My parents were married 70 years ago today on June 22, 1941. Pop was 27 and already an Army vet and Mom was 22. They had almost 6 months of joy before their world went nuts on December 7th.

Pop got shot to pieces in Italy after trekking through North Africa and Sicily with the U.S. 34th Infantry Division while my mother broke her ass working in a defense factory in lower Manhattan while minding her husband's incorrigible kid brother and hoping for better days. She miscarried my older brother after Pop went back into service.

These people did the Depression without much and then won a war. Both are dead but I remember and miss them very much. Neither had an entitlement coming for anything they ever did. They just hustled for honest work and spent a lot of time laughing together.

Larry, you're a spitting image of your old man. Wow.

Pop got hit with three bullets for his first wound in November of 1943 and then had pieces of his ass and hip blown away with shrapnel in April of 1944.

Around about the early 1950s when I was just a small boy my mother made the old man go to the Veterans Administration to lay in a claim for disability. That was around 1950 when my father's buttocks began to spew out small fragments of German shrapnel and catch some infection. He never gave a damn for serving, he just figured it was an OK job as a first generation Irish guy out of Brooklyn and that he had done his duty as an American.

The VA awarded my father 10% disability for his two Purple Hearts, two dead fingers, a gimp, and a smile. My father died January 31, 1974. My mother returned his February 1st disability check for $31.00 to the United States Government.

Those "entitlements" have grown a bit since then, no?

Wow, Jeebs is right. John is as well. I know you miss them both, terribly, QP.

We might look a lil like my name sake.