Veterans Day

 FTW 11/11/22 - Veterans' Day

I always feel somewhat guilty when military honors days come around.  People are always talking about going to the cemetery to salute their loved ones...but I have no close relatives who were in the military.  Two uncles were, and were in concentration camps, but they were uncles I never knew at all and I don't have a clue where they are buried.

My father dearly wanted to be in the Navy.  In 1934, when he was 19-20, there was a waterfront strike in San Francisco.  All of the ships in the bay were stranded and none of the employees were allowed to get off.  My father was working on one of the ships.

My grandmother decided that her little boy shouldn't be part of the strike and went to see union organizer, Harry Bridges, to insist that her son be let go.  And he was.  He was furious with her for spoiling the adventure he was having.

A couple of years later, he enlisted in the Navy but when he took his physical, they discovered he was asthmatic and he was listed as 4F, so he never got a chance to go into the Navy.

He never  got a chance to ride on a Navy ship and though his career consisted of some 30+ years working on the trains, working the mail from San Francisco to Los Angeles and back again, he never even stepped on an airplane.  It always seemed so sad that he died without ever having flown anywhere.