When I was the commander of the 508th Maintenance Detachment at Fort Lewis, Washington, I still wore the 24-karat gold wedding band that my mother-in-law had custom-made and given to me for my wedding. The only problem with that wedding band was that it was way too big for my fingers. Did I say problem? Okay. Let me rephrase that. The size was just one of the problems. Another inherent problem with the ring was that it was way too soft because it was made out of 24-karat gold. 24-karat gold is solid gold. Solid gold is so soft you can practically bend it by squeezing it between your fingers. There is this old cliché that says you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. But if the goddamn horse doesn’t have any teeth, it can’t eat. If it can’t eat, sooner or later, the poor sonofabitch is going to starve to death. It is just a matter of time. Then, you are going to have a dead goddamn horse on your hands. What the hell good is a dead horse going to do you? Let me tell you in two words: no good. That’s right. Then you got a couple of choices to dispose of the carcass. You could either burn the sonofabitch before it starts to stink to high heaven. But when you burn the sonofabitch, it’s still going to stink to high heaven. So, you have to hope that your neighbors ain’t home and that the wind is blowing away from you. One helluva long way away from you. And you better buy some gas too. Otherwise, it’s going to take a while for that carcass to burn. No doubt about it. That fire could last for two or three days. The second option that’s available to you is to dig a deep ass hole. No. Not a deep asshole. That’s a really rotten bastard. I don’t mean that kind of deep asshole. I mean. A really deep ass hole. You know. One that you gotta have a ladder to get the hell back out of. The problem with digging a hole like that is that it could take you two or three days to dig the goddamn hole. That is unless you’ve got a JD 410 backhoe. JD is short for John Deere just in case you were wondering. If you don’t have a JD 410 backhoe, well, that carcass could start to stink to high heaven while you’re digging that damn hole. So, the next time somebody says don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, you can tell them exactly why the hell that’s a bad idea. But when I got my 24-karat gold ring from my mother-in-law, I didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth. I gladly accepted it. Cuz I couldn’t afford to buy my own damn ring. But I could never wear that ring except when I wasn’t doing anything. I mean, you know, like work. I could wear it for show. But that was about it. Cuz at the first mention of work, that ring would slip, slide right the hell off of my finger. Cold weather exacerbated the problem. Cuz I have this condition in my hands and feet where blood circulation slows down to a crawl when they are cold. That condition is called Raynaud’s phenomenon. Usually, I took my ring off in cold weather, whenever I worked with my hands, or whenever I was outside. However, sometimes I forgot to take the ring off. Shit happens. One time, during a cold snap at Fort Lewis, when I was the commander of the 508th Maintenance Detachment, I forgot to take my ring off when I was outside. In the cold, the ring slid right off my finger and I lost it. I didn’t even know that I had lost it until that evening. One of my soldiers found the ring a couple of days later and put it on a neck chain. I didn’t see him wearing my ring around his neck, but my operations Sergeant did. She immediately recognized it and asked him where he had gotten that ring. He said he had found it. She told him it was mine and asked him to give it to her. He did as she asked, and she asked me if the ring was mine. I looked at it and said, “Yes. Where did you find it? I lost it a few days ago.” Then she told me the story of how one of the soldiers had found it. After that, I never wore that ring to work again. However, later that year, we drove my red Chevy van to North Dakota to my parents’ house. On the way to North Dakota, I had to drive across a stretch of Idaho near Coeur d’Alene that was really icy. Then, I had to drive across another stretch of Montana where they had put down salt on the road. So, when I got to my parents’ house, I wanted to take my van to the car wash on the first nice day available and wash all of the fenders, sidewalls, and undercarriage as best as I could to get all of that salt and crud off of it. I didn’t want my vehicle looking like a rust wagon. First, my wife and I went to the bank and got a roll of quarters. Cuz that van was one helluva big ass vehicle. I figured that it might eat quite a few quarters at that car wash. Then, my wife and I headed to the car wash. We were in luck. The car wash was a one stall car wash, and there was no waiting on aisle number one. I pulled in and we fired up the car wash. Can you guess what was coming? No. The train tracks were on the other side of town. There was no train coming. No. It wasn’t Santa Claus or the Easter Rabbit either. The ring. That’s right. I forgot about the ring. I forgot to take it off before I started washing the van. When I had finished spraying the soap suds onto the van, I stopped to use my sponge and a bucket to do some scrubbing. When I finished scrubbing the van and I got ready to rinse, my ring was gone. I had lost my goddamn ring. Oh shit! In the car wash, no less. If it had gone down the drain, I was hosed. There was no way I was ever going to get it back out. But before the ring could even get down the drain, it had to go through the trap. The trap was about a foot wide, about a foot deep, and about six feet long. And the trap was full of a mountain of dirt. Well, I’m sure there was more mud and shit in that dirt then there was just dirt. But it was a huge mountain of dirt. I know all of that shit didn’t come off of my van. But I didn’t see my ring anywhere. Maybe I was in luck. Maybe the ring had fallen into the bucket. I slowly felt through the bucket and drained some of the water off. But I didn’t have that kind of luck. I never have that kind of luck. The ring wasn’t in the bucket. It was either in that mountain of dirt, or it had gone down the drain. Shit! That was just great. Well, I finished washing the van and then I pulled the van out of the stall so that I could search for the ring. It seemed like the car wash wasn’t a very popular place. There was still no one waiting on aisle number one. I got down on my hands and knees and started digging through that mountain of dirt. The longer I dug without finding it, the angrier I got. I would not give up looking for that stupid ring because it was my gift horse. About four hours later, I finally found my ring. It was buried under that mountain of shit. Well, actually, it was just mud and dirt. I cleaned up and then we drove over to my mom’s house. I cleaned up my ring and put it away. That was the last time I ever wore that wedding band. That gift horse ring had made me look like a big asshole during one hell of an exercise in futility digging a big ass hole through drainage dirt.
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