This morning I answered an email wishing me a Happy Veterans Day. I emailed back “HVD right back at you”. I triggered send a moment too early but I’m sure the Vet grasped the proper meaning. Which always brings to mind what I almost named asknod. Actually, I didn’t “almost” it at all. I was well on the way to naming it WWVD (What  Would a Veteran Do?) before Cupcake brought my brilliant idea back to the drawing board. Using the initials VD in any branding attempt is a death wish.

This Veterans Day was meaningful for many reasons. In just the last 11 days, the VA Opposing Forces (OPFOR) have retreated 5 times and granted my Veterans untold riches. If this keeps up all month, it might exceed a million in retro for the combined group. But honestly to top it off, I finally succeeded in gifting a truck to a disabled Veteran in my own back yard instead of sending it off to 1-877 Kars for Kidz™. Seems there’s lots of choices on where to get rid of a car these days.

Back on Father’s day this year, Cupcake looked at my old 2001 F 150 pickup and decided I needed to arrive places looking more respectable. Pickles absolutely looooved  it because it’s the only one she’s allowed to ride in due to her propensity for making everything wall-to-wall hair. The new F 150 (2016 new) is a sixpac with a back seat just built for miniature people and hairy dogs.

It only took me sixty six tries and finally employing a full-body block to shunt her into the back seat every time. She gets back there now under protest and moans the whole time. Have you ever gotten the “eye roll” from a Labradog?

So, a Navy Vet named Michael ran into Ray, the President of the Key Peninsula Veterans Group in our local grocery store yesterday and they got to talking. Seems his son Patrick is a disabled Vet and in need of vehicular capabilities which he doesn’t have. Ray volunteered as I had a truck I’d been trying to give to a needy Vet since right after the 4th of July.

So what better thing to hand him the keys on Veterans Day? I didn’t call CBS and ask them to send a news and camera crew over. I didn’t publish the ceremony day and time in the local fish wrap. I asked him to give me time to feed the horses this morning and dig out the title. We met up out front about 10:30 and his three kids got a lot of licks and kisses from Miss Pickles. Problem solved. New Friend and probably a new client.

As for Veterans as a whole, today is not the most stellar august day for many. An article in ProPublica discussed the horrendous state of the East Orange VAMC in New Jersey. It sounds like something I went through on Veterans Day back in 1973. It was one of the reasons I never went near a VAMC for almost 20 years.

When I came home from the Outback in June 1972,the Air Force determined I was no longer service material, kicked me out and escorted me to the front gate in February 1973. I joined a lot of other Vets who were too poor to go home or decided to hang out near LA. I got a job in an explosives factory and began hanging out with other Vietnam Vets I met there.

On Veterans Day, we’d decided to go down to the West LA VAMC to visit one of my friend’s friends who was recovering from bilateral amputations below the knees. We stocked up on Anne Green Springs in our Bota bottles, rolled a bunch of joints and stopped at the Carl’s Junior in Lancaster to load up on Burgers/fries for all the guys (6) in his buddy’s bay before heading down into the Valley.

When we got up to the second floor and rolled out of the elevator, the stench of old poop and urine hit us immediately. All six of the guys were amputees- some both hands, some legs and some in combinations of hand and foot. The nurse orderlies were all down in the day room drinking pop and watching The Young and the Breastless. They couldn’t be bothered to help other than to tell us where the clean sheets and towels were.

One by one, we got them into wheelchairs and rolled them in naked into the big shower area. Everybody got a shit, shave and a shine and new linen. We piled the dirty shit in the hall and covered it with the towels that we used to shower them with. It cut down that shit smell. Then we rounded up more wheelchairs and got them all downstairs and out in the east garden area away from the front door in order to properly medicate them.

We said our goodbyes and promised to come back soon but I think that was probably a hollow promise. I never went back. You couldn’t pay me to. It was so depressing I can’t explain in words. I moved up here in April of ’74 after the the Cal Jam and never went near any VAMCs again until Cupcake started harassing me in ’89 about my own back problems. And that explains why I’m here writing this.

The ProPublica article discusses the dismal shape VAMCs are in but that’s old news. When has VA, or VBA/VHA ever been in good shape. The VA’s Cemetery Commission is in great shape. They just did a bang up job burying my mom at Arlington.  The article talked about employees quitting due to being overworked. I can understand. If VA fires everyone or lays them off except for the supervisors, who’d going to do the work? And if the VHA poohbahs then come back and say oops. We changed our mind. We’re rehiring, do you honestly think any self-respecting person would go back knowing they may get shitcanned again next year?

I’ve known a lot of folks who have worked for VA and all of them say the rules are too strict. Too much training on what to say/not to say, too much gender respect training, too much HR breathing down your neck to make sure you are meeting your expected goals, too many performance reviews. That’s just the VAMC. You should see what the claims processors at the Puzzle Palaces are subjected to on performance expectations. How about the thousands of  staff attorneys in DC servicing the 135 VLJs? Their performance reviews are brutal. It explains in part why we’re getting such crazy BVA decisions. Some VLJs are flat out anti-Vet and their staff have to learn which way to slant the appeals. The staff attys. are also being tasked to crank out impossible numbers of decisions in a short period of time, explain why or lose their jobs.

AI was going to be the VA’s godsend to eradicate the backlog. But if 74% of everything you touch has to be done over, the waiting period is just never going to improve. Instead of just winning a claim or appeal these days, I then have to file a supplemental disagreeing with the ratings % and the effective date. VA denies and I take it to the Board again. I get a new “win” and VA screws it up a third time. And this is a big reason why we have a horrible problem with the backlog at the Board. It’s turned into a big game of “Mother, may I?”

I can see the writing on the wall for Dugout  Doug. He’s out there on the Apology Tour handing out Doug Collins Challenge Coins to raise the morale according to the Propublica article. These are the hollow actions you are reduced to when you have nothing left to offer Veterans. These kinds of drive-by appearances strangely remind me of politicians. I had hoped we would finally turn over a new leaf with this administration and how it would benefit Veterans. It didn’t and I doubt it ever will.

VA has, over the years been a notorious dumping ground for Senators’ and Congressmens’ children job-wise. Becoming a full-blown Government Agency in ’88 has not cured the disease. No political party is at fault. They’re all equally avaricious. Vets are a commodity- just like oil.  The average IQ at VA is not the problem. Most VA employees who stay are smart. They’re feather bedders. Once you reach the higher ranks, there are no more performance reviews-other than the ones which make sure you don’t win any SMC.

Happy Vets Day. Go out and find a Vet to help. One called me yesterday and I asked him if he was going out to Applebee’s for his free meal. He laughed and said he did that about 3 years ago and the line was out the door and into the parking lot- and that was just the lunch crowd-not the dinner stampede.