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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | NOVEMBER 2024 19 By Crochet E. Oldman As part of an assignment in English class, my grandson Dylan, 13, wrote me a letter and asked what was new in my life. When I started to respond, I realized that my "new" was about as new to him as a dinosaur egg. I was going to tell him it was new that I retired after 45 years of working. But that was five years before he was born. In fact, one of the new things in my life is having grandchildren like him. How new is that? He'd been a grandkid all his life and I have six older than he is. Moving into Four Seasons comes closer to qualifying, even though he was five years old then. I told him all the new, digital electronic stuff was new to me, but not him. He operates a smart phone and lap top and iPad and DVD and GPS and anything else that comes along. I remember fumbling badly in my youth to adjust the first, new-fangled television sets — and I consider color a cutting edge innovation. And my fumbling continues. When I visit his house, I cannot reliably turn on, switch channels, or scroll through the directory on the TV. With great tolerance he clicks the necessary buttons and tunes me in. He originally called me on his smart phone from the Bay Area to see if I would be his pen pal for the semester-long assignment. When I was 13, I would have used the mail. Back then a three- minute, long-distance telephone call cost maybe a hundred times as much as a three-cent stamp. Today, with a stamp nearing a dollar and all kinds of free cell phone minutes, he wisely chose the cheapest – and fastest – option. (No wonder the Post Office is in trouble. I hope our pen pal project will give it some needed business.) I remember when saddle shoes were the new thing, when the Hudson Hornet was a snazzy car, when the Nehru jacket and the leisure suit were high style, and when a greasy pompadour was the standard men's hair style. And how about men walking on the moon, splitting the atom, inventing the computer; they are all new to me -- but to Dylan, they came shortly after the discovery of fire. So, I told him that for a really old guy like me, what seems new is really old stuff for a young guy like him. I hope his generation sees as many new, wonderful things as mine did. But then, I can't say we did real well with a lot of our new stuff. The atom bomb killed a whole bunch of people and my computer is filled with messages from rascals who want "earnest money" to qualify me for some mythical fortune. I must delete a trash truck full of unwanted spam every day and college drop-out Edward Snowden used his computer to steal half of the National Security Agency's files and share them with terrorists and the intelligence agencies of Russia and China. Nearly every day some distressed lady discovers a creep has Twittered nude pictures of her he hacked from her computer. Television is an even vaster wasteland than when Newton Minow complained about it. It has grown by hundreds more channels — broadcasting just more of the same old, moronic shows and dozens of new ads about matters so painfully personal that I blush to mention them. Hopefully, Dylan's generation will do better with his new stuff than we did with ours. In time, he is nearly as far removed from World War II as I was from the Civil War. I consider the Civil War ancient history, but World War II is a vivid part of my life, with its impact on my family, with rationing and blackouts and air raid drills. (I was a teen-aged civil defense messenger, with an arm band to identify my importance. I thought I was nearly a Marine Raider.) And there were the neighbors called up for service – some not returning. I was a couple years too young to serve in the war, and congratulated myself for having wisely planned to avoid all that trouble. Then Korea occurred and creamed my plans for 42 months. Among my earliest memories is seeing the last, doddering, old Civil War veterans ride by in an open touring car on Decoration Day – now called Memorial Day. Back then the Civil War vets rode, the Spanish American War vets still walked in front of them and the World War I guys, mostly in their 30s, even stayed in step. I wonder if someday Dylan will see an antique Korean veteran ride by with the Vietnam guys walking in front and the Iraq/Afghanistan vets mostly in step, and think kindly of his Grampa. I hope so — after all, I was his pen pal. ~ Reprinted from November 2014 Breeze Veteran Tells Grandson What's New

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