Okay Veteran

Okay Veteran

Grandpa's oldest boy went to war when he was practically still in britches. He fought in World War I, and again in World War II, and lived to be an old man afterward.

I knew him as a fun-loving uncle, thin and handsome, when I was a kid. He looked just like Grandpa did.

He grew up on the farm and got an education a mile away in a one-room school.

He was gentle in nature but tough enough to fight in two wars and come home still a nice man.

When the farm had a family reunion every summer, my uncle was the fun guy, when I was a kid, even though he was in his seventies then.

He was married to a stiff English woman, one of the spoils of the war, you could say. She seemed to me to be so unsuitable for him, but I must have been wrong somehow.

My uncle loved to speed, probably a leftover piece of war adrenaline or something, and his wife would go into her wifely disapproving mode whenever he did.

As soon as everyone was at the reunion, the boys and men gathered down on the sand road past the cedar hedge. They lined the sides of the road to watch my uncle do what he did every year.

Of course, the women always forgot this ritual until they heard the roar of a car engine starting up and the males cheering loudly down by the road.

I raced to watch through the open gate in the hedge, listening to the women up on the lawn behind me, carrying on like a bunch of cackling hens.

He'll get himself killed doing that!

Somebody should put a stop to it once and for all!

He's too old to act like a stupid teenager!

Cackle, cackle, cluck.

And then it began. My uncle drove his roaring car to the top of the hill way up the road to the right of us.

Bets were called on how fast he'd go this year. Some said maybe 65 or 68.

As we watched, the car stopped at the top of the hill, was slammed into reverse, and a foot stomped on the gas.

Tires spun, ripping rapid grooves in the loose sand. But the second they got traction...

The car roared backwards down the hill, shooting exhaust fumes into the clean country air, and racing shivers up and down my spine.

Arm flung over the backseat, silver head turned to watch behind him, my uncle drove a line so straight it made the young men blush with pride.

The car never swerved, never left the road, and never hit anyone as it raced past the men and the hedge, and me at the gate, throwing up spitfuls of sand.

Way down to the left, where the road disappeared beyond the bend, the car came to a shuddering stop.

And then the daredevil of a war veteran drove back toward us, back to the hedge, stepped out of the car to the crazed cheers of every male there, and grinning like the ace of a driver he was.

My dad slapped him on the back.

"Bet you were hitting 70 miles an hour this time, buddy," he said.

"Easily," my uncle agreed. "Maybe even 72."

I adored that man, who looked just like my Grandpa, who was gone from this world when I was barely eight years old.

Grandpa always reminded me of Wild Bill Hickok, so his oldest son was Wild Bill Jr., to me.

I left the open gate and walked back across the lawn, to watch the clucking hen women solemnly file into the farmhouse, shaking their heads in despair at that man.

They did it every reunion, every time.

And my uncle never listened to them.

Until the day he died.