How do you remember what you don’t know? How do you appreciate what you have not experienced?
A few years back I moved to LA to begin a graduate program. All the university’s on-campus housing was filled, so the only room I could find to rent was in the home of my advisor’s father, a World War II veteran named Nate Miller.
Nate’s wife had recently died, so his son thought it might be good for him to have company. Nate had lived in the same bungalow in Buena Park since the war, raised two sons, and enjoyed a quiet life since his days in combat. Other than a smattering of high school history, I knew little about World War II or what its veterans had been through, or about any war’s veterans. I was clueless about what would come next, like nearly anyone of my generation would have been as a veteran’s housemate.
Nate kept a big russet Doberman named Diana that did business all over the front lawn. One day I mentioned to my new landlord that it might be appropriate to have the stuff picked up once in a while. “Aw, that ain’t nothing,” Nate said. “You should see a Kraut’s helmet lying on the ground when its still got his brains in it.”
