Veterans of the second world war.
For sixty years they've been friends,
Though one is not Norwegian.
Right spry they are at eighty-four.
On my bike ride yesterday, I rolled into Mt. Horeb (pop ~6,600) tired and hungry. I went into a very quiet little convenience store, bought a couple snacks, and ended up staying quite a long time and leaving refreshed. The friendly, elderly proprietor bade me rest on a chair in his office, and he gave me a large mug of hot chocolate -- for free. A friend of his came in, and they chatted, and I asked if they were brothers. The proprietor said "He's not even a Norwegian." (I guess that's unusual in Mt. Horeb.) I chatted with both of them a long while and recited my poem about my ride. They both seem to be in remarkable health at 84, and they hear better than I do. Both are veterans of WWII, one a Marine, the other Army. The Marine said he recently attended a reunion on Iwo Jima. The other told of finding and making fast friends with previously unknown relatives in Germany. The two men had been roommates when they first reentered the work force after the war. I told them about our Friday noon support-the-troops vigils in Lynchburg and told them I'm a "cold war veteran." I told them about Helen's family coming from the Philippines to San Francisco on a troop ship near the end of the war. And I told them about my Norwegian and German ancestors.
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