboard form in the top piece of each item in each pile, so it was stretched tautly. Laying beneath, every under shirt and under pant were folded to perfection. Socks were lined neatly in a row and rolled together in the prescribed manner.

I marveled at his closet, where every hanger was exactly the same distance from its partner. On the floor rested two pair of shoes and one set of combat boots shined so impeccably that they could have doubled as mirrors.

I realized I was in serious trouble. There were only a couple of days to prepare for the change of command ceremony, when our peace would be shattered by the turmoil of the fourth class system. There was a year of brutal, old fashioned hazing and bedlam in store for us, and I didn’t know how to shine shoes or fold clothes properly.

“W.R., let me give you some advice. You have to make your bed so tight that you can bounce a quarter on it, so make it once and never sleep under the covers. Keep an extra blanket in the laundry bin, and use it when sleeping on top of the made bed. It saves a lot of time.” It was the one bit of Jack’s advice that proved particularly useful for the next four years.

The transition to the fourth class system occurred abruptly two days later when the upper classmen descended on us while we were standing in formation waiting to march to the evening meal. They screamed and cursed us with every derogatory slur known. None of us ate a morsel at the meal; we were kept busy sitting at attention in our chairs while shouting rote knowledge until hoarse.

When we returned to our room, the contents of every drawer and the closet were dumped on the floor. The beds which took so long to make were upended in a heap. All of Jack’s labors were for naught. When on the floor, his beautifully displayed clothes were no different than mine. Each evening after a grueling day of military training, we repeated the ritual of putting the room in inspection order, only to find it in shambles the following day.

On the third day I returned to my room to find the pile of clothing considerably smaller. Jack and all of his equipment were gone; he disappeared, vanished, evaporated as suddenly as he appeared. For all his bravado, experience, and apparent self confidence, he could not cope. He functioned comfortably when life was predictable and tasks were prescribed, but pandemonium was a different matter. It took only three days in the pressure cooker for him to say “that’s enough” without even so much as a farewell to his new friends.

Some think walking on a flat treadmill at a leisurely pace for an hour means being in shape, but increase the incline to 15%, up the pace, and see if you can chat casually with the person next to you. Training and educating is no different. If a student is not exposed to stress in practice, how can one predict if he will implode when exposed to real life pressure situations and simply quit and take his rumpled clothes home with him?

The Linear Accelerator

Egr Chebbi, Morocco

photo by Susan Owhadi






Scott Sturman


It's not Mt. Everest or CERN's particle beam accelerator, but it was the site of some ground breaking scientific discoveries in the early 1970s.  Could a boulder of sufficient mass be dislodged from the summit of Colorado's Eagle Peak and mow down every tree in its path until coming to rest?

Eagle Peak soars 9368 feet above sea level and is located in the Rampart Range just west of the United States Air Force Academy campus.  Its eastern face is quite steep but technical equipment is not required to access the summit.  One autumn day a select group with ample liquid refreshment hiked 2000 vertical feet from the campus to enjoy the view.  Along the way we pushed some rocks weighing less than 100 pounds down the slope to see what would happen.  Accelerating rapidly down the 45+ degree incline, they began to bounce like rubber balls as they repeatedly struck the uneven ground beneath them.  Every so often one of the projectiles would strike a massive granite outcropping with a violent smash.  It was pulverized into gravel sized fragments and emitted a distinctive, acrid odor which we could smell after impact.  Rocks that passed through the granite section entered the tree line and caromed off large tree trunks and came to rest nearby.  Inquisitive minds wondered what would occur if a large group of "scientists" returned and placed some really large boulders in motion.

At the dormitory that evening we organized a team for the following weekend.  My classmates S.R. and Mark, both mechanical engineering majors, and Goodie, a physics major, volunteered to consult on technical issues, while seven or eight liberal arts majors were recruited to dig, lift, and pull. As long as there was free wine and a lot of it, it didn't take much to entice a history, political science, or economics major to join the expedition.

Next Saturday afternoon after completion of military training lectures, twelve of us grabbed a couple of shovels and headed toward Eagle Peak.  Along the way we found several logs about ten feet long and a foot in diameter and hauled them with us. As we neared the top, we saw a number of huge boulders weighing by our estimation several thousand pounds apiece perched above a steep incline which extended uninterrupted to the tree line below.  While S.R., Mark, and Goodie supervised launch preparations, it was my job to keep the liberal arts majors from drinking all the wine.  Archimedes would have been proud.  Using (F1)x(D1) = (F2)x(D2), we set a fulcrum and placed the end of a log beneath the uphill side of a relatively round boulder, which would roll easily once put in motion. With ten of us pushing down on the lever and the other two undermining the downhill side of the boulder furiously, it started to move.

As soon as the boulder's center of gravity extended beyond the ground supporting it, its mass and acceleration produced an imposing force.  No one knew what to expect, but within three seconds it was traveling nearly 60 miles per hour and bouncing 10 feet into the air.  Suddenly, it impacted an enormous rock embedded in the ground on the canyon floor. There was a massive explosion sounding like a howitzer as the boulder disintegrated. We started laughing, screaming, and slapping each other on the back and began looking for a bigger boulder.

The next candidate was larger and rounder than the first but its base was buried deeply in the ground. After what seemed like hours of digging and prying, we dislodged and sent it down the canyon. This time the boulder avoided the large rocks lining the canyon and entered the tree line.  It hit the base of a giant pine tree and snapped it like a match stick.  If the collision slowed the boulder's progress it was not apparent as it continued down the mountain mowing down every tree in its path.  As the bounding mass passed out of sight, all we could see were the tops of trees disappear from view.

As we returned home and descended along the boulder's path, our mood changed.  The power of the falling boulders and potential danger to anything in the way was a sobering thought.  Young men with time on their hands and much to drink do crazy things, and we were relieved our antics had not caused any permanent damage.  To mark the occasion the canyon was renamed the Linear Accelerator, but it was the last day a physics experiment was conducted in this unusual laboratory.  

Shit Shield

Haleakala, Maui - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman

Before social advocates descended on the Air Force Academy and humanized the fourth class system, meal time was hazing time.  To the uninitiated observer, often a crusading politician with views unsympathetic to military sentiments, Mitch Hall's bedlam was a haven for sadists.  Hapless freshmen or doolies needed protection from their upper class tormentors, even though the unpleasantness helped force the recipients to bond together and forge intense life-lasting friendships.  

At the Academy all meals were served family style at a rectangular table for ten.  The table commandant, a senior or first classman, sat at the head of the table. To his left and right sat five or six other upper class cadets, usually another first classman and the rest juniors and sophomores known as second and third classmen respectively. The last three or four seats were reserved for doolies who sat on the edge of their chairs at rigid attention with their eyes riveted to their plates. They were not allowed to speak unless addressed by an upperclassman nor eat without permission.  The mechanics of eating were strictly established: a morsel of food on a plate before them was acquired by a fork or spoon then lifted vertically to mouth height, where then is was conveyed horizontally toward one's mouth. Once the food was delivered to the mouth, only three chews were permissible before swallowing.  Quick consumption was a matter of necessity, and a habit that has accompanied many of us for close to fifty years.

Meals were a fifteen or twenty minute affair, where as many calories as possible were consumed between interruptions from upperclassmen, who bombarded fourth classmen with ceaseless questions.  Any subject was fair game, from rote knowledge, air force aircraft specifications, and military speeches to current events and sports. When answering a question, the doolie was required to stop eating, look his questioner in the eye, and answer it in as loud a voice as possible. There were some important considerations:

First impressions were crucial. If one gained the reputation as a “tie up,” upperclassmen would go for the kill every meal.

Questions were answered as rapidly and accurately as possible, so one could resume eating. A failure to do so meant shouting answers to incessant questions and leaving the table hungry.

If the table commandant had a special interest, it was smart to know something about it. Perhaps he was from Minnesota and a fan of the Golden Gophers. A correct and savvy response often meant a full stomach and rested vocal cords.

The answer to any “why” question was “No excuse, sir!” There was no deviation from this mantra. For example, if an upperclassman asked, “Priskna, why are you such an idiot or why are there twelve inches in a foot?” The answer was always, “No excuse, sir!”

Every week cadets were assigned different meal tables–a whole new cast of characters. The importance of a shit shield, a doolie who knew virtually nothing about sports or rudimentary current events, became readily apparent. His performance was so routinely pathetic that even the most ambivalent upper classman set upon him like a hyena on carrion.  This left the other fourth classmen free to stuff their stomachs for a week.

In my squadron the most prized shit shield was Cadet Fourth Class Rolyat, a veritable vacuum of knowledge. Easily intimidated and clueless on how to parry each meal's predicted verbal onslaught resulted in a thin frame and a raspy voice.

One Monday morning breakfast began with a new group of cadets.  At twenty five years old the table commandant, Cadet First Class Zabonini, was about as old as a cadet could be.  After growing up in a rough working class neighborhood in New Jersey, he attended a military school prior to attending the Academy.  Rolyat, on the other hand, was seventeen years old and fresh out of high school. He was suckled in a wealthy and connected San Francisco family.  Before Rolyat delivered the first bite of food to his mouth, Zabonini barked, “Rolyat!”

“Yes, sir!”

“I can't hear you, Rolyat!”

“YES, SIR!”

“That's better. Who is the Vice President of the United States?”

“SIR, I DO NOT KNOW!”

The other fourth classmen barely could restrain themselves. To laugh at a classmate meant no meal and plenty of unwanted attention, but under what rock did Rolyat call home?

“You gotta be shitting me, Rolyat,” screamed Zabonini. “Who is the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers?”

“SIR, I DO NOT KNOW!”

“Have you lived in a cave all your life, Rolyat?”

“NO EXCUSE, SIR!”

“Rolyat, that was not a “why” question! Where were you when God gave out brains?”

“SIR, I DO NOT KNOW!”

“What kind of a tool are you, Rolyat?”

Whereupon Rolyat responded with the standard reply to this often asked question, “A WEDGE, SIR! BECAUSE A WEDGE IS THE SIMPLEST TOOL KNOW TO MANKIND!”

“Correct, Rolyat. Now pass in your plate, Smack!  Recite General MacArthur's Farewell Address to the Graduating Class at West Point, and it better be loud so they can here it in Denver.  And the rest of you wads better not crack a smile or there will be a punishment run for all of you tonight, and I guarantee you'll all puke your guts out.  In the mean time you should thank your classmate Rolyat for being such a tool, so you can eat the rest of the week.”