I Just Can't Put It Down

"Here they come boys, here they come!" These simple words don't seem like much to start a book of memories with, but for some reason, they keep coming back to me every time I sit down to put my thoughts on paper. The old man was going blind. He sat in the dust of the garden, scooting along on his bottom, feeling for weeds growing around the tomato plants we were nursing along through a dry spell. We spoke of war and many things. Sex, religion, or politics rarely entered our discussions. War was our common bond. His war, fought so many years ago across a country that he had scarcely even heard of. He was a farm boy, more at home saving the soil or tilling tobacco. He knew where to build ponds. If the field wanted to wash away with the rain, he knew how to leave a grassy strip to hold it there. He volunteered to go to France and fight the Huns. His war was the war to end all wars. My war, fought in the jungles of a little nation called Vietnam was a different time, and a different concept. My war was never even declared a war. Oh, we did speak of other things. One day he said to me, "I'll bet that I could still drive a car if I could get it out on the road. I can still see pretty good right out in front of me." Time was quietly closing a door on him through which he could never return. I decided to check him out. Why not see if he really could drive? Hell, why not? Chances were good that we wouldn't kill anyone except maybe ourselves. We tried it that day. He really couldn't see good enough to drive. What the hell, he pulled up a lot of tomatoes too. We tried.