A welcoming new place

/ July 2, 2016

Eyeglasses place. One of our Chinese joints. Popular sub shop.

Not the usual strip.

Not the usual strip.

It looks much like your run-of-the-mill tiny strip mall, this stretch of stores where I buy egg rolls and wonton soup. China Chen is quite near Northern Pines, the course where I played with the little golf league that could for many years. And so I stopped there to bring home take-out for my dear wife Karen and I. And it’s also just down the road apiece from the store, where I toiled in the paint department. So I’d stopped a few times on my way home from work, too.

Of late, I’ve noticed a new establishment has joined the lineup.

You can sign up here.

You can sign up here.

The National Guard advertises for new candidates on the windows.

Interesting enough for me to pull out my iPhone 6.

A uniformed rep saw me and came out. He called me buddy, as in, “What’s up, buddy, can I help you?”

When I told him about this general interest blog about things I find interesting, he smiled, nodded his head, and went back inside.

I went into my Chevy Cruze, followed him into the storefront, and gave him my blog card. He shook my hand.

May they find good, strong people to serve us all.

Happy July Fourth weekend. Independence Day, ring forth.

Have you spotted storefronts for service organizations, and do you think it’s a good approach? If you’ve served, how and where did you enlist? What place in this strip would you most likely frequent, and why?

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12 thoughts on “A welcoming new place”

  1. I live in a military town, or former, well, it depends on how you look at it, it’s all open now and only DFAS remains. Anyway, our local recruitment center has all four branches with a shared corridor. Recruitment is still big here.

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    • And you have the base background from Georgia, as I recall, Joey. You’re way into knowing about this I culture, more than me. Happy Independence Day, my dear friend, to you, the Mister and the whole troop.

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  2. If you remember last July the shootings in Chattanooga, TN (Where I live) 5 sevicemen were killed. The person who is responsible for the killings shot up a military recruiting office. Not to scare you or anything but just letting you know we have those outposts too.

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  3. I think the store front recruiting is a good idea.It raises awareness of the military and the career options available and it makes approaching them comfortable on a plane that we are all used to. That said, I have heard the military criticized for HOW they use these store fronts. One of the problems in modern warfare is the cultural make-up of the forces. This may seem innocent, and many see it as opportunity, however, most non-conscription forces are composed mostly of poor and some middle class folks. From their perspective it can easily be a chance to get discipline, education, travel, respect, a career, good food and excellent exercise. And that is a good thing. However, what happens is that this removes the war from the frame of personal for the decision makers – as few if any of their children or families are ever involved. And war should be personal. It is sometimes unavoidable but as Sun Tzu said in “The Art of War” – war should only ever be used to prevent war – the end focus should always be stopping the war as soon as possible – not defeating the enemy or gaining geography or crushing resistance – but, quite simply to end the war (and obviously keep it ended- no point in stopping a war that will restart in a year). Viewed from this perspective, the US should not have been in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. They had to be in WW1 and WW2 and Korea, etc. And note: in hind sight all the wars that were fought for reasons other than stopping war were abject failures in the long run and,if anything, made the situation less stable and killed more people than if there had not been a war.

    That said, it becomes obvious that the country’s young poor and middle class are dying to protect the rich and wealthy. This is wrong. Did you know that in the Vietnam war not one single son or daughter of a congress person fought? And yet it was congress that had to make the decision to support the war.

    The military knows where their troops come from and deliberately places a greater number of recruiting sites in disadvantaged neighborhoods and then some in middle class neighborhoods. They put none in upper class neighborhoods. Now this just makes sound policy from a financial perspective – you spend your hiring dollars where your employees will originate. However it perpetuates and encourages and grows the poor/middle class staffing of the military. More and more, fewer and fewer of the military are upper class. Many years ago most wealthy families had sons serving – granted as officers,but still in the war. Their stories and experiences informed the ruling and wealthy classes as to the vagaries of war.This is no longer true.

    To my mind all countries should have a mandatory military service – mind you a shorter service period of two years or so for non-career soldiers. This would solve the division of service between the rich and poor. It is likely that the majority of career soldiers would remain from the lower and middle class but at least the ruling class would have some idea as to the nature of war. They are forgetting and that is bad.

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    • I see your point, totally, Paul. I’m no fan of war, but I support our military personnel. It’s always a conundrum for me. I do think a lot of the decision makers up top here in the U.S. still do come from our military academies, where admittance is highly covered through Congressional letters of referral. I think that allows the higher-earners entrance into the process, somewhat still. Nevertheless, I follow your logic.

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