One of the items we have for sale at our garage sale is a card containing 3 images of military equipment. Not being military people, my friend and I were incapable of identifying the equipment. Nor was my friend able to find any of these images online. From the background, we guessed that the time period may have been that of the Korean War. The card has languished in our buckets for some time.
Today, a gentleman visited our garage sale. He looked to be about our age and was wearing an Army hat. He very diligently went through all of our items, spending the majority of his time with our old books. He selected two books and brought them back to our seats in order to pay. That is when his eyes fell on the card.
He looked shocked. “That is not the Korean War!” he exclaimed. “That is a Chinook! This is from Vietnam!”
Gratefully, my friend grabbed a new card and began to transfer the images onto it. The gentleman identified all of the equipment and even spelled it for us. He was a Vietnam era vet, and we thanked him for his service.
He and I fell into a conversation about the men in our families who have served their country. The men in my family were in the Army also, and we discovered that his father (in the 5th Army) and my uncle (in the 3rd Army) shared the experience of fighting their way up the boot of Italy in World War II. Both men shared the same opinion of their trip across the mountains. (Guns, mines, grenades, etc. “Remember,” the artillery were told, “if they are within range of you, then you are within range of them.”) My dad was in the Army Air Service during that war, and we each acknowledged the courage and determination of our brave men in service.
The conversation moved eventually to the next generation. I told him that my cousin’s son was recently separated from the Army on a medical discharge. He had served two tours in Afghanistan and a year on the DMZ on the Korean peninsula. This kind man genuinely was moved by my cousin’s service, and we had a very serious discussion about the life the North Koreans live. He showed great compassion for a people who know no other way of life.
We thanked him again for his help, and he happily left with his books. I have been thinking about him ever since.
A spiritual discipline, when done well, moves us outside of ourselves and opens us to new experiences. We see others with new eyes. This gentleman could have lectured us for our mistake or disparaged us for our ignorance. Instead, he willingly helped us to rectify our error and went on to spend some time in our company, unconsciously helping all of us to honor our ancestors. Beneath the old soldier’s tough exterior, there was a heart of compassion, friendship, and love for mankind.
Touching the humanity of others is the best part of garage sales.
Conversations With Chickadees 
The older I get, the more I am conscious of and thankful for the ways we are all linked. I only just read this post — though you published it yesterday. This morning I replied to a post on Facebook — a friend reposting a tweet from a Libertarian economist who has divided the world into “the good people” (who earn everything they have all by themselves) and “the bad people” who expect others to pay for them. (He doesn’t call them good people and bad people but his meaning is clear). My point was that none of us ever really does anything all by ourselves. We are always helped — sometimes by people we meet or know like you and your garage sale vet — and sometimes by people we never meet or even know about. But we’re all in this together. And that is good.
By: Sandra ANDERSON on October 21, 2017
at 5:36 am
Thanks, Sandy. I agree that we are all interconnected. It is good to remember that in these days of division and derision.
By: nightmistwalker on October 22, 2017
at 7:40 pm