This assignment required us to analyze economic theories of the Great Depression. With an event like this which led to so much hardship for so many people, it is understandable that there are multiple theories behind the Great Depression. In his article “The Great Depression as Historical Problem,” Michael Bernstein writes that traditionally, scholars of the Great Depression have identified three causes; the Stock Market Crash, policy errors, and long-term factors. He states that the more recent scholarship tends to suggest that the true reasons for the duration and severity of the Great Depression lay not in the stock market crash itself, but rather in long-term factors that were a sort of ripple effect after 1929.
With this in mind, I turned to the Statistical Abstract for 1929 and for 1933. Interestingly, the government did not publish an abstract for 1932. Rather than looking at stocks or bonds, I decided to look at personal income taxes as reported in these two abstracts to see if they reflected what was going on in the country as a whole. I’m not an economist, or an accountant, but I theorized that as the workforce took a hit, as did personal savings during the Depression, it would have an impact on the number of people filing personal income taxes. When you look at long-term factors, the lack of income, or the reduction of income, has an effect on spending, and spending has an effect on the economy as a whole. Consider, for example, in the Spring of 2020, as everything shut down, the economy went into a tailspin. The President, and Congress, sought to tackle this from multiple angles, from giving loans to businesses to giving direct stimulus payments to the people, with the hope that they would then spend that money locally help local businesses stay afloat. With the unemployment rate climbing, putting money into people’s pockets, in theory, would decrease foreclosures, etc.
The first abstract I looked at was from 1929. In it, you can see the number of returns filed between 1910 and 1926. The number of returns filed peaked in 1924, and dropped the following two years by three million. However, as this was prior to the crash, this would not have been due to the Depression. On the righthand side of the table, we can see that even as the total number of returns filed dropped significantly, the tax yield of those returns continued to increase. In other words, less people were filing, but they were paying more in taxes.
In the second abstract from 1933, we can see that the overall downward trend continued from 1927 through 1930. Not only that, but the net income dropped significantly from 1928 to 1930, from $25,226, 237 in 1928 to $18,118,165 in 1930. This hast to be due to the crash in 1929, and the ripple effects on the economy, specifically the bank failures, which wiped out people’s savings. At the same time, regular taxes paid went down by almost 50% from 1928 to 1930. Capital Gains were decimated, dropping from $284,645 in 1929 to $65,442 in 1930.
What can this data tell us about the US economy during the Depression? At least from a tax standpoint, fewer Americans were paying taxes in 1930 than had in the previous years, though this is part of a downward trend that started prior to the crash. However, the amount of money being paid in taxes dropped significantly from 1929 to 1930. It is likely there are a variety of reasons for this. On the one hand, with the economy starting to contract after the crash, leading, eventually to bank failures and unemployment, this would have an impact on those required to file taxes. It is also possible that this may be more due to specific effects in certain regions of the country. It would be interesting to look at unemployment and tax data by region to see if this was across the board, or if it hit certain places harder. Also, as people found themselves with less income, and/or unemployed, this no doubt began to take a toll on the local economy, as people had less disposable income to spend. Local stores and businesses, faced with a sudden loss of customers, would have to respond by laying off some workers, or closing altogether, which would add to the drain on the local economy.
Looking back on March through May of 2020, it now makes sense to me why the government quickly moved to try and shore up the economy. They remembered what happened in 1929, and realized that, absent direct intervention in 2020, we might face the same type of situation. While the economy still got hammered hard in 2020, government intervention just might have kept us from having a protracted depression like we experienced after the stock market crash in 1929.
Samuel Gompers was an immigrant cigarmaker who rose to become one of the most powerful labor leaders in the United States by the early 20th Century. He founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and served as president from 1885-1894, and after a break of one year, again from 1895-1924. A labor leader might seem an odd choice for an assignment over economic influencers, but, given that he helped found an organization that, to this day, still represents millions of American workers, he certainly influenced 20th Century economics by pushing for the organization of workers, and trying to have an impact on government policy. My great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were union steelworkers. I chose a different path, and became, first, a firefighter and then a police officer, belonging to unions in both jobs, so Gompers was spoken of with great reverence in my house when I was a child.
However, like all of us, Gompers was a complicated person. In fact, some of the biggest influences he had might land him in hot water with some historians and social media influencers today. He was adamantly opposed to unlimited immigration from Europe, and opposed to all immigration from Asia, fearing that it would drive down the wages of working-class Americans. He often bragged that the AFL excluded Chinese workers from membership. Gompers used his considerable political muscle to push for immigration laws passed in 1921 and 1924. Likewise, Gompers did not believe in pan-unionism. He openly fought with the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), believing them to be more committed to world socialism than to helping organized labor. By the time of his death, Gompers had also marginalized the role of the socialist wing within his own union too.
In a way, Gompers proved that labor, business, and politicians could co-exist. Far from being a radical, he instead took a middle of the road approach. Gompers stressed that his union and its membership should focus on tangible issues like pay and working conditions, within the capitalist system, rather than seeking to destroy it, as some of the more radical elements of the IWW wanted. During World War One, he worked to suppress anti-war propaganda among union members, and, due to his work on behalf of the war effort, Gompers served as an advisor to the American delegation at the Paris Peace Conference on issues affecting international workers’ rights. Historian Ralph Riaco noted that after the war, as a reward for his help fighting the IWW, the Government backed Gompers’ efforts to promote unionization and collective bargaining.
While not all growth in Union membership can be attributable to Gompers alone, a look at the numbers will indicate the explosive growth which took place during his time as President of the AFL. The table below shows a total American membership of roughly two million workers in 1910. By 1920, that number reached five million.
It is important to note that this is total union membership, and not all unions fell under the AFL umbrella during this period. To see how much of this growth came within the AFL, we must consult a second chart. The 1926 American Labor Yearbook shows that the membership of the AFL was 1.5 million in 1910, increasing to 4 million in 1920. When compared to the previous chart, it is apparent that the majority of growth was due to the expansion of the AFL under Gompers’ leadership, but there were still a million union members outside of the AFL in 1920.
I would argue that much of the growth, though by no means all, is due to the work of Gompers. The American Federation of Labor is really a union of unions, and during the early 20th Century, Gompers stayed busy adding more unions to the ALF fold. With each one, the membership grew. Likewise, as more people joined unions, the membership went up exponentially. The growth coincides with the onset of the Progressive Era, in which the government began to actively involve itself in attempting to solve a myriad of social problems, among them issues related to workplace safety and the pay and treatment of workers. The voices of five million unionized workers in 1920 no doubt helped spur politicians into action, for union members are also voters, who vote in accordance with their economic best interests in mind.
Though overall union membership as a percentage of the workforce is low in the 21st Century, public sector unions such as mine still enjoy robust collective bargaining agreements, good health benefits, and quality pensions. The origins of those benefits today lay in the work Samual Gompers did in the early 20th Century in not only unionizing more workers, but also getting the government, albeit temporarily, onboard with the idea of working with, rather than against, labor.
(For my usual readers, this post is being done as an assignment in one of my PhD courses, so it is not the standard fare.)
The three generations before me, my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all steelworkers. Had the American steel industry not collapsed in the decade I was born (1970s), I would have no doubt followed in their footsteps. Although I am not doing my seminar paper in this course on the steel industry, I decided, for this assignment, to look specifically at the state of American steel production at the end of the 19th Century, when the United States was in the process of becoming a major producer of steel. Of course, if the topic I selected goes down in flames, like the American steel industry did, I might switch over to steel as the topic of my final paper!
The dataset I looked at for this assignment is from the 23rdStatistical Abstract of the United States published in 1900. It contains a chart (included below), which illustrates the quantities and tonnage of iron and steel produced in the United States between 1895 and 1899 as reported by the American Iron and Steel Association. The chart has some interesting bits in it, from which, I think, we can draw a picture of what the country looked like and was experiencing during those four years from an economic standpoint. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/statistical-abstract-united-states-66/1900-21993?page=367
First of all, most of the tonnage produced at the time was pig iron. I am familiar with what this is, since I grew up hearing the term used frequently by my father and grandfather. When I was little, I thought it had something to do with pigs. It doesn’t. Basically, pig iron is heated in a blast furnace until it is sort of a molten liquid form, then transferred to a steel mill to be refined into actual steel. In other words, you need pig iron to produce the steel. As you can see from this dataset, the total tonnage of pig iron exceeds that of any other single item produced during all five of these years, but the total tonnage of all of the products produced exceeds the tonnage of pig iron. This would indicate that the pig iron produced in a year wasn’t necessarily being used to produce steel products in that same year, meaning steel production carried over from one year to another. One curious note is that pig iron production fell in 1896 and then increased again in 1897. The year 1899 shows a 35% increase in production over the base year of 1895.
Prior to really looking deeply at this dataset, I assumed, given that it was the late 19th Century, that the majority of steel production would have gone into making railroad ties. However, this dataset shows something different. The majority of steel was produced as rolled steel (used to make steel components of machinery) and steel ingot which is used in building construction. For a second dataset, I looked at immigration during this time period, to see if it was immigration driving the demand for steel to produce housing. The immigration report from the 23rdStatistical Abstract of the United States (1900) indicates that between 1895 and 1899, the United States absorbed 1.7 million immigrants. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/statistical-abstract-united-states-66/1900-21993?page=415
Immigration alone cannot account for the increase in steel production, or the mass production of building components. To use this as the simple explanation would be to attach the assumption that all immigrants were destined to live in buildings with steel frame construction. In his article “Statistical Models and Shoe Leather,” (1991), Freedman warns about the attachment of an assumption to data models which may then lead the investigator to build data around the assumption. In previous courses I have taken here, the need for solid empirical research was stressed by multiple faculty members. Keeping that in mind, when looking at these two datasets, I would state that the datasets prove two things empirically. One is that our steel production increased between 1895 and 1899, and that the majority of that steel was being used in either rolled steel or steel ingot. The second piece of empirical data is that immigration saw a modest increase during this same time period.
To take this study further and prove with solid empirical data that it was, in fact, immigration driving the boom in steel production, one would need to look specifically at immigrant housing. Where were these immigrants living? What construction records are there for buildings built during those same years and in the cities receiving the bulk of these immigrants. If such construction records exist, it might show that the boom in construction was actually in the realm of commercial properties, and thus totally unrelated to immigration. Conversely, it is possible that it was, in fact, residential structures driving the building boom, and thus the increase in steel production.
The use of raw data on things such as steel production, or immigration, is of use to historians as it can provide us with a basis with which to start our inquiries. It can even change the direction of our inquiries. As mentioned earlier, I incorrectly assumed that in the late 1890s, the railroads would be the largest consumer of steel. As it turns out, the builders were. Having lived through the collapse of the steel industry at the end of the 20th Century, and seeing my father lose his career, and my grandfather nearly lose his pension, it was bittersweet to look back at n era when American steel production was beginning to grow into the behemoth it would be by 1950. As the final piece of this post, we are to state what our major research topic will be this 8 week session. Pending instructor approval, of course, I will be examining the CB radio craze of the 1970s and early 1980s. I’m particularly interested in whether or not it was popular culture that created the CB craze, or if movies like Smoky and the Bandit, and songs like Convoy, reflected what was already happening in the country
In June of 2023, I bought a Red Dodge Challenger SXT. I named her Molly, since Molly (the heroine of my novel Molly’s Song helped pay for her). The SXT was the base model Challenger with a V6 engine. I really wanted an R/T, but they cost 10-15K more and were not as fuel efficient. At the time, I was driving 100 miles round trip to work and back five days a week, and so I needed something that would be better at the gas pump. I had no idea that a scant six weeks later, I would accept a teaching position at a new college that was not only much closer to home, but also allowed for virtual office hours, which meant I was only driving in 3 days a week one semester and two days the next. In two years, I only had 14K miles on the car.
We’ve had a bumpy spring for reasons too much to get into here, and I decided that I wanted to explore getting an R/T. There weren’t many available in the area that didn’t have a lot of mileage on them. I found one that was still new on the lot with less than one hundred miles on it, all test drive miles. I decided to go in and see if we could work a deal. We could! Not only did they give me a great price on Molly when I traded her in, but the price on this R/T was, two years after it came out, what I paid for an SXT in 2023. This car would have cost me $45K then. I got it for just under 35K. Let me tell you, it is going to take time to adjust to the throttle on 5.7L HEMI V8 after having a 3.7L V6. Not only is she beautiful, but she is so fun to drive, just like Molly was. Though I was sad to part with Molly, I know she will find a new home with someone who loves her as I did. So, without further delay, let me introduce you to my new girl, Mashka.
It is time for my annual year in review post! As I noted in the 2023 year in review, in August of that year, I accepted a tenure track position at a community college much closer to home. January of 2024 marked the start of my second semester. I teach most of my classes off-site, meaning that rather than being on the main campus, most of my face to face classes are at local high schools. I pop in and teach dual credit courses to high school juniors. Dual credit means that they are taking the college history course from me, but it also counts as their high school history credit. It comes with unique challenges, but it also has unique rewards. Plus, only having a 25 minute drive to work versus the hour and fifteen minute trip at my previous institution is wonderful.
As a baseball fan, I start counting down the days to spring training as soon as the previous World Series ends. This year was no different. I’m a Red Sox fan, and, of course, this season left much to be desired. Sadly, it marked the end of hall of fame radio broadcaster Joe Castiglione’s career at the microphone. I won’t lie, I was getting misty eyed hearing him call the final out of the season and his career.
Cravat Cat was a handsome fellow!
In early May, Cravat Cat, the feral cat that my wife and I have been taking care of for 9 years passed away. He showed up 9 years ago and he was at least 2, maybe 3 years old back then, so he was 11 or 12. We’ve fed him, given him a warm outdoor shelter for the winters, and taken care of his medical needs. He pretty much lived on/under our porch. Since he was feral, he didn’t really like people, except for my wife. Apparently, he thought that she belonged to him and I’m pretty sure that he was constantly plotting how to do me an injury. The night before he died, he had his supper as usual. The following morning, he was curled up in his shelter, dead. He died in his sleep. I like to think that we gave him a long, full life, which is rare for a feral cat.
The cat distribution network immediately went to work and a month later, this portly fellow showed up. I’m calling him Chubs and he has now taken up residence where Cravat Cat once lived.
Chubs does not miss any meals
When the spring semester ended, I was looking forward to having 12 weeks at home. I wasn’t teaching in person over the summer, just online, and so I wasn’t going to have to leave the house all summer. However, the best laid plans and all that… At 0100 on the first Monday of my break, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I leaned over to lift the toilet seat and then it happened. My entire back locked up. I was stuck there, unable to move, for about twenty minutes. If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I suffered a serious back injury in 2012 and have battled chronic pain and complications ever since. Dear Readers, this was the worst pain I’ve felt since the original injury. Horrific isn’t strong enough a word.
It only got worse as the days went on. I managed to get a next day appointment to see my pain management doctor for a Toradol shot. I was so bad off that I couldn’t drive, and so my dad took me. The shot worked great for about four hours, and then it wore off and I was the same as I was before. They scheduled me for some injections into my spine, but they were three weeks out, and so I just suffered until then. The injections went okay, and they reduced the pain by about 50 percent, but even now as I write this in December, I have not returned to the baseline pain levels I was in before I lifted the toilet seat. I really, really don’t want to have another surgery, but that might be unavoidable at this point. There’s medication out there that will dull the pain, but because of the “opioid crisis,” good luck getting any. Since the government can’t (or won’t) tackle the issue of the drugs being smuggled into the country, instead, they deny badly needed medication to people with legitimate medical issues. Just do a google search and you’ll see that even patients with terminal cancer are being denied morphine. That’s like taking away your car keys because your neighbor drives drunk.
Screenshot
Despite the pain and limited mobility, in some ways, it was an ideal summer. I watched a ton of baseball. I played a lot of PlayStation games. I had gotten a PS 5 in March, and this was the first chance I’d had to really enjoy it. As an added plus, in July, the first college football game in over a decade got released. I logged 100 hours in the first week! I even managed to get some writing done. I had gone into the summer with the intention of losing 30 pounds, as I had gotten a bit portly. Thankfully, that is the one part of the summer that went according to plan. I was in so much pain and also taking medication that made me a bit queasy, so eating wasn’t a priority. I managed to get back down to 200 pounds (I’m 6’4). I’d still like to lose another 10, but I’ve been holding steady at 200 ever since.
The calm before the storm: Looking out over Galveston Bay 12 hours before landfall
Mother Nature came calling in July. We found ourselves at Ground Zero for Hurricane Beryl. Not to brag, but I predicted it would hit here even when the weather guessers on TV were insisting it would hit 600 miles away. They were wrong. This was more of a wind event than a surge event. At my house, we were getting gusts in the low 70s. Thankfully, the roof we had replaced four years ago held up just fine. The big issue was the power. The storm knocked out power to most of the Greater Houston area and, in some places, it was out for two weeks. By some miracle, the four blocks around my house never lost power! This was great because after the storm, the heat index was 105. It actually wasn’t a miracle, really. There’s a nursing home two blocks away and we are on the same grid as them. Last year, they replaced the wooden transmission lines with metal ones and raised the wires above the level of the trees.
I wish
In August, I was gearing up to go back to school for the fall semester. I needed to go and see my spine surgeon, but first I needed a referral (the joys of having an HMO). I called my GP and I was told that I couldn’t do a telehealth appointment because I hadn’t been in to see him in person for over a year. I’m not sure what one has to do with the other, but they insisted I had to go in for an in person visit. So, I did. I’m in the high-risk category for bad outcomes if I get Covid, which is why I’m one of maybe 4 people in the country who still wears a mask in public. That had helped me avoid Covid thus far. I got to the doctor’s office in my N95, and the place was full of coughing, sneezing people. Half of the staff were visibly ill. No one was wearing a mask. One thing I’ve always liked about this GP is that I am in and out quickly. Not so on this day. I was there for an hour and a half.
Olga took good care of me while I recovered
Three days later, I woke up with a fever. I took a test, and it was positive immediately. Now, you might be tempted to say that there is no way I could know for sure that I got it at the doctor’s office. Well, I do know. I had not left my house or seen anyone apart from my wife for the two weeks prior to this. And my wife tested negative. Obviously, I had avoided Covid up to this point. The first three or four days I was tired and had a fever, but that was about it. By Day 5, I thought I was over it. Then, on Day 7, I developed tachycardia (my hear rate was in the 130s when I was laying down) and was short of breath. So, off to the hospital I went for several days. I ended up missing the first week of classes. Even now, in December, I’m still having some lingering cardiac and lung issues. And, yes, I’m still wearing a mask. If the first infection did that to me, the next could kill me.
Eat em up, Kats!
My alma mater, Sam Houston State, was competing at the FBS level for their second season this year, and it was their first season of bowl eligibility. Behind a solid defense, they put together a 9-3 record, made it to a bowl game, and won! The first bowl victory since 1964! It was definitely exciting to watch the season unfold.
When you part Serbian and you make a boxer, you do this. IYKYK.
In October, the first licensed boxing game in 15 years came out on the PlayStation! I’ve been waiting for it ever since it was announced a few years ago! It hasn’t disappointed. I’m having a ton of fun playing it off and on. It is the kind of game you can play for a while, set aside, and come back to. I don’t really play against other people online. I prefer the offline career mode.
A new cover!
I’ve saved the biggest news for the end. First of all, Molly’s Song got a new cover! There’s a long story as to why, but basically the original publisher closed. I had to find the book a new home to keep it in print. I like this cover so much better than the original one. If you haven’t read it yet, now would be a good time to do so!
Olga has been a big “help” with my studies
The second big piece of news is that I have started back to school myself….as a student. I am working on a PHD in History. I don’t really need a PhD in anything. I have an MA in History and an MS in Criminal Justice. I have a tenure track position at a community college, and I’ll be retiring in 10 years. I’m doing it to prove to myself that I can. It is true that having one will get me a 14K raise, which will kick my salary average up for retirement calculation purposes, but I’m really doing it to prove something to myself. I’m torn as to a dissertation topic. Part of me wants to go with my first love, the Civil War, but the other wants to combine my criminal justice background with history and do something regarding organized crime in Louisiana in the 1950s. There’s still time to sort all that out though. I’ve completed the first two courses and got an A in each!
And for the final piece of news, and this one will excite you if you are a true crime person. For several years, I’ve low key wanted to start a crime history podcast. After much thought and preparation, I’ve done it! It is called Homicidal History. The Spotify link is here, but you can also find it on Amazon. And, you can follow the podcast socials on Instagram and the Twitter. Season One is currently airing, with new episodes on Tuesdays. The third episode comes out on New Year’s Eve. Each season will have 10 episodes. Season One runs from late December through mid February. Season Two will start in mid May. It is a short form podcast, and episodes will range from 10-30 minutes. I’m also on the Blue Sky now, and while the podcast doesn’t have its own account, you can find episode links on my personal account. I’m Lee Hutch on there.
On that note, if there is a pre-1975 unsolved murder, missing person, or bizarre crime that you are particularly knowledgeable and passionate about, let me know. I’m planning the Season Two episodes now. And, if you’ like, I’d love to have you on to talk about it. You can guest host an episode with me! And no, it doesn’t mean you have to come sit in my bedroom where I record. We can do it over the internets. Just shoot me an email. If you don’t have a case you’d like to talk about, please consider listening/following the podcast on the podcast app of your choice. And if you really, really like it, a review would be great.
The cats are all doing well. Over the summer, and we aren’t sure exactly how this happened, but Harvey got an abscess on his taint. A couple of vet visits, 1K dollars, and a week in isolation later, and he was fine. Yes, Harvey now has a thousand dollar taint. Dickens, our oldest, just turned 17 this month. Anastasia turned 11 in November, and my little girls, Olga and Aksinia are 4 this month.
She was never this excited to see me when I was on the job.
My wife is still recovering from the stroke she had in May of 2023. She’s back at work now, but it is still a difficult journey and some of the lingering issues will most likely be permanent. But she wasn’t too bad off to be standing on the porch waiting for the firemen to come by with Santa Claus.
I belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, and so my Christmas isn’t until January 7th, since we are on the old calendar, but for those of you who celebrated Christmas, or anything else, in December, I hope it was enjoyable for you. I also hope that you have a 2025 filled with health, wealth, and happiness.
Honestly, I’d be happy with just the health part, though for me, that ship sailed a long time ago.
I’m ringing in the new year with my usual tradition, that is, my tradition since I retired from public safety and no longer have to work holidays. That’s right, friends, I’m enjoying the Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy Channel. I’ve seen every episode multiple times, but I look forward to the marathon all year long. It’s one of the few things I do look forward to anymore. Though I quit smoking, I also allow myself to enjoy a fine maduro cigar on New Year’s Eve as well.
Until next time, friends, take care of yourselves.
I hope this missive finds you well. The first thing you will notice is that Molly’s Song has a new cover! It is a long story as to how this came about, but it came about, and thus the new cover. It is still available in all the usual formats, paperback, eBook, and audiobook. If you haven’t gotten a copy yet, you can do so here. With the new release, the eBook is a mere 99 cents!
I had a really good spring semester, and I went into the summer with all sorts of grand plans. I wanted to lose 25 pounds, finish the sequel to Molly’s Song, and watch a lot of baseball. Well, we all know what they say about the best laid plans. If you’ve followed my journey for any length of time, you know that I suffered a devastating spinal injury in 2012 that led to my retirement from public safety. Since then, I battle chronic pain and a myriad of other complications. Around 3am on the Monday after the semester ended, I got up to go to the bathroom. I bent to lift the toilet seat, something I’ve done millions of times, and my whole back locked up and went into spasm mode. I was stuck in place, unable to move, for almost an hour.
As a result, as the summer unfolded, I was in horrific pain every second of every day. I haven’t felt pain like this since the original injury/surgery. I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t lay down. I spent weeks pacing the floor all night long, in too much pain to sleep. I did get to watch a lot of baseball though. It took almost two months for me to be able to function again. That said, my pain still hasn’t gone back to baseline lever and probably never will. It’s possible that there will be a very big spinal surgery in my future. I did watch a lot of baseball though.
When you are in that much pain, you brain doesn’t function like it should. As a result, though I was able to hammer out six more chapters of Molly’s War, I got nowhere near the end. Right now it is still about 40 percent complete. This distresses me to no end because it was supposed to be finished in 2020.
By early August, I was slowly getting ready for the start of the fall semester. Then, I woke up on my birthday with a 103 degree fever. I took a Covid test and it was positive. This was my first time and, as all of you know, I have continued with all the precautions long abandoned by everyone else because of the state of my health. The fever was unshakable for three days. I woke up on the third day and the fever had broken. I felt okay, just tired. But then, on Day 7, I started having tachycardia at rest and shortness of breath, so to the hospital I went for yet another hospital stay. I had to miss the first week of the semester.
Even now, almost a month to the day since I first tested positive, I’m still having some lingering lung and heart issues, though I’ve been back to work for two weeks. It really kicked my butt. I’m not ashamed to admit it. And I certainly don’t want it again. I may not make it through another infection.
There is some good news though! I’ve lost 27 pounds! All the pacing I did when I was unable to sleep and with a limited appetite due to the pain, I managed to lose 27 pounds and two inches in my waist, so I’m definitely happy with that, though I do not recommend what I’ve gone through as a good diet plan.
I have one other update too. On Monday the 16th, I’ll be back in school. Obviously, yes, I’ll be teaching at my college, but I mean I’ll be back in school as a student. I’m starting a PhD program in History. I’m really looking forward to it. Maybe I’ll end up regretting the decision, but for now, I’m happy about it. For now, I’m thinking that my dissertation will be on a World War 2 themed topic, but of course, that is subject to change.
Don’t worry! We are all friends here. You will not have to call me Dr. Hutch.
Remember Friends, take care of yourselves, and each other.
I am writing this missive to you from what was ground zero for Hurricane Beryl. Our house was spared any major damage, and we are all okay. There are trees and branches down all over the place. Fortunately, we were not among the 2.1 million people without power, most of whom, forty-eight hours after the storm, are still without it. And with the heat index over 105 at that.
Honestly, the wind damage is similar to what I saw during and after Hurricane Ike in 2008, but thankfully, Beryl did not bring the 20 foot storm surge with it that Ike did. So, it’s mostly wind damage everywhere and not much flood damage. Damage is damage though, and if it is your house, it doesn’t matter what kind it is. It still sucks.
We are still in response mode and not recovery mode. I’ve been hearing non-stop sirens all day. That’s the thing about hurricanes. As a (now retired) fireman, I always feared the post-storm period more than the storm itself. People are without electricity in brutal heat which causes problems. People not used to doing manual labor, much less in hundred degree heat, are working outside. People use tools that they aren’t overly familiar with, which causes injuries. House fires increase due to electrical issues caused by the storm. People who are on maintenance medications can’t get them refilled because the pharmacy is closed due to power outages.
Living on the Gulf Coast as I have for my entire life, you never know when your number is up storm wise, and if it is, you don’t know if it’ll be your turn to suffer damage. I had a tree on my house during Hurricane Nicholas in 2021, and I’ve had other damage over the years, so I am well versed in the Hurricane Roulette we play down here each summer and early fall.
People often ask why we live on the Gulf Coast given the hurricane threat each year. Well, every region of the country has its own disaster risks. You have to pick your poison. I’ve spent my whole life within a couple of miles (at the most) of the water. It is what I am accustomed to and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, though Wilmington, North Carolina is nice (but they also get hurricanes). And the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia is pretty nice too. But I intend to stay in hurricane alley for the rest of my days, absent some really unusual set of occurrences.
And the bad thing is, the busy part of the hurricane season for the Western Gulf doesn’t even start for another six weeks.
It has been a long time since last we spoke, so I now take pen in hand to write my annual year in review post. I did not go into 2023 with any grand plans or resolutions as I don’t really do much of either of those things. 2023 would end up being an….interesting year, in some ways good and in some ways quite bad.
I was happy when the spring semester started because for the first time since I started teaching full time for the college, all my classes would be on the campus where my office was. The semester passed with little fanfare. We had an epic Saint Patrick’s Day celebration on campus right before Spring Break. It was our second annual event. Of course, I was really looking forward to baseball season starting, though from the way the Red Sox played, I think they forgot the season started.
Then, right before the end of the semester, my wife had a stroke. Strokes are not normally something that happens to health people in their 40s, but here we are. She was at work when it happened and I was also at work, in the complete opposite direction. At first, she seemed to be recovering well, but when the summer set in, it was setback after setback. Thankfully, her speech wasn’t affected by it, but she has (at times) debilitating nerve pain now, some issues with balance, and some short-term memory problems. At first, the doctors assured us that those issues would be temporary, but now, given how long it has been, they are admitting that they will probably be permanent.
They did find that she had previously undiagnosed high blood pressure, but further testing found a hole in her heart. The theory is that this is what allowed the clot to pass through and go to her brain. They did a heart cath procedure in November to try and patch the hole but they were unable to. As of the time I am writing this, on the final weekend of the year, we haven’t heard what the plan going forward will be. No doubt the saga will continue.
IYKYK
Midway through the spring, I inadvertently uncovered a family secret. I did one of those Ancestry DNA tests, but I sent the raw data to GenomeLink as they have a more accurate ethnicity estimate. My whole family is Irish and so I wasn’t expecting anything unusual…welp…that was not to be. Come to find out, a very close ancestor, one only a couple of generations back and one that I knew quite well was, in fact, adopted, unbeknownst to them. (They passed away years ago, but never knew that they were adopted). So, rather than being entirely Irish, I am actually 3/4ths Irish and 1/4th Serbian. I guess that is fitting enough, since I am already an Orthodox Christian. I have started to learn the language which isn’t too difficult since I already know another Slavic language (Russian). I have also really enjoyed learning to cook some traditional Serbian dishes.
Pljeskavica, anyone?
Or maybe some stuffed peppers with ajvar?
Late in the spring, it was getting close to time for me to consider buying a new truck. There was nothing wrong with the one I had, but it was 6 years old and had a lot of miles on it, plus, given how long of a commute I had, it was only a matter of time before I had to sink a bunch of money into it, so I thought I would go ahead and get a new one. Easier said than done. I had a Chevy Colorado and I wanted to get the same thing. None of the local Chevy dealers had any on the lot, but the dealership closest to my house said that they had some on order. I put a $500 deposit down to hold one and they said it would be there in 6-8 weeks.
I checked at the 6 week mark and they said they had no firm estimate on the delivery date. I asked if they had a way to track it and they said no. I found this a little hard to believe since you can track your Door Dash order up to the minute, but I didn’t think anything of it since they had said it could be 8 weeks. Well, when the 8 week mark came around, I emailed and got no response. I called the salesman and got no response. I ended up emailing and calling multiple times over the course of a week and no one got back to me. So, I contacted the Sales Manager and told him to give me my deposit back. I wasn’t expecting them to necessarily have the truck, but an update would have been nice.
Since I would be unable to get a Colorado anywhere else, I decided to get a Dodge Ram. I found one online at a nearby dealership and contacted them to make sure it was still available. They said yes. I arrived the next morning when they opened only to be told that someone had “just bought it” but they had some more expensive ones they could show me. I told the salesman that I he was full of…excrement….and that I had a check for a down payment and a trade-in and I already had financing. At that point, he said he would “touch base with his manager” to make sure the truck had really sold. What is it with car salesmen always having to “touch base” with someone? I told him no and he was literally chasing after to me trying to get me to stay as I walked to my truck.
My wife suggested we try the dealership where she bought her Jeep the year before. It was a little further away, but we drove up there. They didn’t have a truck in stock that I liked, but while I was sitting there, I started eyeballing the Dodge Challengers. I’ve low key wanted one ever since the George Washington commercial that aired during the US v England game in the 2010 World Cup. The price wasn’t any different than what I was prepared to pay for a truck, cheaper, actually, so I took one for a test drive. It was love at first acceleration. I picked a red one because, when you have a thing for redheads and you are buying a muscle car, red is the only color option. Also, a redhead helped me buy the car. No, I don’t mean my wife. I mean Molly O’Sullivan, the heroine of my second novel. Naturally, the car is named Molly.
The more momentous event came later in the summer. One afternoon, I got a text message from my brother AJP who told me that the college where he and I were teaching at part-time when we met ten years ago had a last minute opening in the history department. Though he and I had both moved on to full-time positions at other colleges, we did enjoy our time there. The only reason I left was that I was offered a full-time position at another college. I had been considering the possibility of looking for a position closer to home after my wife’s stroke. I was commuting 70 miles each way to work five days a week and spending hours upon hours fighting Houston traffic each day. Not only did this mean that I would be a long way away from her should something else happen, but it was also really starting to aggravate my existing spinal injuries. I decided I’d toss my hat in the ring and see what happened.
Most community colleges have a multi-step hiring process which includes a couple of interviews and a teaching demonstration. I kept advancing to the next round and was offered the job. To my shock, I was offered the position. It came with a nice raise and it cut my commute in half! As it turns out, all but one member of the department had either retired or relocated out of state in the previous year, and so they hired four of us. We quickly became pretty close over the course of our first semester. One Friday afternoon each month, we get together off campus for an early supper and happy hour. I am really enjoying my co-workers and it is nice to be back with my homeboy Blue the Dolphin! We had a Halloween Festival on campus and set up a History Department booth. We had a blast.
I really do miss my friends at the college I left. I’d been there full time since January of 2018. We went through a lot together, from me missing my first three weeks of class due to an emergency surgery to going through the Rona Times to hurricanes. We got through it all together. I didn’t leave because I was unhappy. It was more of needing to make the right decision for my family.
I am slowly but surely working on the sequel to Molly’s Song tentatively titled Molly’s War. I was hoping to be finished with it by the first of the year, but it is looking more like it will be the summer before I wrap it up. I have also written a couple of scripts for the All Bad Things podcast. They released one of mine on my birthday, which was a coincidence as they did not know when my birthday was.
My little Cossacks, Olga and Aksinia, wish everyone a Happy New Year!
I am not one to do the whole New Year, New Me bullshit. I don’t set goals for the new year beyond survival and I don’t make resolutions. I quit smoking for good in 2023, so this New Year’s Eve will be the first in 14 years that I don’t enjoy a fine cigar to ring in the new year. But that’s okay. I will, however, continue with my New Year’s Eve tradition of watching the Twilight Zone marathon on the Scy-Fy Channel and Twittering about it. This has been my tradition since I retired from the FD and no longer have to work holidays.
I hope the new year brings you good health and good luck.
Until next time, friends, take care of yourselves.
I figured I would write a quick midyear update for you. Unfortunately, I mean the title of this missive literally. My wife had a stroke in early May. It was kind of a surprise because you don’t see many strokes in people in their mid 40s and she’s always been the healthy one. Apparently, she has had very high blood pressure for a long time, but it never gave her symptoms and since she doesn’t need to go to the doctor very often, she was unaware of it until the stroke. If there is a good thing about it, the doctor said it that if you had to have a stroke, the one she had was the better one to have since she will make a full recovery. It has been about six weeks now and she is almost fully recovered except for some lingering numbness in her left thumb and part of her left foot. And, of course, since we know about the high blood pressure now, she can take medication for it which, so far, is keeping it in check.
There isn’t a whole lot new going on with me. I finished the spring semester and had three weeks off. Now, I’m teaching two summer courses, but they are online and so I don’t have to go to campus. In the late spring, I was in the market for a new truck. However, with inventory shortages, I was unable to find a dealership that had a Colorado that I liked in stock. I decided that I would take a look at the Ram 1500s, since I’ve always like them, but I couldn’t find one that I liked within my price point.
While at a Dodge dealership, a red Challenger SXT Blacktop caught my eye, so I took her for a test drive. I really enjoyed the drive and the price was right, so I bought her. Naturally, I named her Molly since Molly helped pay for her. I’ve owned both Fords and Chevys in my life, but this is my first Dodge. I have to say that this is the first car I’ve ever had that I just want to get in and drive aimlessly, and that includes the Mustang GT convertible I had for a few years many years back.
I’m sure it will be fun rolling up on campus in August.
Until next time, Dear Readers, take care of yourselves.
It has been quite some time since my last post, but as the New Year’s Eve year in review has become sort of a tradition, I figured that I would do one for this year as well. The latter part of 2021 was filled with hospitalizations and surgeries for me and I went into 2022 hoping that it would be, at least somewhat, of a better year. But…you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.
I returned to work for the spring semester in January with more than a little trepidation as the whole world was getting Omicroned at that time. All of the faculty were crammed into small, unventilated classrooms to listen to information that could have been put in an email. Of course, people were coughing and sneezing all over the place. And…big surprise…the next week, when classes started, a very large number of faculty were out with Covid, though the college denies that it was, or ever has been, transmitted on campus. I was not one of the “chosen ones” that time and managed to avoid it.
However, the Saturday after my first week of classes (and her second week of classes), my wife tested positive. She was sick for about a week, but had lingering symptoms that lasted for six months. It wasn’t until June that she finally felt her energy levels returning to normal. We took precautions while she was sick and I evaded it again, but it makes one wonder how long one’s luck will hold out.
The rest of the semester went by fairly well. Right before Spring Break, we had our first annual Saint Patrick’s Day Party on campus. We were actually planning this in Jan and Feb of 2020 to hold that March, not knowing at that time that the whole world would shut down during the second week of March. So with what amounted to two extra years to plan it, we had quite a bash with food, music, games, and me as the Master of Ceremonies/DJ.
I also found out during the spring semester that in the Fall of 2022, I would be teaching a Criminal Justice class for the first time. I do have a second Master’s degree in Criminal Justice, and professional experience in that area, but I had not taught it before. It would be an online class and I knew it was going to be challenging to set up since we were in the process of switching over to a brand new learning management system after having used Blackboard for over ten years. I figured I could use the summer to learn the new system and set up this class, plus my online history classes. My load in the fall was three in person and three online.
I was excited when the baseball lockout ended and spring training started, though with the way the Red Sox played this season, I wonder if they were aware the lockout was over. When the semester ended, I was totally exhausted to the point of near incapacitation. Truthfully, I never recovered from the three surgeries I had in rapid succession, with two on back to back days, in the Fall of 2021. My summer schedule was relatively light. I taught two history classes (online) during the Summer 1 session and had the rest of the summer off.
My wife traveled to Florida right at the end of June and stayed through the 4th of July, so I was left to my own devices. While she was away, my Mashka had a birthday and we celebrated with red velvet cupcakes and I went to the midnight vigil liturgy for the Holy Royal Martyrs. I was the only person there under the age of 70, I think. Usually when she goes out of town, I have a marathon of all the Hornblower movies, and this time was no exception. It filled me with the urge to go around yelling “Damn your impudence, sir!”
Towards the end of the summer, I learned that Molly’s Song won the First In Category prize of the Goethe Awards for historical fiction. It came as a surprise because I honestly had forgotten that the book was entered into the competition. Still, I got a nice ribbon and some stickers. Unfortunately, I was unable to go to the awards banquet due to it being impossible for me to travel due to my health and Covid. But I’m not much on those kind of events anyway, so just winning the award was nice enough for me.
Speaking of health, over the summer I found myself getting short of breath when engaged in the most mundane of daily tasks. I already knew I had fibrosis in both of my lungs owing to my injuries, but this was more pronounced than what I normally deal with. After a few doctor appointments and a pulmonary function test, I was diagnosed with emphysema. It is at an advanced state for someone my age. While it is true that I did smoke for 20 years, that alone would not cause it to be this severe this young. The doctors think it is due to a combination of three factors; me having smoked for 20 years, all of the toxic shit I breathed in as a firefighter/arson investigator, and, following a genetic type test, some kind of gene thing, I can’t remember what, that made me more prone to get it in the first place, and also for it to be more severe.
Considering that one of my grandfather’s died from this same disease, it was bad news, but also not entirely unexpected. That’s not to say that I was specifically expecting this exact disease, but as much as I hate to say it, I’m at the point that every day I wake up expecting something else to be wrong or go wrong with my health. When every day is a struggle, it is hard to remain positive when you know that your body is doing its best to kill you. I already had a reduced life expectancy and now, this has shortened even more.
If I’m lucky, I’ll make it ten years. Maybe fifteen if I am really lucky. I’m okay with that. I’ll keep working for as long as I possibly can, mainly because it gives me an excuse to get out of the house and be around people rather than sitting at home being miserable. And misery is right. The emphysema means that my skeletal muscles are having to work harder for me to be able to breathe which means that it puts tremendous strain on my spine and ribs, which aggravates the spinal issues. I thought I knew what pain was before, but it is far worse now.
The fall semester started with little fanfare. To be honest, for the first time, I wasn’t really looking forward to being back. I am writing the first part of this post on Sunday, Oct. 2nd. I will revisit it on December 31st to finish it up. By writing the first bit today, I am better able to remember what to write about from the previous nine months. I have the sneaking suspicion that another shoe is about to drop on me health wise. I can’t put my finger on it yet, it is just a general feeling. I’ve made it through the first six weeks of the semester without anything sending me to the hospital, but I don’t know how long my luck will hold. I guess when I revisit this in December, I’ll be able to say if my feeling was legitimate or not.
I am writing this next bit at the end of November. My hunch was somewhat correct. At the end of October, I went in for my annual physical. Usually I do it in August, but I couldn’t get to it before the semester started and then I got busy, so November it was. Everything was going okay until they did an EKG. Now, I think it important to note here that despite my lungs not working, my brain not functioning normally, my spine being held together with screws and duct tape, and my intestinal issues, my heart has always been the one organ in my body that worked flawlessly. Well, that is no longer the case. I’m not sure exactly what the issue was, but I was scheduled for a stress test in the middle of the month. Naturally, the day before the test, the doctor called to cancel it…after I had already cancelled my class for the day and taken off work. They’ve rescheduled it for the day after final exams in mid-December, so for now, we wait.
Thanksgiving was a low key affair. My wife and I stayed home. I spent the week watching college basketball mixed in with a little football while my wife lusted after all the players on the German National Team since the World Cup also started that week. She is an obsessive Germany fan while I don’t care who wins, so long as it isn’t England. I just cheer for whoever they are playing. That’s kind of an Irish thing, I guess.
The semester ended with a whimper and not a bang. This was the first time sine I started teaching full time in January of 2018 that I wasn’t beset with dozens of student emails begging, demanding, cajoling, etc, for a great other than the one earned. I had nary an email the week of finals. That was kind of a welcome surprise.
Right before Christmas, we got a visit from a severe cold front. On Friday, Dec. 23rd, the wind chill outside at 0800 was 0 degrees. That’s pretty cold for SE Texas. It was similar to the severe cold spell we had in February of 2021, but this one didn’t last as long. And thankfully, the only pipe that burst was an outside line. We never do anything for Christmas anyway, so my wife flew to Florida on Christmas Day to visit family. Her flight was delayed by four hours, but eventually she got there. She was gone for four days and I stayed home and entertained myself with a combination of the PlayStation and various and sundry Roku Stick options.
I am finishing this on New Year’s Eve and, as has been my tradition since I retired from the FD, I am spending the weekend watching the Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy Channel. I’ve seen every episode multiple times, but I still enjoy watching the annual marathon. Tonight I’ll sit on my porch (it is very warm today) and enjoy a fine maduro cigar. Yes, I know I have emphysema, but I can’t catch it twice and one cigar a year is far preferable to the two decades where I smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes a day.
I don’t know what the new year will hold for me or anyone else, for that matter. I no longer make long term plans. I just take each day as it comes, for better or worse. And I’ve never really been one for New Year resolutions anyway. Regardless of what the new year may hold for me, I hope that it brings you health and happiness.
Ghosts of the Past 