The 1951 Dodge Business Coupe

When Judy answered the door she was grinning.

"Come in, Ricky. Dinner's almost ready."

I'd expected the typical Sunday farmer's dinner I had at a couple friend's houses when I was in high school. It was usually fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and either green beans or corn. That was because most farm families at the time had a flock of chickens and a garden, and they mostly ate what they raised.

I didn't expect a beef roast smothered in potatoes, carrots, and onions with gravy made from the drippings. I didn't expect it to taste so good either. Mom made roast beef like that about once a month, and this was every bit as good as Mom's. I got another surprise when I told Judy's mother that. She just chuckled.

"You're thanking the wrong person. Judy made this. She made the blackberry pie we're having for dessert too."

I told Judy it was great, and after I finished my slice of blackberry pie, I told her that was great too. She blushed.

"Mama taught me, so it was really her. I just made it like she taught me."

I told her mother then that she'd done a great job of teaching Judy. She just waved her hand.

"All I did was what any mother does. I taught her how to take care of her man when she finds one. Now, Judy, help me clear the table so Ricky and Daddy can talk."

Amos looked at me then.

"Young man, let's go in my den so we can talk without listening to the women. They'll be jabbering away about nothing for the next hour at least."

The farmhouse was pretty big, but I never thought about it having a den. My dad didn't have a den. Dens were what rich people had. When I told Amos that, he explained.

"When I was in the Army, I kept hearing men talk about how they was gonna have them a big house when they got out and they was gonna have one special room just for them. My daddy built this house in 1918 when he came home from the war and he was thinking he was gonna have him a bunch of kids so he built three bedrooms downstairs and four upstairs.

"All he and Mama had was me so all those bedrooms went to waste. I figured when I inherited the farm, one of those downstairs bedrooms would be for me and my wife, I'd turn another one into a bathroom since Daddy never put in indoor plumbing, and the other one would be for what those guys called their den. Once Daddy passed, that's what I did.

Amos looked at me and grinned.

"Makes a good place to hide out when Betty gets her dander up for some reason.

It's also a good place to just sit down and have a drink of an evening. You a drinkin' man, Ricky? I'm gonna have me one. You like good bourbon?"

Well it was one of those situations where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. If I said yes, he might think I drank a lot. If I said no, he might think I was criticizing him for drinking. I tried to take the middle path.

"Yeah, I like a good bourbon once in a while. Thanks for asking."

Amos' idea of a good bourbon was apparently half a water glass full because that's what he poured both of us. Then he walked over, handed me my glass, and then motioned to two chairs.

"Let's have us a seat so we can talk."

After we sat down, Amos too a sip of his bourbon, smiled, and then looked at me.

"Judy said you wanted to talk to me about something. What's on your mind?"

I tipped up my glass to have some time to think and to get up a little courage before I answered. I drank too much and had to cough a couple times before I could answer him.

"Mister Meadows, I like Judy a lot and my dad said I should talk to you before I ask her to...well, I want her to be my wife if she wants that too."

He took another sip from his glass, swallowed and then smiled.

"You ask her yet?"

I shook my head.

"No. My dad said I should talk to you first."

Amos just nodded.

"I figured this would happen one of these days. You been seeing a lot of my Judy lately. She means the world to me and I want the best for her. What you got to offer her?"

I didn't have an answer to that question that I thought Amos would accept. I did the best I could.

"Mister Meadows, I have a good job as a mechanic at the Ford dealership. We won't be rich, but we won't be poor either. I have to find us a place to live, but I can do that. It won't be as big a house as this one, not at first anyway, but I'll find us a nice house."

Amos looked at me and frowned.

"You think getting her a nice house to live in is taking care of her?"

I'd thought the fact that I had a job would go a long way toward getting Amos to agree to let me marry Judy. After he said that, I had a feeling I wasn't going to be able to convince him, but I didn't give up.

"No...well...yes, a nice place to live is part of it. The rest is what you say when you get married, love, honor, and obey and all that stuff."

Amos frowned again.

"So, who obeys who? Do you expect Judy to do what ever you say or are you gonna do everything she says?"

I was starting to realize that Amos wasn't dumb like everybody said. He was asking me questions I hadn't really thought about, questions that made me realize I hadn't really thought everything out, and questions that were telling Amos a lot more about me than I'd have ever told him on my own. I told Amos what came to my mind.

"Well, no. I think it has to be both ways. Sometimes she'll have to do what I want and sometimes I'll have to do what she wants."

Amos took another sip and then frowned at me again.

"You won't get far with Judy if you try telling her what to do. She has a mind of her own. Always has."

Amos was using my words to try and trap me and I was getting frustrated.

"That's not what I mean. What I mean is...oh, hell, whatever I say you're just going to twist it into something else."

Amos smiled then.

"Settle down, Ricky. I just wanted to see how you think. The truth is it does work both ways. Betty and me, we had some fights about that when we first got married. She thought she knew what was best for me and I didn't like it, I didn't like it at all. I was the man of the house and what I said was what she was supposed to do. She let me know she was going to do what was best no matter what I said. We worked it out, just like you and Judy will if you're willing to talk about things.

"If I say you can't marry Judy, will that be the end of it?"

I had to think about that for a while. I'd pretty much decided Amos wouldn't stand in the way since I was sure he had to know Judy liked me a lot. Now, it sounded like he was going to. I decided I couldn't let that happen.

"No, it won't be the end of it. I won't let it be the end of it because I love her and I think she loves me. I won't try to take her away from you, but I will try to convince you that marrying me is the best thing for Judy."

Amos took another sip of bourbon and then smiled.

"Judy told Betty that's what she thinks too and Betty agrees. Now, if you're gonna be my son in law, you gotta learn how to drink good bourbon. You liked to have choked yourself before. Just sip a little and let it stay on your tongue for a while before you swallow. Goes down smooth as a baby's butt when you do it that way. Try it and see."

Well, I learned a lot about Amos that night. As he got deeper into his glass, he started to open up to me about things I'd never suspected about him. It started with him asking me about my time in the Army.

"Ricky, Judy says you were in Vietnam. You see any combat?"

I nodded.

"Not as much as most, but too much for me. I was at Chu Lai during the Tet Offensive. For a while there, I stopped being a mechanic and started being in the infantry. Can't say I'd ever want to do that again."

He smiled then.

"Felt the same way after D-Day, but I didn't get to stop fightin' Germans. Nobody did unless they got hit. You get hit?"

"Yeah, but not bad. The VC bullet just punched a hole in my shoulder. Hurt like hell, but the medic just slapped a field dressing on it and then put me on a truck going to the field hospital. I was back to working on trucks as soon as we chased the VC and NVA out of Chu Lai."

"They give you a Purple Heart?"

I nodded.

"Yes, but I never put the ribbon on my dress greens. It just seemed like I didn't really deserve it. I mean, so many guys over there got hurt really bad and a lot of them died there. All I had was a little hole that didn't hardly even leave a scar."

Amos took another drink, and he stopped looking at me. Instead he was looking at the wall beside him. I hadn't really looked at that wall because I was concentrating on Amos, but when I followed his eye, I saw a few pictures and four medals in a frame under glass. They were too far away for me to see what all those medals were, but I recognized two of them as Purple Hearts.

Amos was still staring at that wall when he spoke again.

"Happens in every war. Some men go through the whole thing and don't get a scratch. Some men don't come home at all. Others, they get hit but not too bad. Like you, they heal up and go back to fighting. Some get hit bad enough they come home early. Called it the million dollar wound, they did. I got to come home early, but I never got that million dollars."

"You got hit by a bullet?"

Amos shook his head.

"Nope. German artillery shell that went off in the trees over my foxhole. Blew six trees into splinters. One as big as a two-by-six hit my right leg and almost took it off. Another one about as big hit my left leg and busted it up pretty bad. I don't remember much about that because a medic wrapped up my legs, told me I was lucky, and gave me a shot of morphine that put me to sleep.

"Well, I suppose I was lucky, but I lost my right leg and they put a cast on my left leg that I had to wear for three months. I didn't think I was lucky then, not even when they sent me back to Lawson Military Hospital in Atlanta. They got me fixed up with an artificial leg and told me I'd be as good as new. Well I knew I wasn't gonna be as good as new.

Amos took another sip from his glass, and then looked at me and smiled.

"Then I met Betty. She was the woman who was supposed to teach me how to walk on my new leg. I guess it was like with you and Judy in reverse. I was just a farm boy from Tennessee and she had all this college education. After the first week, I couldn't get her out of my head. After two weeks, I started faking not being able to walk just so I could be around her.

"She caught on to that though, and she told me she didn't have time to mess with me unless I was willing to work with her. Then she said if I wanted to see her more, I should just ask her out sometime. Well, I didn't have anything except I was gonna inherit a farm I wouldn't be able to work and I was gonna get disability from the Army, but I still asked her out. One thing led to another, and when the Army let me come home, Betty came with me. We set up housekeeping in the little tenant house across the road.

"Well, I knew I could never work the farm. I could drive a tractor a little because I could work the clutch with my left leg, but using the brakes with my right was really hard to get right if I was going to plow or anything like that. I did all right with the cattle Daddy had though. They didn't need much except some bales of hay in the winter and I could do that. I took care of the cattle until Daddy passed in '46.

"Right after the war you had all these GI's coming home from Europe and the Pacific and they had a bunch of combat pay saved up. The first thing they wanted was a car, but it took a while for the car companies to change over from making tanks and other stuff to making cars again. Those GI's bought used cars and when something broke, they needed to fix it. The problem was, nobody had been making parts during the war either.

"When I was going through France, I saw people taking old cars apart to get parts to get other cars running again. I figured that might work here too and it was something I could do even with just one leg. I sold off most of the farm and bought a truck and started hauling wrecks out here. It worked too. As soon as the car companies started making new cars, that business dried up a little, but then along came the kids those GI's had and they wanted cars too. New cars were too expensive, so they did what their daddies did. They bought old used cars and fixed them up with my parts.

"I can't do much besides pick up the cars and trucks and haul them out here because of my leg, but with what I make on parts and my disability, we have enough to be comfortable. I still run a few cows and some chickens and we have a big garden, so we get along just fine.

"You and Judy will do just fine too. I kept that little tenant house fixed up for the day Judy found her a man. Even took half of one bedroom and put in indoor plumbing. If Judy says she'll marry you, you can live there until you find something better. 'Course, you have to ask her. If I was you, I'd do that pretty quick."

He'd just drained his glass when Betty and Judy walked into the den. Betty shook her head and apologized to me.

"He's probably been talking your ears off about the war. Always does that when he drinks more than he should. Don't get the wrong idea though. Amos doesn't drink much at all, just sometimes when his leg hurts him or he's talking with someone he thinks will understand."

She turned to Amos then.

"Come on, you big lug. Let's get you to bed. If you fall asleep in your chair again, you'll have to stay there all night. You're too heavy for Judy and I to pick up."

I had to smile when she took Amos by the arm and walked him out of the room because he reached over and squeezed her butt. Betty just chuckled and said, "Forget about that tonight, Amos. You can't even walk right, let alone do that."

Judy smiled as we watched them go, and then asked me what we'd talked about. I didn't know the right way to tell her so it sort of came out in one really long bunch of words.

"Well, he said I'd been seeing a lot of you and wanted to know if I was serious or not and then he told me about being in World War Two and getting hurt and meeting your mother and then he said if I was serious I should tell you."

I took a deep breath, and then put my arms around Judy.

"Judy I am serious about you. What I want is for you to be my wife. I don't have much to offer, not even an engagement ring, but if you feel like I do, will you marry me?"

Judy stared at me with her mouth open for a few seconds, then put her arms around my neck.

"Ricky, I've wanted that for a long, long time. Now, kiss me. I have to go tell Mama."

When I got back home, Dad was waiting up for me. He grinned when I walked into the living room.

"Well, did you talk to Amos?"

I said I had, and Dad asked what he'd told me. I told Dad about Amos losing his leg and how that had worked out. Dad put his hands together then and frowned.

"Amos didn't tell you about his bronze and silver stars?"

"That must have been the medals I saw in a frame on the wall. He didn't say anything about them though."

Dad shook his head.

"I thought he might have changed, but he hasn't."

Dad got up and walked over to the book case and pulled out a book, then asked me to sit on the couch. When he sat down beside me, he opened the book. It wasn't a real book. I was a scrapbook with pictures and newspaper clippings.

"Your mother put this together before we were married."

He turned a few pages and then pointed to a picture of two boys.

"That's me and Amos on the day we left for boot camp in January of 1943. Your grandpa said we should wait to be drafted, but we were both eighteen and thought we'd live forever. We were rarin' to go fight the Germans and the Japanese."

He turned a couple more pages.

"We had a week's leave before we shipped out for England. That was in October of 1943. The rumor going around was we were getting ready to attack the Germans in France since we'd already chased them out of Africa and Italy. Amos and I were hoping that was the case. That's what we'd signed up for, to fight either the Germans or the Japs.

"We kept training while we were in England. It was training in the usual infantry stuff, but also in something we'd never done before, what they called amphibious landings.

"Well, on D-Day, we found out about those amphibious landings. Amos and I were in the 1st Infantry Division that landed on Omaha that morning. After we broke out of Omaha, we started inland. A ways into France, we ran into a German platoon that started shooting at us. I took a bullet in my butt that day, and the medic sent me back to where they'd set up a field hospital on Omaha Beach. It was two weeks before I caught back up with the 1st, and when I did, Amos was wearing sergeant's stripes.

"I asked him how he got promoted so fast and he said our platoon sergeant had been killed in an ambush and our Captain had given him the job. What I didn't know until two weeks later when they had the award ceremony was that Amos had crawled through heavy machine gun fire and then taken out a German machine gun that had killed the sergeant and had his platoon pinned down. He took a bullet in he arm while he was doing that. They gave him a Purple Heart and the bronze star for that.

"We kept fighting our way through France until we got to Belgium. We were dead tired and we'd outrun our supply trucks so we were low on everything. Ike decided to give us a rest there until our supply trucks could catch up. We had the Germans on the run and he figured they'd keep running. Only problem was, they didn't. They turned around and attacked us. Two weeks before Christmas, Amos and I were in foxholes and hoping the aerial artillery bursts didn't cause a tree to fall on us.

After the first two shells rained pieces of tree down on our company, there were a lot of guys hurt. Those shells broke the trees into pieces like sharp spears that came down fast. I saw a couple guys staked right to the ground. Most just got pieces of wood stuck in them.

Amos told me to cover him and before I could stop him, he crawled out to the nearest guy and then dragged him back behind our foxholes. As soon as the medics started working on that guy, Amos went back for another one. I counted six that he pulled back to the medics before this big chunk of tree hit him in the legs. He was pulling himself back with just his arms when two medics picked him up and carried him off. I didn't see him again after that.

"When the war ended, I came home and figured Amos had beat me, but he hadn't. His dad said he was in a hospital in Georgia getting fitted with an artificial leg. He also told me Amos had been awarded another Purple Heart and the Silver Star for pulling all those men to safety in the Ardennes."

I was pretty confused because nobody seemed to know that about Amos. People in town thought a lot of World War Two veterans. The town park had monument in it with the names of the area men who'd served and a separate section for those who'd been killed in action. Every Memorial Day, the American Legion Post led a parade through town that ended up at that monument. The mayor would give a speech and then a bugler hidden in the bushes would play Taps.

Amos Meadows wasn't among those names and I'd never heard anyone talk about Amos being a veteran, much less that he'd earned any medals. When I asked Dad why that was, he frowned.

"When all the guys from this area came home, the Legion met us in uniform, saluted us, and then marched us through town to the park where the mayor gave us a speech thanking us for what we'd done. After that, things got back to normal pretty fast. The guys who'd fought started getting jobs and getting married and having kids and nobody had much time to celebrate except on Memorial Day and Veteran's Day.

"Amos missed the coming home celebration because he was still in the hospital in Atlanta. When he did come home, he didn't make a big deal out of it or even tell anybody except his mom and dad he was coming. He just came home with Betty and they kept to themselves. I asked his dad why it didn't even make the paper, and he told me that Amos didn't want any special treatment, and he'd told his mom and dad not to tell anybody anything about him.