We're the great things about Ricochet. Now, the great thing is that it's written by

the members. It's not a bunch of Coast goal elites yammering BS boil plate at you. Now

it's folks from all walks of life with lots of interesting things to say. And every week,

we highlight a post of the week on the Ricochet flagship podcast. In fact, it's called

the lilacs post of the week because I'm the guy who's got to go find it. It even has a classic

old radio sounder.

The changed lilacs member post of the week.

Pretty neat, huh? Well, this week, it's me and Sergeant Combs by Ken Forster. In 1958, I was

working for Bell Telephone as an installer when I was drafted into the army. I didn't want

to go. I wasn't cut out to be a soldier. I was a boulder, a pool player, a wise acre, civilian

to the core. So it was with a heavy heart that I showed up at the pointed time at the

muster station in downtown LA. Almost before I could adjust myself to my new surroundings,

I and five, six other schmucks were told to drop our trousers and grab our ankles. With

the bedside manner of nurse ratchet, the army doctor came down the row, sticking his

finger up our ears. Never did tell us what he was looking for. Whatever it was, my happy

civilian life had taken a sharp turn for the worse. After basic training at Fort Orde,

the army sent me to Fort Gordon outside of Augusta, Georgia, to learn how to climb telephone

poles. That's the army for you. I already knew how to climb poles. I was climbing poles

from Marbelle when I was drafted. I eventually ended up in a signal corps outfitting Germany,

and that's where I met Sergeant Combs. He's a big guy. The southern accent had a pot belly.

Faces black as coal in a skull that had permanently frozen onto his face. When Combs was mad at

me, which was pretty much all the time, he would call me a mother-fucking-punk or something

...