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THE GOOD OLD DAYS
By: d. Glorso
As we age little things change. Not too important we think, but each day we are a little closer to death. Our body’s clock, is still ticking while the mind tries desperately to hold it all together. Now at the age of 72 we come to the realization, the end is near. Funny, 72 is considered a good pulse rate.

Healthy most of life but 2020 has been a wake-up call. Actually we have been dying since the day of birth. But thankfully, most humans call it “living”.

“This is really living”, my Dad Sam Glorso would always say as he sat with a fishing pole in hand. He relaxed at the edge of Mallard Lake in Keeneyville, Illinois. Dad gazed across the blue clear waters toward the green weeping willows on the other side of the pond.

He loved that little lake. Pete Moss and/or gravel loaded in his dump truck. He brought a little piece of Mallard Lake to his clients living in the city, where immigrant families grew their lovely gardens along the concrete alley-ways of Chicago. Beautiful, the smell of fresh tomatoes for the pasta sauces were simmering on the stoves of Italian immigrant kitchens.

They’re sweet smelling gardens brought to you by Sam Glorso, a coal-man in the winter and a dirt-man in the spring. As a boy I watched him enjoy his toil to make life better for those Italian country folks trapped in the city. Who could not love a man with a generous heart for his older generation? He delivered a piece of the old country to the Brown Chicago “Daygoes” who crossed those oceans for a better life in America.

How often do we forget their sacrifice and boldness? They managed an often painful trip to the “New World” for the good of the family. Then in his broken prime, Sam Glorso hauled his family across the continent to the California Coast. Where the climate is more like the Sicilian shores, where our ancestors began their arduous journey. They came to America from a place only known to us as “the old country”.

Imagine now; why do we suffer so over these Covid-19 times? It is a sign of a new beginning. Like our assessors, embrace the transition. More people will someday be in the happiest life they know, recalling these as the good old days. Where, loving families cared dearly for one another.

FOREWORD
The poems and paintings presented by Dean Glorso In Search of the Laughing Place arise from yearnings and recollections, some nostalgic and harking back to childhood, others connecting to history and the circumstances of a veteran's homecoming. Together the poems and iconic paintings are often complementary; and offer us admission and transit through the author's lifetime journey in the form of lyric narrative poems supported by original art, a work that blends empathy, irony and pathos.
The recurring themes for resolution in this fine, engaging book bring light upon the past, including stories of family and those lost in conflict. The central theme of longing and homecoming is best exemplified when the author returns to a place frequented by him and his friends while growing up in Keeneyville, Illinois. However, the "Laughing Place" of the title is more than a search for a physical environment. Both the poems and evocative paintings become our compass pointing the way to an ideal; perhaps now lost as it once was, but one that is still very real in our memory, and held permanent in our hearts and minds.
To Dean Glorso laughter is as important to the mind of mankind as nourishment from food is to the human body. "In Search of the Laughing Place" takes us on a verbal and visual journey to a place of the heart. Sometimes the journey to laughter is not direct, but through our experiences in life we must draw ourselves to the "Laughing Place" we crave. Dean Glorso's book of poems and paintings unleashes thoughts and emotions needed to remind us that laughter is good for the soul.

Dan Guenther, USMC Vietnam Veteran
Award Winning Author & Poet

THE MAJOR'S MAIL CALL (1st Place National Award VA's Festival of Arts 2016)

Like Santa Claus, I drop the sack
Letters from the "World", I sort and stack

Some familiar some new, as I flip through the mass
Some special for Marines, missing or killed in the act

Vietnam, my job, the mail takes care
Then I see the letter, scent fills the air

The handwriting so perfect, the black ink so clear
The blue-green envelope smells sweet and dear

She doesn't yet know, the word just around
The Major's mission, must have met ground

He"s the XO, I look up to, all give him respect
I stare long and hard at the letter, and cock my neck

And reflect on the times, I handed him the stack
Blue-green on top, in his chair he'd lean back

His feet found their way, to the crate called his desk
With a smile he'd thank me, I'd deliver the rest

Leaving him to read the letter, scented so sweet
Now I wonder how many years, she will weep

Not knowing the fate, of her man so dear
Missing in Action, must be every love's fear

The cross on the wall, not yet removed
The Major's Mail Call, death not proved

MY GLEAMING MACHINE
My gleaming machine packed for the road
How I loved the freedom and biker code
Painstakingly crammed for weather, drastic and fair
Complex nonetheless simple, I rode it with care

Senses heighten on the road, beneath blue sky
In my mind and my memory the air rushes by
A teeming world reduces a freeway to alley
Autonomy on two wheels is a minds true ally

A few gamble, some venture on crowded Dark Street
Cars speed down the Parker, in full summer heat
I embark on a journey through mountain and tree
Beyond wheat fields and homes, I roll past the sea

Encircled by nature, my county my home
I stop unaccompanied, fish-camp alone
These days of travel are some of the best
Solitude � no stress, freedoms crest

I�m dependent on my own free will
I look for beauty in flat-land or hill
No one to tell me when to ride
One soul pleases, only one pride

Some talk thunder and trailer the bike
Many dress the part but settle for trike
Movement and sunshine together in one
Heal on pavement, armed with a gun

Two wheels near four, need rules and code
Fight for position in a jam clustered road
Watch the good driver, for soon they turn bad
Cars, trucks and buses will make the wits mad

Invisible I rode in the rush of the day
My flesh protects metal, some will say
A donor of organs, my card should read
Ancestors of morons, on bikers they feed

How dare they confiscate my liberty and will
They don�t know I helped support Freedom Hill
In a place called the Nam with the U.S.M.C.
Then built a golf course by the Andaman Sea

In Asia a biker has even more peril
Run down like dogs or cats trot feral
A vision of crash must always be with thee
Mind set and leather is much of what saved me

OSCAR BART by d. glorso

Oscar Bart was a lath and plaster man
in the nineteen thirties he honed his skills
A building tradesman when craft meant pride
When we knew him, he was mired by age

Plaster of Paris put mud in his veins
One leg shorter put a weave in his step
The sideways motion
Made him a charismatic old hipster

The thin paper of a Chesterfield King
Permanently stuck to his lip
Bellowed smoke across his cheeks
His eyes squinted from irritation

His face never clean shaven
But his thick purple lips smiled largely
As he walked into the old store
We would rise to the occasion

And listen closely as to what he had to say
As his wisdom and humor
Gave us a charge
Smart-aleck kids we liked the old fool

We're now past old Oscar's age
And stuck in ways of habit and routine
But will a poet someday inscribe
A line or two in honor of us

A Greatest Generation released the helm
It's now our time to impress the young
With craft and savvy for them to believe
Swagger on, swagger on....

Long after General Winfield Scott�s Army of reinforcements headed southwesterly from Chicago, to help defend the Illinois settlers from the Sauk Indian Leader, named Blackhawk. And long after the American Civil War. And long after my grandfather, Oscar Jackson fought in the trenches during the First World War. And not too long after my Father, Samuel S. Glorso returned from fighting in the Second World War. And only a few years after I saw Korean War soldiers bivouacked along the highways on the way into The City of Chicago. But before my childhood friend Richie Mullin joined the United States Marine Corps. And before many from this little Town of Keeneyville, Illinois served in Vietnam; and before Andy Warhol painted 32 portraits of Campbell�s soup cans; and before Arlo Guthrie sang about the Illinois Central trains �Rolling along, past houses farms and fields�; and before I started putting survey monuments across this land; as a boy in my hometown of Keeneyville, I peered across a Campbell�s Soup tomato farm through a surveyor�s �Dumpy Level� for the first time in my life. It was a memorable moment for me, as it was the beginning of my fascination with my surroundings, and the technology that I would soon use in a Land Surveying career spanning more than 45 years. It is a career where I would make a difference by literally putting a mark upon the world.
The Dumpy Level, with optics I had never witnessed, was set up by surveyors laying-out the new construction of Case Foundation Company�s industrial machine shop, only 30 feet or so East of our tiny home along U.S. Highway 20, about 25 miles West of Chicago, Illinois. This was the start of big changes for the little Town of Keeneyville, and it would also be the start of my adult life where I would begin thinking about the future, and taking note of construction techniques, procedures, and technology that would make all these changes to Keeneyville possible. This moment in my life was also the beginning of a transition from being a child happy to spend summer days swinging on a rope tied high from a cottonwood tree at the place we called �The Laughing Place�, to being an adult.
In adult life, I would find myself yearning for the days I spent with my friends there, and use the changing technology to my advantage, by starting a �Facebook� group page, called �Keeneyville Swamp Rats� to reconnect with people from my hometown. The naming of the Facebook page was easy, as it represented �Baby Boomers� from this little town of lowlands and ponds. A name given to us by the more affluent children of Lake Park High School established some miles away from our town, but just across the street from a very posh, well known country club and golf course called �Medinah�. The condescending name Keeneyville Swamp Rats stuck with us, and today it is a name we wear with pride, and it reminds us of the wonderful little town that was long ago swallowed up by the expanding metropolis of Chicago-land.
One Swamp Rat that I reconnected with is Doug Ehorn. Doug also a writer and veteran, had written a book called, �Keeneyville Kids�. Doug�s book reminded me of the many wonderful people I grew up with, and he also recently started a list on Facebook of Military Veterans who served from our home town. The name of Richie Mullin was put at the top of the list of Marines who served. As Richie was the only one of us from Keeneyville who was killed during the Vietnam War. I remember Richie well, as he was a fellow Swamp Rat who lived closest to the old Laughing Place, a place now converted into a wonderful DuPage County Forest Preserve, called Mallard Lake. With Doug being, an Air Force Vet, retired Environmentalist, and fellow Swamp Rat who wanted to have a memorial service meeting at Mallard Lake for Richie on this Veteran�s Day, I came up with a land surveying idea for our fallen Veteran Hero.
I�ve used this idea before, and wrote about it in Colorado�s Professional Land Surveyor�s magazine, Side Shots Volume 33, Number 2, May Journal 2002 in an article called �One of Colorado�s Prides�. In the article I described placing a survey monument at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, in Denver, Colorado. I named the survey control monument �Tony Shiya�, after a young surveyor employee who was killed in a car accident, during the Red Rocks renovation, and new visitor center construction project. This is an idea that I presented to Doug Ehorn and we decided to use it for our friend Richie Mullin, by placing the monument this Veterans Day as pictured here. Doug will place it at or near the place we called The Laughing Place. Later a licensed land surveyor, registered in Illinois will establish GPS coordinates for the position and record the �control� monument with the appropriate agency. The 3-1/4 inch bronze monument reads: �RICHIE MULLIN USMC, WELCOME HOME, THE LAUGHING PLACE, KEENEYVILLE SWAMP RATS�.
Most everyone in the Baby Boomer Generation has someone they know who was killed in the Vietnam War. It is my hope that other Land Surveyor/Veterans will take the time to look up at least one of the 58,272 names on this web site www.vvmf.org and prepare a monument named in the veteran�s honor. Placement is up to the Land Surveyor, but I believe hometown parks are a wonderful place to Welcome Home our Vietnam War Heroes. The memorial monument set flush with the ground takes up no more space than a sprinkler head. Besides, every land surveyor knows, the more control points and benchmarks we have the better we like it.
Semper Fidelis,
Dean F. Glorso, Veteran USMC Vietnam 1968 � 1969
Colorado Professional Land Surveyor PLS# 16109 (Active)

A LONGSTANDING PROFESSION - By: Dean Glorso, Colorado PLS #16109
�I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. And see if I could not learn what it had to teach. And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived� - Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862.
Thoreau is mostly known for his writings while living in a cabin at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. He traveled often to Maine and worked as a Land Surveyor for about 9 years of his short 44 years of life. As with most �famous� people of our profession, Thoreau didn�t become famous for his particular work as a surveyor, but for his accomplishments of a passion most dear to his heart.
As an artist, I want to illustrate a history of our profession in a �picture�. After all, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. J. B. Guyton, Editor of Side Shots graciously allowed my painting, �A Longstanding Profession�, to be displayed on the cover of this wonderful publication.
In thinking about an art project, I first Googled: �Land Surveyor Artists.� One name that came up was G. K. �Ken� Allred, a past president of the Alberta Land Surveyor Association, Canada. Ken published a remarkable article, �Survey Art � An Interesting Subject�. (I encourage you all to surf the web and read it.) As I read Ken�s article, and did more searching of �Land Surveyor Art� images, I realized no-one had made a painting telling the longstanding history of our profession, thus my reason for doing so. I hope you all enjoy my painting, and read into it, what you wish.
The famous surveyors and surveying objects depicted on the cover of this issue of Side Shots are: Beginning at the top right of the painting, Captain James Cook (1728-1776) standing on his chart of the Newfoundland Coast; Thence continuing left, boustrophedonically (as fields are plowed); to Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862); Thence to the Egyptian Rope Stretchers (2700 B.C.); Thence Edmund Gunter�s Chain (1620); Thence the Surveyor�s Plane Table (prior to 1830); Thence the 30/60 Degree Triangle; Thence George Washington (1732-1799); Thence David Rittenhouse�s Compass (1732-1796); Thence Abraham Lincoln (1809-1864); Thence the Plumb Bob Target; Thence Charles Mason (1728-1786) & Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) Line; Thence A GPS Satellite (1st Launch 1978); Thence Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) & William Clark (1770-1838); Thence Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) on the US Nickel; Thence Charles Trimble�s Robotic Total Station (2000); Thence Andrew Ellicott (1754-1820), the surveyor who completed the Mason / Dixon Line to the West; Thence The Roman & Greek Surveyors (about 300 A.D.) ; Thence Benjamin Banneker (1732-1796), the surveyor appointed by Washington to layout Washington D.C.; Thence the Brass Plumb Bob (about which a poem I wrote and was published in Side Shots many years ago by Art Hipp), and Thence Terminating at Author Hipp (1925-2007) a Colorado Land Surveying Giant, and Founding Editor of Side Shots Magazine.
The placement of this collage has significance to me as a surveyor/artist. Example: Lincoln is placed North of the Mason / Dixon line in Pennsylvania where he made a very famous speech. Everyone has their own interpretation of a piece of Art. I challenge you, the Surveying viewer to write less than a thousand words to describe your interpretation of this art. Then send your thoughts to Side Shots for possible publication. The surveying community would be interested to know what you think.

JOAN OF SMART by: Dean Glorso
Even in tired clothing, Mum always looked stately to me
Born modest in Wisconsin, her father survive the Great War
A West Allis drafter, he married a college girl
But cancer snatched his love

Joan was left motherless at the young age of seven
The death brought her duty too young
She prized a sister age four, and a brother age two
Exiled to Todd County, she lived with her Auntie

The South Dakota Mission taught her faith to survive
The plight of the Natives, taught her love
Her wits were honed keen in the Sand Hills of Nebraska
The Nuns taught her poise and dignity, Saint Mary�s, O�Neill

Hope came to her at the place where Crazy Horse died
An Italian-American warrior sang in the cafe�
Words grabbed her heart, the union began
Then off to war he�d ride

Feeling the need to bond with Italian family
She moved to Chicago, pregnant with child
In the foreign city of in-laws and out-laws
Communications failed

Exiled again, she and her babe found shelter
In the Army of Salvation
While the Army of War fought on
The aid of strangers shaped friends

The struggle continued when her hero returned
The song in his voice scratched by War
The bloodless wounds that trauma can bring
Changed the man she loved

Four more children blessed the couple�s life
The Greatest Generation passes on
The knowledge and smarts of Mother�s like Joan
Filters on to us now

Learn more. Love more from women of the past
May the grace of God let unions last
Keep smart thoughts at the surface of your mind
For life is filled with change, and wars bring out the wrath of man

HERO�S

You�re a military hero, home at last
Will you be known as time goes past?

What made you do it why were you brave?
Your buddies didn�t ask, but still you gave

More than your share of effort for the cause
You made the ultimate, while others pause

If called could I react as you, die for another�s freedom?
What would go through my mind could the moment come

Could I too volunteer my life, for the few?
Brother Marines the Corps is proud of you

RESOLVE
By Cpl. Dean F. Glorso, Mail Clerk
USMC �Draftee� - Vietnam Veteran 68-68

In youth it takes time to develop direction
As I floundered through the adolescent years
Giving no mind to purpose or consequence
I rely on luck

Waiting for something to grab me
Something to hold me tight
As I wave in the breeze of life
A godsend disguised as war

Forced my lazy hand to act
Struggle heightens my senses
The men around me are my heroes
Marine Aviators with wits of steel

My eyes focus
My ears perk up
My mouth stays shut
I observe, listen, and do my job

Only now I realize
How important this time was for me
The Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps
Near the seventh decade of my life � I live with resolve