The Return of the Waist Gunner

 Just talked to my Great-Uncle Dick, who among other things, was a waist gunner in a B-17 in the Second World War, and who ran a successful court reporting firm in Reno for many years. He worked out of the Washoe County Courthouse, which is featured in this entertaining Traveltalks color short film from 1943. 

While I talked to him I was outside on my cellphone in the parking of the hotel in Carson City. He was just about to take his morning medications. He described the physical limitations of his body. At 95 years old, that's to be expected.

We arranged I would drop by later. He wanted to make sure I had a mask. I said I had six. You have to have to go out and about these days, I told him.

I told him about my drive up from Las Vegas. I had spoken to him there after checking out of Trump International, I had driven over to the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd where I parked.

I told him how I'd come up from Las Vegas in the desert, driving on some highways that were new to me. I told him how I had needed to cleanse my mind a bit from the heightened situation in the country and the world.

I told him how I stopped in Yerington. He perked up. "Yerington is a nice town," he said. Dick has lived in Reno since 1957.

I told him about Gardnerville and Minden, and how they had exploded in growth. He knew what I meant. "If I were young and starting out here in Nevada, that's where I would buy a house and live." 

He said, "didn't you say you had a friend here you might visit in Reno,"

I said that there were several people I might want to visit on this trip, and that the friend he mentioned was one of them, but that I wasn't planning on calling him right now. 

"It might strain charity for both of us, if politics came up, and it probably would," I said,

He jumped in. "You know, I'm surrounded by liberals, and of course I disagree with them...but we still get along."

"That's your generation," I said. "You guys can disagree. My generation, and people younger than me. We can't do that. If someone I know my own age who voted for Biden finds out that I voted for Trump...twice...then nine times out of ten they are going to lose their mind and start screaming at me."

He recognized what I meant, in regard to his own grand-daughters, who live in Southern California, and who refuse to talk to their own parents, who are staunch Republicans.

"You can't reason with them," he said. "They don't recognize facts. They don't recognize history."

"Now you see," I told him, "why I treasure your presence here on earth, and am loathe to see you go. You guys--all of you guys---I remember you and what the world was, that you lived in. And I know that we---my generation---I knew we were different. Where we are now, I've seen it coming since 1972. But you guys, all of you guys, you lived in the real world."

"I feel sorry for them," I said. "They are going to lose and they are going to be in a world of hurt. We have justice on our side, and truth, and the law"

He concurred.