My father never spoke of the war.  I knew from my mother that he was in the Army in WWII, and that he served on Okinawa.  There was a picture in one of our encyclopedias of MacArthur visiting a battleship, and that my father was on that ship when the picture was taken (though he's not in picture). 

He had a pair of silver spurs he told me once, and only once, he'd gotten from a Japanese officer, but never said if that officer was dead or alive at the time.  As an adult, my guess is that officer was dead.

It was only a few years ago, when my mother died and my sister and I had lots of time in the car to talk, that I learned he was something called a "machine gunner", that he never rose above the rank of Private First Class.  

I learned that, as the smallest man in his platoon, it was his job to crawl down into the hidey-holes and flush out - or confirm the deaths of - the Japanese soldiers after the flamethrowers had done their work.

I wouldn't talk about any of that either.

My father, an "old schooler" as my older brother says it, would rarely allow me to buy fireworks.  As all us Morris kids were allowed to do pretty much our own thing most of the time, you can be sure it didn't have anything to do with safety.  It was about money, as almost every facet of his life was. 

"Might as well set fire to a stack of dollar bills," he'd grumble, then hand me a five dollar bill to make stretch as far as it could go, which wasn't far.  Bottle rockets, mostly, and some Black Cat firecrackers.  I didn't have any concept of what the larger rockets did, and didn't have enough money in any case.

So, maybe I overcompensate now. ( Courtesy snip... )