esrosedotblog

WALLET

I found more good stuff in my Dad's wallet.

There is a picture of my mom when she was a volunteer assistant at the grade school. It is funny. It was taken as part of the kid's picture deal where the outside photographer snaps all the kids and then sells the prints. She is in front of a really badly painted pine forest backdrop.

Then there is his AARP card. I remember the kick he got by giving me my first AARP card. For some reason, it really tickled him. Me too. I guess that we lived long enough to get over the shit that usually occurs between a son and his dad. In this case, a gay son. More shit.

He has his A&P check cashing card. This has particular resonance as he worked for A&P for 45 years. He was a store manager for a long time, then quit and joined the union. He got tired of the never ending quota increases. I think the words he used included "stuff the job up your ass". He made more as a union member than he did as a manager. He loved that.

There! look! It is his Social Security card which he got when SS started in 1936. He was there at the inception. I wonder what he would think of all the screwing with it now. Well, I know. As a life long Democrat he would have a tasty description for those 'goddam bastards'.

In the folding money part of the wallet is a one dollar bill he got during WWII. It was a special HAWAII bill; currency for the service men to use. It has many autographs from his shipmates on the USS Ebert. He was a radarman. It was the best and worst time of his life.

My Dad. I still have a piece of him.