Veterans Day

When I was 7, the 17 year-old kid who lived across the street taught me how to throw a baseball. A year later he was in Vietnam. Three days into his tour, he ran over a mine in his Jeep. His bent dog tags were all that came home. I watched the dark blue car from Maxwell Air Force Base pull up in front of his house the day they told his mother. I can still hear her screaming, his father, a veteran himself, sitting silently, staring at the sky in a lawn chair in the front yard. My friend’s name is now on a black wall 90 miles north of here. So on a day like this, when we celebrate Veterans day with sales and promotions and patriotic commercials, I remember that kid and how he could throw a curve ball that I never mastered. And I think getting a good deal on a car is a hell of a sad way to show respect for what he and so many more have given us all.