IT’S barely evening, you still have time. You don’t have to make up something solemn or grand like a politician. Just say Hey, it’s Veterans Day, what are you up to?
On one occasion, oh, something like 15 years ago, I actually said to my nephews, in some kind of thoughtless, dumbass media-noise reflex, Thank you for your service, as if the kids had just dried my car at the car wash exit. I felt like an idiot. Never said it again.
Today I made the usual rounds via text, email, even snail mail, which you have to plan for a week ahead of time, as you may recall. I texted the nephews, leatherneck Dave, gyrene Rob. They served with the Marines in Iraq, two tours each. They were there around the time my followers in Iraq were demanding that I come over and form a government. That was awkward.
In a twofer email, I combined the day’s regards to my Sunday woodworking-shop buddies, Larry and John. Subject line: Get back to work superheroes.
Just because it’s Veterans Day and you swell Joes landed on Omaha Beach with Ronald Reagan and John Wayne, don’t think you get to goof off.
John joined the Navy at 17, enlisted from New Cumberland, West Virginia. He’ll correct me if I’m wrong but I seem to think he had never seen the ocean. After signing up, he spent some number of years not on the ocean but in it, stalking Soviet submarines.
Larry was drafted from Glen Cove, Maine, and trained in jungle combat at a vast Army installation once named for a traitor. Now it’s Fort Cavazos, Texas. There, military intelligence, such as it is, hears that college-educated Larry is rumored to possess the superpowers of a touch typist. They snatch him out of the Vietnam line by the back of his neck: Son, you’re too valuable to sleep with your head in the mud like Gump, like Bubba, ordinary men who hunt and peck. You’re going to West Germany with the Military Police. You’re going to arrest Gumps and Bubbas and type up reports like Gumps and Bubbas never did. You’re going to type your way through your hitch with ten fingers—ten, soldier!
Wrote to my friend Rusty Barton in Florida, Rusty who… I don’t know, took shop instead of typing, went to Vietnam.
Rusty Barton! How the hell are ya?
If you saw my most recent blog post you’re aware Trump has hired me as his chief speechwriter, I’ll be packing up for DC any day now. Other than that, no big news to share.
It’s the daily joys that matter. We’re enjoying grandparenthood, as I’m sure you are. It really is the best of human reproduction, isn’t it?
Then blah blah, irrelevant bullshit about me. We pick it up with:
Still riding… got out on the iron piggy yesterday for a blast down to the woodworking shop a couple of towns south of here, the usual Sunday-afternoon meeting in the man cave. Five of us made it yesterday. We solved all the world’s problems, as always. Please don’t let that get around, we get embarrassed when people heap gratitude upon us.
What did you do on Veterans Day, may I ask?
This year, I put my Veterans Day greetings in the mail—the old-fashioned mail—to a Harley brother in Missouri. Last year, on Veterans Day, I didn’t get a return email from Stray Dog. Nor the year before, and I think maybe the year before that. If he’s dead there’s no obit I can find. Maybe his email was hacked, he set up a new address I don’t have, went off-grid for some reason, who knows? He had started spending part of the year somewhere in the Yucatan, could be he’s down there for good now.
He was the subject of a documentary film by Debra Granik, the director who made Jennifer Lawrence famous. (She read one of my film scripts once, told me it was vivid. She being Granik, not Lawrence. But I suppose there are plenty of stories she may like but not want to spend ten years of her life trying to produce and direct. We never did pursue the possibilities very far.)
Here’s a long-ish piece about the documentary, more than you’re going to want to know. Do catch the film, though, if you happen to see it on a streaming service near you. Thank you for your streaming service… God, let’s not start saying that.
Tony DePaul, November 11, 2024, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
