A great day on the road. Mel and I checked in with the editors of the Pine County Courier and the Pine City Pioneer. We also visited the Carlton County Fair at Barnum and Pine City’s celebration of its 125th anniversary.
I did pretty well in the cow judging but was marked down for having too few stomachs. Cows have three or four of the darn things.
At Nicoll’s, a small town restaurant in Pine City, I had very interesting back to back conversations with folks concerned about our veterans. First I spoke with a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. The two of us shook our heads in despair about how badly this administration has sidetracked the nation in Iraq.
Immediately after that I spoke with a fellow at a the next table over who had been listening intently to the first conversation. His son is in Iraq and is coming back for a short fifteen days visit home before returning to the Middle East.
His son is tight-lipped about what’s going on…..Republicans have done a good job shutting everyone up by saying any criticism of the war is destroying our troops morale. Still, the father has a very grim view of what’s been going on. His son asked him last year to take $1,000 out of the son’s savings to buy standard tools for a mechanic and other materials to armor the humvees that he and his buddies travel in. Because the Defense department won’t protect them from IEDs they have to do it themselves.
This was a pretty sobering conversation. I joked grimly that at least the son could afford to do what the Defense Department wouldn’t pay for because he was paid so much. The father told me that his son helped load the body of another Minnesotan on the plane a few months ago for his final trip home. Despite these experiences the son feels guilty about coming home from the fighting because he’s leaving his comrades behind.
Its a damn shame our troops don’t have a government worthy of them.
