Starch

This Week's Dinner Specials at a local restaurant include "starch and two vegetables" with the featured entree'. Starch, in restaurant parlance, means "your choice of potatoes, rice, or some funky Middle Eastern thing to soak up your gravy"

To those who served in the military forty years ago, starch has a much more sinister meaning, one that would send us screaming from any restaurant offering it. Some genius in the Pentagon decided that a liberal application of laundry starch was just the thing to keep the "fatigues" that we wore every day looking sharp. At the local commanding officer's whim, the post laundry would return our fatigues so starched that they would literally crinkle like paper. As the day wore on, our perspiration would dissolve the starch into viscous, milky rivulets that would course down our bodies until trapped at our belt or ankle lines. Belt and ankle rash were as common among GIs of that era as bikini lines are among Tanning Studio patrons today.

GI Joe began his day facing several ordeals. Making his bunk "so tight that a half dollar bounces off it" was a challenge. Running a mile in combat boots before breakfast was never a treat. Still, inserting his body into starched fatigues was oft-times the toughest thing he had to do all day. Imagine forcing your toes, then your foot, and finally your leg through the corrugations in a sheet of cardboard at 5 A.M. while your Drill Sargeant screamed at you to get into formation right now or the whole lot of you will be doing push-ups until noon.

When I left the Army, I promised myself that I would never again sleep on the ground, drive a standard shift, drink coffee, or wear starched clothing. I have from time to time violated the first three of those pledges. I will hold to Pledge #4 until my dying day though.