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My Dad can be aggravating every so often. He's conservative and opinionated and not a little arrogant. He got religion about thirty years ago and that made it worse. Despite all of that, he is as entertaining as anyone I have ever known for one reason. He is a supremely skilled and captivating storyteller. Granted, most of the stories are about him, but he's lived an interesting life, and he weaves all sorts of different elements into his tales. Unlike many combat veterans, he loves to talk about his time at war. It's rarely about the ugly parts. Usually, he has funny stories about different men in his unit during his first tour in Vietnam or men he flew with during his second tour.

One of my favorite stories is the one about one of his young soldiers who Dad said was the happiest American in Vietnam. Dad was a second lieutenant in charge of a platoon on armored cavalry soldiers. He knew this private stateside, before they deployed because the kid had gone through training at Ft. Know while Dad was also stationed there. He's found the private crying one day outside the barracks and with his best fatherly attitude (he was 21 at the time), asked the kid "What's the matter son?"

"Sir," the young man answered, "My girlfriend, she's going to have a baby." My Dad assured him that he could arrange leave for him to go home and "make things right." "But sir, you don't understand. Her Mom."

Dad asked,"What about her Mom, son"

"Sir, she's pregnant too."

Dad said it took a few seconds for the situation to become clear. Yes, the answer is yes. This young draftee from Nowheresville, Oklahoma had gotten both his girlfriend and her mother in the family way at the same time and then left for the Army. So, yeah, when he ended up in the jungles of Vietnam fighting a way, he was relieved that he wasn't back home being murdered by two irate women.

Telling stories runs in the family, though. My grandfather never presented himself as a military man, although he had been on active duty before Pearl Harbor and didn't get discharged until 1946. His World War Two stories were mainly about geography and culture. The National Guard unit he joined during the depression had been activated and sent to Trinidad in the later 30s. He pronounced it Trinny-dad. There was, of course, no combat there, but he played a lot of baseball. He'd been all over the states and spent time in England before landing in mainland Europe where he proclaimed to he's gone all the way across France and Germany until he "hugged necks with the Russians at the Elbe River." Some of his stories were harrowing in their own way. His unit liberated a German POW camp holding Russian prisoners. Before running from the approaching US Army, the Nazis turned loose their Alsatian dogs on their prisoners in a final spurt of brutality. The Russians, rather than scrambling in fear, instead caught the dogs and promptly ate them. I heard that story many times and thinking about it today reinforces the "war is hell" ethos like no other I've ever heard personally.

Some of my stories also take an ironic turn like that. I was in the military during the Cold War, so I thankfully, I have no combat tales. My personal war stories are from working manhunts after prison escapes. The most surreal moment from that period was when I was sent to escort a bloodhound handler into a patch of woods, where minutes before three prisoners who'd managed to penetrate a fence fled under gunfire. Two of the prisoners were being held at the prison where I worked even though they hadn't been convicted yet. They'd escaped from jail and were being held at my unit because they were a security risk. Yeah, no shit. Since they were not yet convicted felons, the "shoot on sight" law that is supposed to keep criminals from climbing fences technically did not apply to them. Thus, my captain as he pushed me into the woods to look for then cautioned me to "Try not to shoot them." Read the whole story.

Those stories are memorable, but they aren't my favorites. I loved to listen to my grandmother's tales of cooking for her six brothers on a wood stove, trying in vain to quell their appetites after they'd spent the days plowing with mules. I also love to hear my mother recount her early hardscrabble life living in an old farmhouse without running water or adequate heat where sometimes the hot water bottle she took to bed with her would fall to the floor where she'd find it frozen in the morning when she crawled from under the quilts.

It's not just the older generation that can spin a story. My kids love to elaborate on the things they did to exasperate me when they were growing up. My oldest daughter, who I dearly love, has and has always had a slightly sharp tongue. She used it one too many times on a trip home from a friends' lake house one day back in the 90s and I turned around in the car to pop her on the leg as a warning, except I didn't. I tagged her brother, who, while not an angel, was an innocent bystander in this case. "Dad, you got me!" was his indignant response. I was doubly furious. When we finally got home, my daughter, sensing that she had pushed things too far, climbed over the other children in the back seat and took off running as fast as she could with me chasing her. Lucky for both of us, I didn't catch her. Not funny at the time but hilarious to hear then tell it now.

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