Reveille is French for Wake Up. Rock On is French for Rock On.

We live near Camp Dodge, a military installation that currently serves as the headquarters of the Iowa National Guard.

Charlotte and I usually leave for school around 7:05. But if it's a clear morning, and we get outside by 7:00, Char likes to stand in the driveway and listen to Camp Dodge play "Reveille."

You can't hear the bugle from inside the house, so it's not bothersome. It's actually fun to catch it. I believe they also play "Taps" at the end of the day, but I've heard that so few times I can't say for sure.

That's not the only music we hear from Camp Dodge. For the past eight years the Iowa National Guard Adjutant General’s summer concert series takes place at the historic Camp Dodge pool. The free concerts are held on Thursdays and the gates opens around 6. 

The lineup includes: 

• May 23: Cloud Ten featuring Heath Alan (classic rock)
• May 30: The Candymakers (team spirit night)
• June 6: Gladys Kravitz (classic car night) 
• June 20: Dirt Renegade 
• June 27: The 34th Army Band’s Sidewinders group will play pop and classic rock (military heritage night; wear red, white and blue)
• July 11: Faculty Lounge (suicide awareness and remembrance night) 
• July 18: Abby Normal (Johnston 50th anniversary celebration) 

This will be the sixth summer for us to go to these concerts, and it is always a good time. We enter at the east gate (look for the tanks!), and both Daphne and I have to show photo ID to get in. There is a huge hill for little kids to run up and down, and bigger kids play Frisbee, bags, and/or toss a football around. If Trostel's is catering, I go for the Graziano Sausage Grinder...

 ...but you can bring in whatever you want to eat or drink.

All of the bands are great, but Sidewinders are especially fun to see at a military base. Where else can you see someone in army boots do the moonwalk?

August Rewind

We got the Howtoons book from the library. Char read through all of the projects, and she decided that she wanted to make the marshmallow launcher. 

The project requires two feet of PVC. As luck would have it, Home Depot sells PVC pipe in two foot lengths. I knew this project was meant to be when I saw the name of the PVC company.

Here's Char goofing around with the launcher. "... and my papa's going to film it..." (in case you need an interpreter)

We visited mini golf courses when the weather was decent. That's some blue water, my friend.

I thought it would fun for Char to have a putter of her own. I used a pipe cutter to shorten a club purchased at a thrift store. You can see how much of the shaft I cut off. My dad enjoyed collecting and restoring old golf clubs, so I already knew how to re-grip the putter. 

I bought a new ROSSA grip from eBay. It was pretty cheap because it was missing the ROSSA ball marker. I used my bench grinder to shape a penny to fit inside the end of the grip.

Char got upset when she lost the coin, but she calmed down when I asked her, "How much do you think it cost me to make that ball marker?"

"Ummm. A penny?"

"That's right. A penny. I think we can afford to make you another one." That's when I got a smile and a hug.

Here's another project. I bought this window at a Vintage and Made Fair a couple of years ago. Since then it's being hanging on the wall waiting for something to frame

I had Walgreen's print a poster of one our pictures taken in Québec City. Now we have a window looking out on our vacation in Canada.

Char's name was drawn in the Johnston Public Library's Summer Reading Contest. She won an electronic keyboard, a book about making instruments from everyday objects, and two packs of Pop Rocks. What did she get the most excited about?

She exclaimed, "Pop Rocks! I can't believe how lucky this is!"

Sometimes when we're out and about, we get hungry, but we don't want to take the time to eat at a restaurant. That's when we go to Kum & Go. They have healthy choices,  salads, sandwiches, and their pizza is good. On Wednesdays they have my favorite - bacon cheeseburger pizza!

Hey, don't judge! Chef and TV host Andrew Zimmern says his comfort food is gas station pizza, too.

Char's comfort food is egg drop soup. That bowl in the middle of the table was full when lunch began. Daphne and I had our own cups of hot and sour soup, but Char was the only one going to town on the egg drop.

There were a few thunderstorms rolling through Iowa in August, but I still haven't been able to get a  photograph of lightning. This picture is interesting and ominous, though.

On Sundays the Iowa Cubs let the kids run the bases after the game. That's pretty cool.

I visited Living History Farms for the first time. Daphne was a Living History Farms camp counselor when she was in college, and this year Charlotte was a LHF camper. The two showed me around.

Charlotte's favorite part of the tour? This farm cat.

I was impressed with the vintage campaign posters. The Concert at the Forum had quite a lineup: 

"On stage, Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, Carole King, and Quincy Jones performed for hordes of nubile screamers, who paid up to $100 a ticket to hear their favorite artists and gawk at the ushers: Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Julie Christie, Gene Hackman, Burt Lancaster, Jon Voight, Sally Kellerman, Robert Vaughn, Mama Cass, John Philip Law, Peggy Lipton, Michelle Phillips, plus the celebrities in the audience, Gregory Peck, Britt Eklund, Carly Simon, and Joni Mitchell."

 - The Village Voice

Daphne got a kick learning about the secret language of the fan while we visited the Victorian-styled Tangen House.

Well, it is time to use my right hand to hold the fan in front of my face. Summer's over. Let's go check out fall.

Taking Stock

Tomorrow Lazerfest hits Iowa, and I hope metal fans will have a great time. I love the metal genre, but even if I wasn't a Dad with a 20 month-old daughter, and I wasn't married to a Mom I need to celebrate, I'd be staying home. I'm a bit jaded on musical festivals.

Here's why:

In August of 1994 I was about to begin my third year of teaching, and I was holed up in my apartment jealously watching the MTV coverage of Woodstock '94. I wondered what it would be like to be cool enough to attend such a historical music event? All those great bands, all those girls in swimsuits (or less)...  Woodstock just had to awesome.

Five years later I flew out to New York to attend Woodstock '99 with my friends Cory and Kyle Moss. Here's my ticket.

Oh man, I was pumped! This was going to be a three day vacation with 200,000 other music fans.  I'd be watching almost 50 bands rocking the three live stages that were strewn about Griffiss Air Force Base. Like myself, 60,000 other people would be sleeping in tents on the provided camp grounds, and when the stages closed down at 1AM, all-night raves would start in the airplane hangers...

Too bad the male to female ratio was about 20 to 1, and the food prices were criminal: $12 for a mini pizza and $4 for a bottle of water. Here's a fuzzy closeup from a vendor's sign.

There wasn't any shade on the air base, and the average heat index for the three days was over 100 degrees. I refilled my four dollar water bottle over 15 times on Friday, and I never had to go to the bathroom. That's a lot of sweating, but it was a better than visiting kybo-land.

By the way, that's not water on the ground.

On the second day I discovered the porta-potties were cleaned out between 5:30 and 7:00 AM, and I set my watch. Too bad I wasn't the only one to notice.

This is where I realized that 99% of all people who try nudism should never, ever have made the attempt. After brushing my teeth on Sunday morning I bent over to spit out my toothpaste and ended up eye level with an old man's junk. "Cover that up, dude," was all I could think to say. He grumbled something about freedom of expression, and then turned to show me his butt. I'll spare you that picture, but here's the scene of the crime.

There was an alternative to the porta-potties: the blanket potty. You know the kybos were disgusting if public pooing was the better option. I saw quite a few people do this. Notice all the garbage in the background, and notice I am wearing shorts. This picture was for demonstration purposes only.

(2012 Reality Check: That R.H.C.P. t-shirt is now part of a quilt my mother-in-law made me for Xmas, and we're using that quilt tomorrow when we have our Mother's Day picnic at Union Park. I bought a season pass to the Heritage Carouse, so I'm gonna need a season's worth of Dramamine.)

As for the main concert area, in the morning the grass in front of the stages was so crowded you couldn't stretch your legs out when you sat on the ground; you had to sit with your knees pulled to your chest. From Thursday night to Sunday afternoon I didn't sit on anything except the ground. It felt awesome when I was finally able to sit in a real chair on Sunday night.

By the afternoon there was just too much humanity to even sit down. Those are speaker towers above the crowd, and I heard a rumor that the mass of people was a half of a mile wide, and a full mile deep. I don't know if that's true, but it sure felt true.

Each band tried to outdo the others by getting the crowd to participate in some way. Kid Rock was able to get the crowd to pelt the stage with plastic water bottles. For the better part of 15 minutes you had to cover your head with your hands to protect yourself from the bottles raining down. A full bottle hit me in the right ear. So painful.

Speaking of being hit, the scariest part of being in such a large crowd was the mosh pits. You'd be trying to weave your way out of the throng, not knowing how far you were from the edge of the group, when you'd stumble into a small, circular, open area. Just when you thought you had made it out, you'd discover you were instead in the path of three brutes charging at each other with fists flailing.  It was like being tossed about in a sea of people that was mined with whirlpools of violence.

I went to the rave to check out Moby on Saturday night. I was burned twice by cigarettes being carelessly waved around. I soon left to stumble around in the dark trying to find our one tent in a slum of thousands. If I wasn't tripping over people who were passed out, I was walking into huge piles of trash. The heat didn't help the smell of either.

We left early Sunday afternoon to beat most of the departing traffic, and by the time we got back to Corey's New York apartment MTV was running coverage of the riot fires the fans had set to the concession stands and speaker towers. Later several incidents of violence and rape were reported.

So much for three more days of peace and love.

Yes, it was a once in a lifetime experience. Who would want to go through that again?