A Real Patriot
This special piece submitted by Robert Cadle – Thanks, Bob!
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Damn! A hearty
"thanks" to a real patriot, a fellow combat veteran of three
wars.....sorry, police actions . Typical Midwestern raised
patriot. Ned Colburn. Every once in a
while, a picture or a writing comes across this screen that "says it
all". All? All! All of the tens of thousands of words written by others,
or by me, the Irish Word Guy, pale, just as the old adage suggests, before a
photograph. Worth ten thousand words, in this instance. |
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Maybe a lot more.
When I was younger, I often came close to
getting beat up pretty bad by crowds when I would let them know what I thought
of them being on their butt when the flag came by..............
In retrospect, that just made me an old foggie,
at the time the grand old age of thirty..maybe.
Or a "Jingoist". One smartassed
College kid called me that once. Some teacher did her/himself proud and
improved the punk's vocabulary from "hey man, wuts happenin".
Or at that particular time: "Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids did you
kill today"?
My thoughts went along the line of:
One too few.
Viewed on screen today, it makes me seem cruel.
Cruel is conning the young men of the nation
into a war that is merely a ruse, a con, to keep the American people's minds on
the war, and not the complete dismantling of the Constitution by the REAL
enemy, the ones within our borders, indeed within the halls of
government. THAT is cruel. Treasonous. Evil.
So are the teachers who have destroyed the
minds of so many thousands of potential "thinkers" and patriots.
But of course, my impassioned remarks to them
was not the way to educate those "innocent" basserts, for
it only polarized them more and made what their teachers had taught them (home
school forever!) all the more true about those "damned veterans, the
trained killers".
Pulverize was my word of choice then.
Today it's merely a sigh, a poignant reflection
of one who has not yet crossed the Rubicon**.......wait, what am I
saying? I have done that many times in my years in the California
Mountains.......the Rubicon , The American, the Feather, the Consumnes, The
Klamath, the Eel, the Sacramento, and so many more.
Ok, so I crossed the Rubicon after all.
** Sometimes I assume a lot of knowledge on the part of my
readers. Not the original receivers, but those to whom some of these
poems and the like are sent. If so, sorry. I am from the READING generation, taught
even before Kindergarten. Back in the "Three R's" days.
Crossing the Rubicon and crossing the "bar" are euphemisms for
passing on to Glory, which is itself a euphemism.
And crossed the "bar" of the
Columbia.
And crossed "the line" many a time.
Like now.
So , so long from the very personification of
an anachronism, Ole Bobby1776.
But first, the fingers sense a poem
coming......yes, the first line was given.....
Guys
like me ..now sit in the park, reflecting on "days of yore".
Watching
the young, so kept in the dark, by teachers who didn't know the score.
Wondering
why, we soared to the sky, in our zeal to honor our flag
Just
a plain guy, with a tear in his eye, but a spirit that still doesn't sag.
My instant poem of the day.
Bob Cadle