Talked to a 92 year old WWII vet at the T.R.E.A. bar tonight. It was quite something.

He was spry and sharp as a tack, but pretty careful moving. He was chaparoned by his granddaughter, who, get this, was in her mid-50s.

Crazy.

We talked March Madness basketball—he believes Kentucky will be upset—and the millions of things he’s done, like served in the Army Air Corps, later to be known as the Air Force, for some 20-odd years, then went into law enforcement, eventually becoming sherriff of an Idaho county. He then worked as one of the first helicopter pilots covering traffic in LA, a job he described as “goddamn boring”. Later, he flew a medical helicopter, hauling critical cases from all over the mountain west to Denver or Salt Lake City, as the case may be. Then he did did something he always wanted to do: start his own business, and bought a motel near Yellowstone.

All this time he was happily married to one woman (his wife passed in the mid-90s) and produced 3 children, 2 sons and a daughter, all of whom he is proud of and all of whom are now retired. One son became an engineer, the other son went into finance. His daughter got her PhD and became a professor of biology at a college in Minnesota.

He served in the Pacific and told me “on some goddamn island or other” he witnessed a Japanese soldier commit hari kari. Did you know that after the they slash their belly, they reach in and yank out their own intestines?

Yeah, me neither.

I offered to buy him a drink, but he quit 9 years earlier after he fell down drunk one night and broke his hip.

Helluva man. Helluva night.

Cheers.