A Letter Sealed With Silver Duct Tape

Tuesday I spent accomplishing nothing toward getting my history of the fire department written.

I spent much of the day watching on-line movies which I had no business watching, then most of the evening watching the second part of the Ken Burns movie The War, a history of World War II, which everybody should be watching.

Even though I was a tiny boy during World War II, the Burns film triggered vivid memories. I remembered the fear that the Japs or Germans would bomb our house; we were supposed to hide under the bed when bombs fell. Even though I was only four or five years old, my part in the war effort was flattening tin cans with a hatchet on a stump in the backyard for the scrap metal drive.

I remember War Bond posters which asked Have You Killed A Jap Today?.

I remember news reels showing Jap soldiers tossing babies in the air and catching them on the points of bayonets.

I remember the excitement when the father of a kid down the block came home from the war on leave. He mounted a display of things he’d taken from dead Japs and Germans: a real Luger pistol, a helmet with an iron spike on top, a white flag with a vicious red dot, a Jap sword, a pair of chopsticks, and other exotic items.

I remember being so happy when Daddy got his notice to report for duty because I was sure my Dad would bring me home neat battle souvenirs like that other kid had… and I remember my mother beating me bloody when I said I was happy about Daddy going off to war.

I remember the widespread joy when news of the Atomic Bomb came, one American bomb that would kill whole cities full of Japs. Strangers hugged. People danced in the streets. The man at the corner store gave me a free coke and a punchborad ticket which won a quarter to celebrate. There was such an air of relief: those damn Japs would not be able to kill us any more. We would not have to hide under the bed when they came in the night bombing.

And I remember my puzzlement when some person at school said some people were questioning the use of the Atomic Bomb. Where the Hell were they during The War? Don’t they realize what Japs and Germans do to captured people? Didn’t they see the films of American survivors of the Baatan Death March? Or what prisoners looked like when American soldiers liberated German concentration camps to open the Jew cages? Without the Atomic Bomb, it would have been us in those cages.

The prevailing feeling was that we did not drop nearly enough A-Bombs.

And I remember the appalling sense of creeping apathy which permeated the country during my early school years as politicians pissed away every advantage American soldiers had gained for our country.

Enough of that.

Yesterday’s mail brought an envelope sealed with duct tape. An unsigned card. No return address. The card contained a one-hundred dollar bill. The card said, “Thanks. God bless”.

Ginny and I puzzled over who could have sent it and why. We can think of nothing we’ve done in recent months that would warrant anyone thanking us for anything.

We are grateful for this surprise gift and we can certainly use it, but it is a happy mystery.