An Eerie Story About Veterans of Foreign Wars

His name was Manoli and he fought in the first world war in the infantry. He had been gassed and the family joke was that they all suffered from his side effects. I swear every last one of them acts as if they had been gassed at war. Manoli is buried in West Virginia and his monument is appropriately decorated and the facts of his main contribution to America, his life, are properly etched on his tombstone. The family and I know, however, that a very important fact is omitted that Manoli walks. That means that Manoli may be dead, but his shadow can be seen wherever his relatives reside whenever they least expect it. Manoli passed on a pocket watch to his son and his son passed it on to me. I was never one for such trinkets and pawned it for $15.00. When I went to buy it back, the pawnbroker had disappeared and the pawn shop had been completely redone selling only firearms. That is the truth, readers.

Now, readers, would anyone lie about things that seem perfectly normal to other people and only have special meaning for those who know the story of the pocket watch with the old face of a Wheeling, West Virginia Candy Shop and the inscription "Happy Days?" Not, this one.

My old family vet is just, for me, another part of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, an organization that I trained high school students to compete in their essay competitions before I ever thought of marriage. I have in my possession a plaque given to me in 1976 for my work with the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I was sent a certificate the other day, January 26, 2009, thanking me for my help for the Veterans. I don't feel as if I have done anything for them. I think that the hostility that is carefully covered up of them by the popular media is reprehensible. Does that media think it could continue to propose its anti-military stance and impose a pseudo Trotsky Orwellian 1984 government, if it weren't for the freedom fighters who wear the countries uniform and brave the bizarrios of both their country and the foreign countries that must be stood up to?

Right now, I don't care about those preposterous lip synching media and their holier than thou attitude against men and women who put their lives where their heart was and gave of themselves for America. My patriotism is not wrapped up in a flag. My flag flys free and I would like to thank Manoli and I know where he is.