November 26, 1960, six years old. 1060 Lemon Avenue, Menlo Park, California — take me back ……
I clearly remember my dad taking this picture with a little Minolta camera. He may have been as pleased with the gift as I was. My adrenaline was through the roof immediately after this when he said, “take her for a spin, Jimmy.” Look at where the top-tube is in relation to my waist — kids grow so fast you have to buy a couple sizes too big — I barely could get off the thing without falling over.
And now FIFTY years later, my grandson:
Who looks to be pretty excited himself.
I had to get out into it.
I have been waiting 17 years to see picture of something like this.
Sunday morning before Memorial Day. Out the front window things are quiet, ocean blue; no risk of drone attacks, car bombs or suicide bombers.
Memorial Day is a conflicted time for me. I want to celebrate the lives and duty of my namesake, friends destroyed in Vietnam, and local boy “Shorty” Millard, blown up in Iraq.
I think about them. What their lives would have been like. What pleasures and pains they would have had. How I might be like them.
What pulls me apart is the question of why they had to be wiped off the face of the earth.
WWII may have been worth it. WWI, Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Iraq, Afghanistan all should make no sense to a thinking person. The “Price of Freedom” is a clever foil for plutocrats, a flickering ember diverting from a darker truth.
How does anyone separate empathy for soldiers, civilians and children maimed, abandoned and killed from the contrived arguments for going to war in the first place?
Unusual for me today I rode midday through Torrey Pines. Hot and sunny inland and marine layer within 500 yards of the beach. Heat on one side and cool mist on the other. Closeup it looks like this:
Then looking back from a bit inland you can see the ridge the first picture was taken from. Both are facing due west.
