Taking Home

The picture above is from when my father was in boot camp during the Second World War. As far as military uniforms go, I've always liked the Navy's. Then again, both my dad and my oldest brother were in the Navy although my grandfather (WWI) and two uncles (one in WWII and the other in Korea) were in the Army.

My sister scanned this old photo of Virg and sent it to me since the local TV station in my hometown, the city that was the home of the Five Sullivan Brothers, is doing some segment on veterans. She sent it to the station and then me.

There was a time when I thought about going into the Navy right out of high school. I never took the military test or contacted a recruiter because that would have put the hard-press on me with military recruiters constantly pestering me.

I would have gone in right before the first Gulf War, which didn't involve the Navy as much as other wars have, though I may be wrong in that assumption. I'm no scholar of military history.

But I was too interested in college instead of learning a trade such as being an electrician. I traveled to Kirksville, Missouri for schooling, which strangely enough is just north of where Virg went to high school in La Plata, birthplace of Lester Dent, author of Doc Savage pulp fiction. Virg's family settled in northeastern Missouri after my grandfather didn't do well farming in Minnesota and found better prospects in the Show Me State.

But to get back to learning a trade, as I was fond of telling my colleague where I worked previously, there are some days when I think to myself, "Maybe I should have been an electrician."

Just like anyone else who gets some years behind them, you begin to think about the past choices you've made and how little decisions have greatly affected how you got to be where you are now or who you're with or what's happened in your life in general. If you think too much about such things, the alternate causal chains may drive you crazy.

So where the am I going with this? Hell, I don't know. I've all over the place in this post.

I guess I'm thinking about living a full life and the choices I've made since Virg will head down to Iowa City at the end of the month to have major heart surgery.

One aspect of my dad's personality that I might have picked up on is that, as many people know, Virg is not afraid to give you his opinion. He can be brutal with his honesty. He's demanding. And he sometimes says exactly what's on his mind. Unfiltered.

For some jobs, like being an electrician or a meat cutter or a manager of a grocery store, those tendencies are perfectly fine. For other professions, they can be a detriment on certain occasions.

Regardless, this weekend the Nasty family heads up to Waterloo to gather belongings and other artifacts from my parent's house that is now going to be sold since they've moved into an assisted living facility. I'll be bringing back a deep freeze, gardening tools, and other assorted stuff.

I'm not going home; I'm taking home.

And that makes me sad.