Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

• 1 Thessalonians 5:11

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

• Ecclesiastes 12:10

The New Boilerplate

My wife filled a small book with “Angel” on the cover.  It was hidden with a box of crafting things.  On 18 July 2025, I thought I had posted the last of these.  But this little angel book held a prayer, followed by 71 quotes.  So, the “with a little help” series is back in business for a while.  And it will be fun for me.  She did not attribute any of the quotes.  The first quote was from James A. Garfield, the 20^th president of the USA.  The next one was disputed, with some thinking it originated with Teddy Roosevelt and others saying Fred Astaire.  After the prayer, these might be on the lighter side.

Her quote

“You know you are getting old when all the names in your black book have M.D. after them.”

• Harrison Ford

The Discussion

Do they still have little black books?

For those who do not know what a little black book is…

A little black book was where the playboy, the philanderer, the adulterous male (and rarely the female of the species) kept the contact information for all the members of the opposite sex that they had “dated.”  They might have annotations as to how good the “date” was.

So, Harrison Ford was admitting that he had such a book, but now that he was older, the only contact information that he kept in a safe place was contact information on his doctors.  So, according to Mark Twain, dissecting the joke kills the joke at some point.

But I have to confess that I had a little black book at one point, but it was under very strange circumstances.

My wife was going to college, working on a nursing degree when I was given orders to report to Ft. Belvoir, VA right outside Washington, DC.  From the Officer’s Club, I could see sailboats on the Potomac River and the stately grounds of Mount Vernon, home of the first president of the USA, George Washington.  From Nederland, TX to Fort Belvoir, VA was about 1400 miles since I went by my parent’s home in Mississippi to say good-bye.

But as I was packing to leave, my wife handed me a little black book.  It was little, small enough to put in a wallet.  It had a black cover.  It was a book.  And the pages were lined, and tabbed from A to Z.  It was a little black book, designed to put contact information into.

I nearly stuttered.  “Why?”

She said that I would meet a lot of people in the school that might be powerful allies down the road.  As it turned out, the idea was ridiculous.  If anyone became influential, and a few contacts were, they were only influential in that they changed their address from the USA to Germany as I was about to do.

But I stared at the book, and I knew the cultural implications of a little black book.  Under those circumstances, my wife trusted me.  The next day, I left for Virginia, leaving behind my wife and a little boy, not quite one year old.

I forgot about the book, as it was useless at a temporary assignment for four months before shipping out to Europe and the Cold War.  But one of the contacts that I should have written down was a major general.  Among engineering officers, there is only one general of higher rank, the Chief Engineering General of the Army, a Lieutenant General.  But this major general and another major general later agreed with my report which led to a building being built for about $6 million, sadly after I had rotated back to the USA.  The general wrote a note in the margin, stating that he remembered me from our meeting at Fort Belvoir, and he thought at the time that I had a keen sense of engineering.

But my wife joined me at Fort Belvoir, and we went to Germany together.

I was assigned a vertical engineering platoon, meaning that my soldiers were carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc.  In contrast, a horizontal platoon were the earthmovers.  When they needed a bridge they called my platoon, but in the meantime, we built and renovated buildings.

My little black book emerged from my luggage in Germany, and I wrote the name of every soldier under my leadership in that book.  No contact information in that almost all of them lived in the barracks.  I knew where all the ones in family housing lived or on the German economy.

But after I moved to the Facilities Engineer, I set the little black book aside.

I found it a few years ago.  I read through the names, and I closed my eyes each time.  Only two or three did not conjure up a memory.  Probably those were the guys who were competent and quiet.  You tend to remember the exceptional or the troublemakers.  And with each memory, I shed a few tears.

But in looking through my contacts on my cell phone, there are contacts for old workmates, family, and yes, doctor’s offices.  Oh, and one for the church.

And if I deleted the unnecessary entries, I would almost be down to Harrison Ford’s definition.

But again, I shed a few tears.  I was the platoon leader for those guys.  They held me up while I served them.  Jesus said to be the master, you must be servant of all.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory