Since it's Veterans Day, I thought I'd share a story about my father, who was a WWII vet. Not a tale about what he faced during the war, but rather one about how these years changed his life. Of course, the GI bill meant he was able to buy his parents a house and attend college, but one important consequence of his service in the Marines was something you may not expect. It got him a drivers license.
After he left the service, he enrolled at the University of Delaware and joined the football team. One summer, the chief of police in Rehoboth, a resort town on Delaware's coast, decided to hire some of the UD football players as seasonal cops. My dad went down there and worked with a few of his friends for the summer. Now, in order to be a Rehoboth policeman one had to have a valid drivers license. Dad didn't have one, so they sent him off to highway patrol headquarters to obtain one. As his friend put it, "After several hours of instruction and observation, including the car ending up in the center divider of the highway, the examiner said he would issue a license if [Dad] promised never to drive outside Rehoboth."
Some of my sisters have inherited these driving skills.
2 comments:
He broke that promise and drove outside of Rehoboth. His breaking that promise should have resulted in his being a passenger for the rest of his life, as his skill on the road never improved.
one wonders, did his driving skills improve as his windows became "more tinted" with cigar residue!!!!! And his drivers seat at times being held up by a bowling bag for support...one wonders!
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