Every now and then you have a conversation or hear a story that is worth repeating... there isn't a "punch line" or a moral, but instead, the words themselves weave a tapestry that is worth seeing.  The following is a conversation I had last week with an elderly gentleman who was helping me unload my truck at a church thrift store.

“This work doesn’t bother me.  I got out of the Navy in 1946, and I’ve been working ever since.  I remember it was June of 1946 when I got discharged with $300 because that’s what they gave you when you got out.  I blew most of that money between Norfolk and here.  I got home and there wasn’t a damn thing going on in Lancaster County.  Woke up – no money, nothing to do – and went down to Cooper’s Store in Mollusk.

“And who was the first person I saw but [John Smith].  He’d just gotten out of the Navy, too.  And I said, ‘Johnny, whatcha gonna be doing now?’  Johnny said back to me, ‘Nothing because there’s not a [explicative] thing going on in this county for a black man...I got 30 days to reenlist and $220.  How ‘bout I pay you to drive me down to Norfolk because they won’t let no [black man] drive down there by himself.’

“Well, Johnny was like a brother to me because we thinned corn together down at Belle Isle for fourteen cents an hour.  Old men Jackson, Boatwright and Pollard – they would give us our money, laugh and tell us not to spend it all in one place.  So, Johnny and I piled in the car and we paid for the ferries and the food and gas on the way down to the recruitment office.  Got to the recruitment office and Johnny took all the cash he had and threw it on my seat and said, ‘You take care of yourself – I’m on Uncle Sam now.’  It was $160.

“So I went back to home, started a business and worked hard, and didn’t see Johnny for another ten years.  He was home on leave and told me that he was stationed in Panama and hated every minute of it.  His CO was from Tennessee and hated blacks.  Johnny said his CO hated him, but that he hated that CO, too…but the officer couldn’t get rid of him because he was the only diesel mechanic he had.  Didn't see him for another four years after that and told me that he still had that same s.o.b. CO and he told him that he better not ever catch him walking around Mollusk because he would deck him good.  And, that he was applying for a transfer.

“Johnny got his transfer and spent his last four years in Norfolk.  He came back home and worked for Humphrey’s Railways for another 20 years.

“Johnny died last Friday, and I just dropped some flowers by the church.  I will miss him, he was a good man.  Like a brother to me.”

So in closing, a salute to Johnny and his “brother” -- both from America’s Greatest Generation.