So long, Old T.
I avoided talking to you for quite awhile.
Your obvious illness and poverty repelled me and then shamed me for my revulsion.
When I heard you speak to others, you were hard to understand, so slurred was your speech.
Still, on Veteran's Day, cued by your "US Army, Retired" Cap, I finally moved myself to speak and wished you a happy day.
And thanked you for your service.
You rolled your scooter chair over and slowly, laboriously, I found out about your years spent fighting the Korean War and in Vietnam.
You drove tanks and armored personnel carriers, serving several tours.
Tank driver - maybe that's why you always bumped me with your electric chair when you rolled past to the handicapped seating on the train
When you came home from Korea, you got kicked out of three restaurants before you found one that would let you sit indoors to eat your first non-army meal in two years.
Wounded and wounded again, you couldn't work after Vietnam.
You talked about riding a bike when you were a kid, how you'd go everywhere and be gone for days, fishing, hunting, or visiting cousins.
And how you wished you could do it again.
I enjoyed chatting with you, so much.
I'll remember most how you'd point to parts on my bike and ask how much they cost, and how you'd laugh when I told you.
Over the years, your pension and veteran's benefits had dwindled, and you found yourself living from aid check to aid check.
I know you were always excited when you cashed them at the local convenience store, but it's never a good idea to flash your roll.
So, after years of service and more years of pain and hardship, someone felt they needed your roll more than you needed to keep driving your chair, like a tank, like you rode your bike as a kid, wherever you went.
And with a small cheap knife, he did what the Koreans and the Chinese and the NVA and the Viet Cong and Agent Orange all failed to do.
I'll miss riding with you, Old T. Peace on your head.