Welcome

Welcome to my blog http://www.skegley.blogspot.com/ . CAVEAT LECTOR- Let the reader beware. This is a Christian Conservative blog. It is not meant to offend anyone. Please feel free to ignore this blog, but also feel free to browse and comment on my posts! You may also scroll down to respond to any post.

For Christian American readers of this blog:


I wish to incite all Christians to rise up and take back the United States of America with all of God's manifold blessings. We want the free allowance of the Bible and prayers allowed again in schools, halls of justice, and all governing bodies. We don't seek a theocracy until Jesus returns to earth because all men are weak and power corrupts the very best of them.
We want to be a kinder and gentler people without slavery or condescension to any.

The world seems to be in a time of discontent among the populace. Christians should not fear. God is Love, shown best through Jesus Christ. God is still in control. All Glory to our Creator and to our God!


A favorite quote from my good friend, Jack Plymale, which I appreciate:

"Wars are planned by old men,in council rooms apart. They plan for greater armament, they map the battle chart, but: where sightless eyes stare out, beyond life's vanished joys, I've noticed,somehow, all the dead and mamed are hardly more than boys(Grantland Rice per our mutual friend, Sarah Rapp)."

Thanks Jack!

I must admit that I do not check authenticity of my posts. If anyone can tell me of a non-biased arbitrator, I will attempt to do so more regularly. I know of no such arbitrator for the internet.











Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Memoriew of WW II - Thx Blaine B!

“Memories of World War II”
         I am trying to think about all the things that I remember from World War II.  I mean, really remember, not things that people have told me about what happened.  On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day, I was just about ready to turn four years old.  So, of course, I have no recollection of it.  I think that my earliest recollection of the war was seeing men in army uniforms guarding the railroad bridge over the Ohio River as we drove up to Sciotoville or Wheelersburg.  I guess the guards were there to prevent possible sabotage, since the Nazis couldn’t possibly have been interested in bombing a Portsmouth railroad bridge to damage the industrial might of the United States.  This must have been in 1942 or 1943, when I was in the first or second grade.
         I also remember a concern at home about keeping the curtains and blinds drawn at night to prevent enemy planes from being able to see targets  from the air.  We even had a Civil Defense air raid warden who wore a helmet in our Charles Street neighborhood to enforce “blackout” regulations.
         One of the funniest memories of the war years that I have is of the steel pennies that came into circulation in 1943.  I don’t know for how many years they were minted, possibly only one.  The copper was being used in the war effort, of course, to make ammunition casings or something like that.  Speaking of metal, I can remember all kinds of scrap drives and flattening  “tin” cans and donating them to the war effort.  There were also used automobile tires drives and newspaper drives.
         As the war progressed and the Allies started winning more victories, I remember that The Portsmouth Times would put out “extra” editions of the newspaper and the paper carrier would come around the neighborhood hollering “Extra, extra; read all about it!”  I think you had to pay extra for the extra editions.
         Another funny thing that I remember is having a deck of “airplane spotter”  playing cards.  Using these cards would help you memorize the silhouettes of American, German, and Japanese airplanes in case they came flying over Portsmouth.  I never spotted any German or Japanese aircraft.
         I can remember my folks reading “V-mail” letters from my mother’s brothers who were in the army overseas.  V-mail was a very small, photographically-reproduced letter.  This system enabled thousands of letters to be delivered to the home folks from the boys overseas using much smaller shipping space in ships and airplanes.  Some of the letters had been censored with some of the words cut out of them so that my parents didn’t know where Uncle Dan or Uncle Phillip or Uncle Paul were writing from.  “Loose lips sink ships.”
         D-Day in June of 1944 was a very big deal as I remember.  It was talked about by everyone in our family because at least two of my uncles, Uncle Phillip and Uncle Paul, were supposed to be involved.   In July of 1944 we learned that Uncle Paul Haffner had been killed in action somewhere in France.  He was a corporal in General George Patton’s Second Armored Division.  I remember a reporter from the Times coming to our house to interview my mother and a story and Uncle Paul’s picture being in the paper. Uncle Paul is buried in a US Military Cemetery in France.
         My other Uncle Paul, Uncle Paul Bierley, enlisted in the Army Air Corps when he graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1944.  I can remember his coming home on furlough sometime in early 1945 from his training as a B-17 radio operator at a base in Texas.
         I remember a little bit about the rationing of food, tires, and gasoline and the shortages of things that rationing entailed.  I can remember people talking quietly about the “Black Market.”  But, I didn’t know what that mystery was about at that time.
         My most vivid memory, of course, since I was about eight years old, was the end of the war.  Grandpa Bierley came over to our house on Charles Street in his Model A Ford and took us downtown to help celebrate the victory.  I imagined that the entire population of Portsmouth was there. They probably weren’t.  I also remember how big and black the headlines in the newspapers were--they seemed to take up at least half of the front page.
         It’s strange how clear some of these memories are, even after almost seventy years.

Blaine Bierley (PHS 1955)

D-Day in 1944 - Jim Kegley

My younger brother, Jim sent me this wonderful bit of nostalgia from his rememberances of D-Day in Portsmouth Ohio.  Thanks for sharing Jim.

High Notes 06-06-2013 – D-Day, WWII
 
One hundred eighty (180) years ago today, June 6, 1833, President Andrew Jackson boarded a Baltimore & Ohio train for a pleasure trip to Baltimore, Md.  Jackson, who had never been on a train before, was the first president to take a ride on the “Iron Horse,” as locomotives were known then.
One hundred years later, June 6, 1933, the first “drive-in” theatre, or “Park-In Theater” was opened for business in Camden, New Jersey.
Perhaps the most famous event in the modern history of the world occurred on June 6, 1944, when The Allied Forces began their massive invasion of Europe, known as D-Day.
As a five year, and two month old boy, I was at home at 1227 McConnell Avenue, Portsmouth, when the invasion took place.  My brother, Ted Dunham had already landed in Italy, and he, as a member of the 102nd Infantry Regiment of the 94th Brigade was making his way through Italy as a battlefield medic.  Ted was 19-years old at the time, born January 6, 1925.  His father, Theodore Dunham, had been killed in an accident while working for the electric power company, before young Ted was born.
Four of my uncles on my mother’s side, Bob Cullen, Floyd Miller, James B. (We called him Barb) McGill,  Hescal Cutlip, and thousands of other Scioto County men and women, were busy building the bombs and other armament used to defeat the Nazis in Europe, and the Japs in the Pacific, at the Wheeling Steel Corporation in New Boston.  Another uncle, my Mom’s brother, Charles Clark, of Lucasville, was fighting in some far off battlefield.  My Lucasville area cousin, Johnny Miller was in the army and his sister, Charlotte, was a member of the Woman's Army Corps (WAC) during the war.
As a child I remember the black smoky days of the forties…the days when most homes were heated with coal, and the mill and other local factories were busily supporting the war effort.  On summer nights the eastern sky would glow bright orange as the steel mill blast furnace would make a pour of red molten ore.  The hot strip rolling mill was going strong, and the smokestacks belched steam and smoke as the overhead cranes and slag-laden trains bellowed and clanged their nightly mission toward victory. 
Those were heady and deeply emotional times in the world.

Jim Kegley's column for the Scioto Voice




For the freedom of Christian teaching in America - SamKat

I am neither a street corner evangelist nor do I place any fault on them.  However, I am ashamed of our country's politization of the word Prosyletize.  The First 'Amendment of our constitution gives the freedom of speech to all Americans.  We are kept from shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre and common sense should prevail in the execution of  our rights, but Christ's great commission to Christians is to go unto all the world and give them the good news of the Bible.  I accuse the Leftist liberals of our society, fourteen per cent who are degrading any mention of Christianity, 
 for making the word, prosyletizing, sound dirty.  It is not un-American because we have a government largely formed by Christian patriots of deep thought, who wanted the USA to be the absolute best place on earth to live in freedom.  Many of the USA's greatest servants were killed or maimed in defense of the freedoms we enjoy.  I truly want to spread Christian love and peace, not hatred and discontent, particularly when I mention Christ and his teachings. Christian missionaries took Christ and built schools and more respectful societies throughout this world.  That is giving their lives to the great commision.

A SamKat editorial

Dreamland Pool Portsmouth Ohio

Dreamland Pool Portsmouth OH-  Real nostalgia of the Prize of the City:skegley.blogspot.com

P'Towners should enjoy this:





 
Subject: FW: Dreamland Pool - Portsmouth






Subject: Dreamland Pool - Portsmouth
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 18:44:32 -0400

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