- When placing flags in front of graves, I fall into a habit of reading the name, unit, and dates on each gravemarker.
- In the local veteran’s cemetary, they tend to be men and women who served when they were young, but lived a long life. A World War I veteran who lived into the 1970’s, a Spanish American War veteran who died in the 1930’s, that sort of thing.
- Gravemarkers tend to be grouped by date of death, which makes sense when you consider that the cemetary would be filled in as requests for burials come in.
- Every so often, though, this morning I came across the grave of someone who died in their teens or early twenties mixed in with veterans who died in their 70’s.
- Those tend to give me pause. This was someone who probably died in combat or due to wounds from combat. They didn’t come home to their families, they didn’t make their own family, they didn’t live to see their golden years.
- They were all Korea, Vietnam, or GWOT veterans. I assume that World War I or World War II casualties were interred overseas.
- I also ran into a few graves with family names that are uncommon here in Kentucky, but were pretty common back home in North Dakota. I need to check the geneology to see if I have kin buried here.
- The local Boy Scouts come together on Memorial Day weekend to place flags, and they start with a small flag raising ceremony before fanning out to attend to the graves. One of Boo’s friends has taught himself to play the bugle, and when that young man played Taps, it raised the hair on the back of my neck.
- At such events, you see both good and bad parenting. One couple I saw had a young Scout and his little sister placing flags. The little girl put the flag in place and her brother would push it down. Mom and Dad were there to supervise and hand them flags as needed. It was cute and good to see a family doing something like that together.
- I also saw some ignorant bint who was livestreaming the event and making comments during the initial ceremony, all while her child was hopping up and down on the headstone for an aircrew that had been buried together.
- Luckily for me, another dad got to the mom and asked her to parent her child before someone else did. I’d like to think I would have been polite and respectful had the other guy not been two steps ahead of me.
- Afterward, I took Boo out for breakfast. A teenager the size of a grown man, dressed in full Boy Scout uniform, draws the eye at the Bob Evans, I must say.
- I considered taking him to Waffle House, which is our favorite breakfast spot, but the one that was convenient is in a rather stabby part of town, and I value both his safety, as well as my own. For him, I was worried something ignorant might happen while we enjoyed our hashbrowns. For myself, I was concerned at what She Who Shall Not Be Named would do to me if something happened near, much less to, the last scion of her father’s house.
- I need to take that boy out to eat more often. He has no skills at all in talking to cute teenage waitresses, and that means I have failed him as a father.
- Luckily for us, she seemed to speak fluent mumble, so she got his order right on the first try.
- Dinner tonight was a “Make All The Food” exercise.
- Grilled ribeye burgers, chicken thighs, chicken legs, bratwursts, old-fashioned hotdogs, pasta salad, grilled potatoes with onions and garlic, and homemade chocolate chip cookies.
- I am officially done cooking for the next 48 to 72 hours. If they don’t want leftovers, Little Caesars is ten minutes away.
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Posted by daddybear71 on May 24, 2025
https://daddybearsden.com/2025/05/24/rumblings-28/
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DaddyBear
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Anonymous
/ May 25, 2025Sadly, I couldn’t do the flag placements this year, but I’m thankful that the Scouts are stepping up and helping. The Veterans graveyard we support has more ‘family’ groupings, some going back to the Spanish American war, through WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and now GWOT. Others only covered ‘one’ war.
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