Memory lane...

My destination after Infantry Training - that little-spoken-of phase that followed my 10-day leave after boot camp - was Camp Pendleton, California, which represented the "Ultima Thule" of my travels to that time. Being young, I paid enough attention to my surroundings to remain safe and sound (though the same cannot be said for my wallet after visiting a carnival sideshow just outside of Oceanside), but not enough to remember very much about the guys I served with.

I got started on this latest bender down memory lane by uncovering a box containing an all-but-one set of the Harvard Classics, which could not but cause me to remember one of the fellows I shared a squad bay with, a pretty quiet fellow who returned from town after liberty one weekend with a box filled with the five foot shelf of books.

And he sat down to read them, one by one. It was his plan for self-education (most of the guys in my unit had entered the Corps straight out of high school, which made me the "old man" of the squad bay, by about two years, by dint of having a couple of years of university under my belt). He was, of course, subjected to a torrent of cracks and jokes and what-have-you about his high-falutin' "intellectual" bent, but he was oblivious to it all. He just kept reading, and was about a quarter of the way through the volumes when our paths parted.

Some years later, I picked up a copy of the books myself (sans one volume), at a garage sale, buying it with the same intent, but never got around to cracking the first book. With my recent discovery, I now have an opportunity to at least ameliorate that shortcoming, and will.

For the life of me, I cannot remember the fellow's name, or where he hailed from, or anything else about him. But sitting here, a generation later, I cannot help but feel the world is a better place because of attitudes like his.

Cheers...

Cheers...