American Legion Post 134 meets for lunch the second Thursday of every month at the Petite Auberge Restaurant in the Toco Hills Shopping Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

American Legion is an organization of U. S. Military veterans that share the ideals of service and patriotism.  If you are serving or have served in the military during war, you may be eligible for membership.  For more information  contact us . 

Next Post Meeting  
Date: Thursday, February 9, 2012
Location: Petite Auberge, 2935 N. Druid Hills Rd NE, Atlanta
Program: Valentine Sweetheart Luncheon

Answar al-Awlaki is no longer among us.  This radical Muslim cleric and imam met his end when, toward the close of September, a drone caught him in his ancestral home in Yemen where he had been hiding and plotting. Why waste ink on him?  Well, he was a traitor, born in the U.S. in 1971, but spent much of his childhood and early youth in Yemen.  He returned to America, earned a degree in engineering at Colorado State, a Master’s in education at San Diego State, and did doctoral studies in education at George Washington University. 

He was an excellent speaker, able to emotionally move non-Arabic speaking young Muslim men.  His major thrust was motivational.  Because of his in-depth readings about Islamic concentration on jihadism and mujaheedism, his emphasis on such made him an outstanding recruiter. He did a good job preaching on vice and sin also, but the fleshpots got to him and he was arrested twice in San Diego for soliciting prostitutes. Ordinarily, he refused to shake hands with a woman. 

Awlaki felt the heat of the FBI on his trail so he moved on to England for a couple of years and then to Yemen.  He quickly rose in the eyes of Al Queda as a planner.  By 2009, he was a Regional Commander and had a hand in the operations against the U.S.  He influenced the Army doctor who shot up Fort Hood.  He motivated some of the plane-jackers who made 9/11 a sadness.  He inspired the underwear bomber.  The carbomber in Times Square was  his also.  For an American citizen, Awlaki was a busy enemy of his country. 

It is perplexing, then, to hear about those legal beavers here who became concerned about our President signing a memorandum which permitted covert action to rid us of Awlaki.  Instead of seeing him as an enemy of our country in this war with Islamic extremists, they thought of him as an American citizen who should have been tried in court.  These scholars evidently didn’t give much thought to the infeasibility.  Capturing Awlaki in Yemen would have been next to impossible. It would have been better had  they thought of the thousands of Americans who have died because of Awlaki.  Legal wrangling may be appealing to some, but it does little to comfort the grieving.

Let’s have no moaning over the droning.

The Post 134 Oratorical Contest will be SAturday, January 28th at 10:00 AM.  This year's contest will be at the Walker School at 700 Cobb Parkway, Marietta, Georgia.

During the lengthy television coverage of the angry Hurricane IRENE, I was jolted into surprise when on to the screen came a shot of Grand Central Station in New York City.  Its marble was gleaming in the emptiness.  Without wishing to do so, I was taken back a few decades to a time when I used it       somewhat frequently.  It was the fun of the place to watch the human flow.  One of the standouts was the man whom I called Knight in the Big Apple. I resurrected him as I saw him in what I wrote so long ago.  Ready? 

At the time, I was at my Sunday morning best: shaved, showered, fed, reasonably comfortable, and only slightly impatient about my train.  I crouched on to a bench, gave up the thought of reading in the dim light, and slyly began taking in the sights and sounds. 

He was diagonally across from me, hunched over, gathering whatever warmth surrounded him.  He was in his forties, I’d say.  I could make out that his hair was dark and full and a bit curly.  His stubble of beard was dark.  There was a robustness about him that came through a rather unkempt appearance.  I watched him chain smoke, the wobbly  cigarettes coming from hidden corners of his dirty jacket.  I was surprised to see the thickness of the wrists, the steadiness of the hands.  I expected him to have the tremors, to be hacking stuff out of chilled lungs, to be feverishly casting about for the next touch, to be disgustingly annoying to all around him.  I could tell from his clothes and manners that he was a Knight of the Big Apple, a connoisseur of cheap wines and bad booze, a seeker of hand-outs, a shareholder of hovels, a man of independent means.

Well, he wasn’t exactly ready for an appearance as a guest lecturer on deportment, but he did serve as another lesson that generalizations about people are rather tricky. 

He was quite articulate, in a rambling sort of way.  He conned a cigarette out of an elderly gentleman who had just sat on his right.  He lit it from the stub of the smoker on his left, and proceeded to give a long and surprisingly lucid but pointless account of his latest job search.  His aging benefactor ignored him, but our narrator went on anyway.  Perhaps he saw an audience that needed convincing because he directed his remarks at a door beyond the old man. 

That task completed, he turned his attention to his attire.  First, he flicked imaginary lint from his greasy, colorless corduroy pants and then lifted his feet to snug up his blackened socks.  Satisfied with the lower extremities, he shrugged off his heavily stained jacket, peeled off a ragged sweater to     reveal a dirty, yellowish white undergarment that was split half way down the back.  He scratched himself delicately in select spots, rearranged the upper garments and settled back to enjoy a        well-earned smoke. 

His respite was brief.  A woman took the now empty spot to his left.  She rattled open her NY TIMES.  Instantly alert to this new opportunity, he craned his head toward her newspaper and read along with her as he smoked.  With a New Yorker’s indifference to such suffering she tolerated him.  He billowed smoke past her face.  He was patient and polite.  He didn’t ask for a section of the paper.  Neither did he indicate that he wasn’t keeping up with her speed reading.

I watched him until time for my train.  I went back and forth from amusement to fascination to disgust.  I had to fight that.  Sure, he was dirty and unkempt and unproductive, but he was still a man for all that.  He was doing no harm, making no demands, issuing no decrees.  He was simply an honest bum. 

Uncontrollably, I tried to catch his eye as I sat up to go to my train.  There was no eye contact.  He was too engrossed in his neighbor’s copy of “Spring Fashions.”

October seventh was a day of adventure, excitement and reflection for our own Ralph Moor, P.C. He was honored by South Georgia College for his many years of support. An economics classroom was named for him at a luncheon attended by family, students, faculty and the administration of the school. After which, he was given a personal tour of the campus.

 Ralph developed an outline for a course to be taught in his newly named classroom to teach young people to stay out of debt and live debt free lives.  He urges them to make money your servant and not your master.  These and other words of wisdom are included in his “Immutable Laws of Economics”, was quoted by the President of the college at the luncheon.

 Ralph taught economics and was the academic dean at South Georgia College for three years in the late forties following three years in Washington D.C and Winder, Georgia as executive secretary in the office of Senator Richard B. Russell.

 It was a fitting honor for this spry gentleman of 98 (going on 99). At an age most of us will not get to, he continues to lead the way.  Well done Ralph Moor.