“That jacket sure does bring back memories.”
I could hear the chuckle in the man’s voice, muffled by the black medical mask he wore. We two were exiting the Kroger grocery store at 10th and Shortridge. I had just come from the nearby office of the Weekly View and decided to stop to get my youngest granddaughter the vanilla ice cream she had requested. The man trailed me by a few steps as we stepped into the crisp air of that sun-bright morning. I turned to acknowledge his comment and he repeated that the jacket I was wearing brought back memories for him.
Many years ago, while visiting with my sister in Waldorf, Maryland, I sat with my niece as she sorted out some items that she planned to dispose of. One of those items was a jacket that she had worn during her 25 years of service in the U.S. Army. When I asked her if I could have the jacket, Kelli Daniels laughed. “Sure,” she said. “You can have it. You’ll just look like every homeless man on the street.” I gave her comment only brief consideration and took possession of what, more than 13 years later, the man outside of the Kroger store called a “field jacket.”
The man stayed behind me as I moved away from the store; I turned to acknowledge him, and he repeated that seeing my jacket had dislodged some memories. He pulled alongside me, and we walked toward the pharmacy drive-up window. The man, an African-American, spoke of his days in the service, his many years wearing a field jacket like the one that I was wearing. He said that he remembered when the jackets had a different color configuration — mine is a mottled combination of green, brown, tan, and black — and when the colors I was wearing were introduced. He told me that when he graduated from high school, he went to college, but it didn’t work out. “I knew I had to get my life together,” and he decided that he had better join the army. As he continued to tell me of his experiences in the service, I realized that, like so many others who have seen me in the jacket, he thought that I had earned it in service to our country.
“This is my niece’s jacket,” I told the man. I pulled from a pocket the insignia that I had found in the jacket, one of which had her name: “Daniels.” I told him of her long commitment to the Army, and how her two sons followed her into that service. I also told him that many other members of my family had served, of two other nieces whose sons had served, one in the Army and the other, the Marines. I also mentioned my friend Larry Mayes, the “Door Gunner” of my May 31st, 2013, column. The man asked where my niece had been stationed, and I told him that she had been in Operation Desert Storm and had also spent many years in Korea. He noted that he had once been stationed in Korea.
Drafted behind me by the memories my jacket shook loose inside him, the man pulled up. “I’m going the wrong way,” he said, noting that his car was in the opposite direction. “One more thing and I’ll let you go,” he said, and told me that one more thing. But as we parted, I gave him the credit he is due, the acknowledgement my jacket brought him, and said to him:
“Thank you, for your service.”
cjon3acd@att.net