Veteran's Day

So today the government celebrated Veteran's Day, which my parents were old enough to remember, used to be called Armistice Day. I remember it's celebrated on the 11th day of the 11th month (at the 11th hour) and that in the 70s the US government made it a 3 day weekend by calling the closest Monday the holiday.

I tell the tale each year, but I guess that's what holidays are about -- remembering and retelling our tales and stories of our culture. And for me, that recalls my Dad.

I wasn't born until decades later, of course, but I envision a 22 year old Bronx boy named Hy pushing dress carts through Lower Manhattan on December 7, 1941. Some time before then, my father was actually excited about a new, potential career. He had watched a young fellow decorate one of the fancy store windows in Midtown, and thought he wanted to do that, too. Unlike me, my Dad had artistic abilities -- he could draw, and had a keen eye for the visual.

He chatted up the fellow, and learned there was a union to join -- he ought to, according to the designer, go to the union hall, pay dues, get a card, and then he would be assigned as an apprentice. After a year or so, he would be a full on designer -- and the fellow told my Dad it paid REAL well.

That night, at the dinner table, he told his father, in Yiddish, of his plans. My grandpa Simon, who died years before I was born, beckoned my Dad closer, and my Dad complied. Then came a zetz, or smack, to the head, and Simon reminded my Dad he had a perfectly good job at the factory where Simon was a respected pattern maker, and how dare my Dad think about doing anything else.

So, as a dutiful son, my Dad kept on schlepping the dress carts, singing as he worked, until that day...he told me it was like a movie -- the city went silent, and my Dad ran to a store front radio. FDR gave his famous address "A Day that will live in INFAMY..." and my Dad knew his draft papers would come soon. They did -- in April, and off he went --nearly 4 years in the US Army.

While he was away, my Mom gave birth to my sister, and Dad didn't meet her until she was well over a year old. But he came home, and started a life that brought me into the world at the tail end of the baby boom.

And yet WW II was central to the tale. For Wifey, too, though her parents were in Poland, and the camps. Everything that shaped who they were came from those same WW II years.

So today I think of Dad, and I thank him, and all the others. I've been lucky. I owe it to them.