Happy Memorial Day

Today is a bank holiday in the United States, ”to remember those who have died in the service of the nation.” That means war.

Yes, I do remember an old friend named Jim who was in the service. But I remember nobody in particular even more, just a lot of green plastic body bags being unloaded from the refrigerator containers at Alameda Naval Air Station. I happened to see them one day when I was driving a truck for the US Postal Services, on a mail collection route I did a couple of hours every afternoon in the sixties to help pay for my college education.* Lots of bodies returning from Vietnam. Jim was at least somebody. He had even served as the president of our high school student body. They say he never actually got to Vietnam, because he jumped directly from a helicopter onto a land mine. Somebody for sure, but no body to bring home.

These aren’t exactly the kind of memories I like to recall, not because they don’t make me happy, but because they separate us, like deafness and dumbness. I'm quite sure you don’t have a clue. Because if you did, you wouldn’t hang up.

It's a holiday, and so I couldn't do what I promised and get in touch with the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno to find out if mother Anne has a plot there. She wants to be buried with our father. Oh pooh, this is not at all what I intended to write about today, but somehow I was distracted. I intended to return to the little girl who claims to remember things that happened before she was born, and who ”if she doesn’t stop pouting we’re going to have to chop off her lower lip.” But I'll return to her later. Right now I gotta go, have to run.

*A Levi Strauss Scholarship paid for tuition and books.