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Author
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Topic: Being an American
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Major Hippie
Pilot
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posted 09-14- 12:19 AM
   
Tuesday morning, I rolled out of bed around 10:30 am. Working the evening shift means I always wake up around this time. After the morning piss & letting the dog out to piss, I stumbled back towards the PC to check my email & such, while a waiting for dail up to connect, the phone rang, it was my mother-in-law, she broke the news to me about the world trade center & the pentagon. The dis-belief was instant, I woke the wife with the news. I turned on CNN as quick as I could. Me & my wife watched the horrorable images on the screen. Tuesday is Friday to me, the end of the work week, while contuning to watch the reports, I got ready for work. I listening to the news on radio, as I drove. I do phone tech support for dell & was only at work for an hour & 1/2 & was then allowed to return home, no one was calling...
I returned home still listening to radio news. We watched the news for hours. The next morning, after we awoke, we of course were still watching the news reports. I had a few chores around the house that needed to be done before I went to give blood. I had to go outside to get something. To walk out the front door, I passed by the TV, the image being played over & over again of the second plane hitting the south tower. Coming down my front porch steps, my mind was engrossed in what I had seen. I don't know what exactly happened next, but my right foot faultered & twisted & I feel from the steps of front porch. My right foot was badly twisted & bruised. I got up & hopped on one foot to my car, got the things out of the trunk I was going to get when I fell, dammit I was going to get what I was after...
After I got back up the steps & into the house, my wife checked my foot, nothing was broken, still the wife wanted to go to the emergency room, but I refused to go, I laid on the couch & watch the news for the rest of the day, the pain I felt was nothing compared to the pain I saw. My foot swelled up & became to painful to walk on un-assisted, my wife gave me her father's cane. Let me take a moment to tell you about my father-in-law. His name was Elwood & he died three years ago. He had been in the Invasion on D-Day as a medic at Normandy. Twelve days later he was shot in the head, the bullet lodged in the center of his brain. While he lay wounded, enemy planes bombed the area. Again, he was wounded in the head by the shrapnel. They had told the soldiers anyone with a head wound should not be recovered as, at that time, so little could be done for head injures, most died even with treatment. But one of the soldiers collecting the wounded saw the Red Cross patch on his uniformed & felt compelled to pick him up. Elwood received what little treatment that could be given at the time. He was latter transferred to a french hospital that had be liberated. His head wounds caused sever seizures, so he was chained to the floor of the hospital basement as not to hurt himself.
Finally, it was decided to send him home. But Elwood needed help to get home, but no abled body man could be spared. Another wounded soldier, a man who had never met Elwood before, said he wound take care of him & see that he made it home. His name was Fate, a paratrooper who suffered from shell shock. He cared for Elwood on the voyage home & got him back to his Mississippi home. Over the years, Elwood had many close brushes with death, he had over fifty brain operations over the many years (althought the bullet was never removed), as well as therapy & all that goes with it... The man learned to walk & function again. By the time I first met him 14 years ago, I meet a man who had married his true love, (she married him AFTER he was wounded) raised a family of 4 (he named his only son Fate, he later called me his son too), who walked, talked (with much intellegance, opinion & zeal) & DROVE A CAR (quiet well I might add)!
When it was shown on TV, Americans burning the American flag in protest, when everyone was saying they should be stopped, Elwood spoke up & said he almost died so they could have that right, & said it was their right to to do so, so let them, even though his disagreed with it. A true man of Democracy.
When he died three years ago, I wept as if my own father had died. We still miss him today... He never stopped loving his country, never once expressed regret over what had happened to him & said he would do it again [though he once said he would probably would try to duck faster, next time  ].He was one hell of a Man. So, now here we are. For a moment we though, if Elwood was around, we would ask him about his thoughts, but as soon as we thought that, we were also glad he was not here to see this. We know what he would have thought & we know he would have wept & been sick for days.
I now hobble around the house on his favorite cane, I thanked him for allowing me to use it. It has marbles in the handle that rattle as I walk. The marbles are colored RED, WHITE, & BLUE! So remember this, enemies of the U.S.A. We will fight you, with a pride in our hearts that you could not grasp or imagine, sense of fellowship & resolve you can never hope to break. We are Americans, nothing more, nothing less! And we NEVER SAY DIE! (except of course when we have an enemy in our sights!) GOD BLESS AMERICA! hip63  ------------------
...remember always fly HIGH!!!
http://groovygalaxy.50megs.com/psychedelicsquadron.html IP: Logged |
nealg
Pilot
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posted 09-14- 12:14 PM
Thank you, Major Hippie, for sharing that; I have tears flowing uncontrollably, tears not of sorrow but of pride, for Elwood and for you. God Bless You, my friend, and God Bless the peacekeepers and free thinking people throughout the world.Resolve is a word, just as freedom and peace are concepts. Those who attacked us think they are resolved. They have yet to see one half of what resolve means. What may be saddest is that they have no idea of what the concepts of peace and freedom are - and the lengths a resolved people will go to to establish them.
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nealg=FC= IP: Logged |
Psi
Pilot
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posted 09-14- 12:32 PM
I'm with Neal on this MH, thanks for getting my tears working once again (like they needed it )P IP: Logged |
Jerry
Pilot
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posted 09-14- 01:28 PM
Thank you MH. We love you for that.IP: Logged | |
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