The 1951 Dodge Business Coupe

"I tried to get Amos to join the Legion post, but he said he hadn't done anything anyone else would have done and he'd rather just forget about the whole thing. That how things stayed. As far as I know, nobody except me and Betty and maybe Judy know what he did and how he got hurt. Amos is a war hero who doesn't want to be one."

Dad closed the book then.

"So, did you ask Judy?"

I grinned and nodded.

"Yes, and she said yes."

Dad slapped me on the back and said it was high time I'd become a man.

Well, two months after that Amos walked Judy down the aisle of the Methodist Church and when the preacher asked who gave her away, Amos cleared his throat and said, "Her mother and I do."

I don't remember much about the actual service except that Judy was beautiful in the wedding gown her mother had sewn for her, and lifting Judy's veil and then kissing her. The only thing I remember about the picture taking was that Amos looked really uncomfortable in his suit and tie. That night in the motel room I'd rented in Decatur, Judy told me it was the same suit Amos had worn when he and Betty got married, and it was a little tight in some places.

Judy was beautiful in her wedding gown. When she went into the bathroom of the motel and changed into a simple white nightgown she was still beautiful, but also looked innocent and fragile and I thought maybe a little afraid. When she put her arms around my neck, I asked her. She grinned a sheepish little grin.

"I'm a little nervous. Mama told me what I should do and what to expect. She said it would hurt a little the first time, but after that, I'd like it. Are you nervous too?"

I nodded.

"Yeah, a little. I've never done this before and I don't want to hurt you."

Judy tightened her breasts against my chest and kissed me, then eased back down off her tiptoes.

"Mama said you'd want to take off my nightgown, so we should start with that."

I don't suppose most men remember their first time with a woman very well. That's because from the time we understand what sex is all about, we talk about sex all the time. The mechanics of sex come from our dads and sometimes our mothers, but it's just what goes where. The real understanding of sex, or at least what we think sex is all about, comes from other guys our own age or older.

The result is a fantasy composed of what older brothers have to say seasoned with some reading of books and magazines some of us have borrowed from our dads, and simmered to perfection with what we think a woman looks like under her clothes. That last information was gleaned mostly from movies where the actress showed enough to make you imagine but not enough you could actually see anything. Men's magazines of that time weren't even as explicit as a woman's magazine today.

We go into that first time with that same fantasy, and on our wedding night, we find out it's all wrong.

What I remember most about that night is seeing Judy without any clothes for the first time. She wasn't at all like I'd imagined. Judy's breasts weren't small and perky. They were pretty big and sort of laid flat against her chest. Her waist was pretty small, but instead of wide hips that all the movie actresses seemed to have, Judy's hips were rounded like that, but not very wide.

The other thing that was a bit of a surprise was Judy had brown hair on her mound that stuck out over her thighs a little. I'd seen a lot of pictures of movie stars in swim suits and none of them had hair that stuck out of the leg of the swimsuit. I found that thatch of brown hair to be really exciting. I thought I knew what was under that hair, but I couldn't see it and it was like I was getting to open a present.

What I found out that night is most of my knowledge about sex was wrong. Dad had told me if I used my finger, after a while the woman would get slippery inside and she'd be ready. That part was true, but Dad had left out some other pretty important stuff.

After I took off my clothes and lay down beside Judy, I slipped my hand between her thighs and felt for her entrance. She didn't say anything. She just reached down and pulled my hand up to her breast. When I didn't do anything, she whispered, "It feels good if you touch me here and on my nipples".

It must have felt good because Judy shivered a little when I squeezed her breast and then made a little moan when I brushed my fingertip over her nipple. She pulled me down so she could kiss me then.

I was gently squeezing Judy's breasts and touching her nipples when I felt her hand slide down my belly. When she circled my stiff cock with her small hand, I jerked a little. Dad had never said anything about a woman doing that. When Judy started moving her hand up and down, I decided Dad had left out at least one really important part.

Another one of those things he'd left out was when Judy kissed me and then gently pushed my face down until I felt her right nipple against my cheek. She murmured, "Kiss me here, Ricky."

I did and Judy moaned and her body sort of raised up off the bed. I did it again and got the same results except Judy's hand started moving a little faster. When I kissed her nipple the third time, Judy moved a little and instead of kissing her nipple, it slipped into my mouth. Judy moaned a lot louder then and she opened up her thighs.

Since I wasn't using my hand on Judy's breasts now, I moved my hand down over her mound and felt for her lips again. This time, Judy didn't stop me. She just opened her thighs wider. Before I knew it, my fingertip slipped between her soft, hair covered lips and felt the slippery ripples of her inner lips. As soon as I did that, Judy lifted up her body a little and moaned, then eased back down.

She didn't stay down long though because when she eased back down, my fingertip didn't. It slipped up over her inner lips until I felt a little bump. As soon as my fingertip touched that little bump, Judy gasped and jerked her body up fast. Her legs quivered a little before she eased back down again.

I did that several times before I heard Judy murmur, "Ricky, I think I'm ready."

By that time I was more than ready. I knelt between Judy's upraised thighs and probed between her slippery lips until I felt my cock head meet resistance. Judy caught her breath then, but she whispered, "Go ahead, Ricky."

I pushed my cock in until Judy gasped again, then pulled back out a little, but I couldn't hold back. I pushed back inside Judy until suddenly she made a little cry and I felt her open up. My cock slid all the way inside her and that was too much, too fast. I gasped as the spurt raced up my cock and inside Judy. I did pull out a little then, but my body had other ideas. I pushed my cock back inside Judy as a second spurt splattered inside her and then repeated that two more times before I sagged into my arms and tried to breathe normally again.

Judy wrapped her arms around me then and pulled me down on top of her. She kissed me and then buried her face between my neck and shoulder and kept stroking my back.

While I was lying there on top of Judy, I started to understand that sex wasn't just sticking my cock in Judy and pumping away until I came. It was a sharing of both with each other. Judy had given herself to me and I'd given myself to her. What had happened was that instead of two separate people, we'd become one, and I knew right then we'd always be just one.

We moved into the little tenant house once we got back from Decatur. Judy's mother baked us a pie as a housewarming gift. Amos found some furniture and a used refrigerator at a farm sale and hauled it home on his truck so we'd have a bed to sleep in, a table to eat at, and a way to keep food cold. The stove and sink were already there. Mom and Dad brought us a set of pots and pans and a set of plates and silverware.

For two years, I'd drive my truck to the Ford dealership five days a week and be a mechanic. Judy would drive my old Dodge up to the house and help Amos like she always had. We were happy most of the time, though I learned that what Amos had told me was true. Judy had a mind of her own and it wasn't easy to change it once she got something in her head. It's good that we had a couch because there were a few nights when I'd have been sleeping on the floor otherwise. The arguments weren't fun. The making up was fantastic.

I was also happy in my job. I got a real thrill out of figuring out why a car did something it did and then fixing it so it didn't. We still had a few older cars or cars that had been wrecked that fixing would have cost more than the car was worth, so once the insurance company released them, the manager would call Amos and Amos would come pick them up at the same time I got off work so I could help him.

It was in January of our second year that Judy was grinning when I got home. When I asked her why, she just said, "I bought something today because we're going to need it." Then she showed me the little onesie she'd been hiding behind her back. When I put my arms around her and said I was happy, she kissed me and then said, "I wanted to tell you first, and now I have to go tell Mama".

Richard Amos West was born seven months later after taking almost twelve hours to make his first appearance into the world. At that time, fathers to be couldn't be with their wives, so I spent the time in the waiting room of the obstetrics ward. When they called me and said they had Judy in a room, I went up to see her.

She looked worn out, but she was smiling as she held little Richard to her right breast.

"Ricky, isn't he beautiful. I think he has your chin and Daddy's eyes."

Well, I agreed with her, but I didn't see either. All I saw was a little red face with cheeks that were pumping away at the nipple in his mouth. I was still proud though, and after I slept for a few hours, I went out and bought a box of cigars to take to work. That night, after I came home from the hospital, I took Amos a cigar and we had a drink in his den. Like the time before, Betty came in after a while and took him to bed. Like before, I saw Amos reach down and give Betty's ample butt a squeeze.

Richard Amos was joined a year and a half later by Jacob Andrew, and two years after that, I held Judy's hand while she delivered Sara Elizabeth. I was promoted to Service Manager six months later and the extra money really helped. Amos had planted a bigger garden as my family increased in size, so we didn't spend much on food. The real cost was all the clothes our kids seemed to out-grow a week after we bought them and the cost of a station wagon to replace my truck.

Amos lived to see all three of his grandchildren take their first steps and when they got old enough, to take them to see the chickens and cattle he still raised. It was getting harder for him to get around though. Like many veterans of all wars, the war had done more than just take his leg. The weeks and months of cold, heat, hunger, and extreme exertion had take a toll on the rest of him too. He made it to the age of seventy before he passed away one night in his sleep.

Betty needed some help in making the funeral arrangements so Judy and I did most of the running around and arranging for a funeral home. It was when the minister asked if he should write the obituary that I said, no, I'd do that. I said that because I'd had an idea in my head since Amos started to have problems. I talked with Betty and she said Amos probably wouldn't like my idea but she thought he deserved it.

I wrote the usual stuff about when and where he was born and who he left behind, but at the end I wrote what nobody knew but I thought they should know about a man most of the town had quietly ridiculed.

Amos Meadows enlisted in the US Army two days after his eighteenth birthday. He was among the first of the American troops to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and he fought from there to the Ardennes Forest where he was wounded trying to help his fellow soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. For his bravery under fire on two separate occasions, he was awarded two Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star and the Silver Star.

I knew Amos wouldn't have wanted a full military graveside service. He just wasn't that kind of person so I didn't try to arrange that. What happened though, was the American Legion and VFW both contacted me once they saw the obituary in the newspaper and asked if they could escort his casket to the graveside. I asked Betty and she said she thought that would be fitting. I have to admit that seeing both Color Guards in uniform with their flags and rifles walking ahead of, beside, and after the casket brought tears to my eyes.

After the funeral, Betty told Judy she didn't need the big house anymore and said we should switch houses. It took a month to get that done, but after that, instead of three baby beds crammed into our one spare bedroom, each kid had their own bedroom upstairs and Judy and I had the downstairs bedroom. We were done having kids, but it was pretty nice to not have a toddler walk into our bedroom while we were having sex and having to explain that mommy and daddy weren't fighting.

It was Judy who started Meadows Classic Auto Parts. She'd continued to help Amos until he passed on, and once he had she said we needed to do something with the junk cars, and she had an idea. She said she'd had a couple people come by for parts and they weren't kids looking to fix up something to drive. They were people with money who were restoring old cars to the same way they were when those cars were new. They were also willing to pay more if they didn't have to take those parts off the junk cars themselves.

I knew what parts were likely to fail on any car, so on Saturdays and Sundays, I started removing those parts and cleaning them up a little. Judy put them in plastic bags and labeled them, and then put them in the barn. Once we had a small inventory, she placed an ad in a car collector's magazine.

Judy did the pricing based on how old the part was and how long it took us to get it off the old car, clean it up, and package it. I was surprised by the costs she assigned. Amos had sold a Model A Ford carburetor for two dollars. Judy priced the four we had at fifty dollars each. We had two Model T radiators that didn't leak, and Judy priced them at a hundred and fifty dollars each. I didn't think they'd ever sell, but six months later they were all gone and we had people calling to see if we could get more.

Every summer now, I hire a half dozen kids who took auto mechanics in high school, give them a set of tools and a golf cart, and a list of what we need. By the end of the summer, the barn is full of everything that will come off a car or truck without a cutting torch.

I cut a deal with a local scrap yard for the rest. They haul the car and truck bodies that are just frames with the sheetmetal that is welded together off to their own yard. In a couple months, that old wrecked Olds or Buick becomes fresh steel that goes to make more cars.

The only cars I didn't strip and have them haul away are that old Plymouth and a '50 Dodge Coronet. My old Dodge still runs and I drive it in the Memorial Day parade every year. I figure there's enough good parts left on the Plymouth and the Coronet to keep my Dodge running as long as I can still drive it.

Our kids are all grown now and have moved away except for Sarah. She has a boyfriend and I think it's getting serious. John just got out of the Army after serving two tours in Iraq. One of these days, I'll have to have a talk with him over a glass of bourbon and tell him the story about Sara's grandfather, and maybe if I feel comfortable with him, I'll tell him about my Purple Heart and my own Bronze Star.

I never told anyone about that medal because I didn't think I deserved it in the first place, not when so many of the guys at Chu Lai didn't make it back home. I was just a mechanic forced to fight or be killed. Those guys were fighting for their lives every day.

The citation in the frame on my den wall next to Amos' decorations says I manned an M-60 and held off multiple NVA attacks until the Army could chopper in reinforcements to us. I did do that, but only because the machine-gun crew had all been hit. I didn't do anything they hadn't done before and wouldn't have done then had they been able.

Well, Judy just came in and saw me with an empty glass and frowned.

"Just like Daddy, aren't you? Well, let's get you to bed before you fall asleep in your chair again."

I couldn't help but slip my hand inside Judy's jeans and give her butt cheek a little squeeze. She just giggled.

"You think you're up to that in your condition?"

I squeezed her butt again.

"I'm not drunk. I'm just relaxed. I'm up for anything."

Judy felt the front of my jeans and giggled again.

"This part doesn't feel very up for anything to me."

I slipped a finger down her butt crack and chuckled when she shivered.

"Once you get out of those clothes that'll change. You want to be on top or on the bottom?"

I'm hoping she wants to be on top. Over the years, Judy's breasts have grown a bunch and I love that little double pump she makes when she's riding my cock and I suck one of her nipples. If she wants to be on the bottom, well that's good too.

Actually, everything is good with Judy. It's like her mother had said that first time I had dinner at their house. She said she taught Judy how to take care of a man. I know Judy is teaching Sarah the same thing. When John and I have our talk, if he says he's serious I'll have to tell him he's in for the experience of his life.

Epilogue

I'm not Ricky West, but I did serve in the US Army. I've known at least two men who could have been Ricky though, and probably several more if they'd felt comfortable enough to talk about it. Most won't. They're trying to forget the unforgettable.

Every year on November 11, the US celebrates what was originally named "Armistice Day" to mark the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month as the date in 1918 on which the Armistice with Germany went into effect and ended WWI. It was a date set aside to honor those who served in WWI. In 1954 the name was changed to "Veterans Day" to honor all those who have served at any time. It is also celebrated by other countries under a different name, but for the same reason.

You will note that it's not spelled "Veteran's Day" or "Veterans' Day". The lack of the apostrophe indicating possession is intentional. Veterans Day does not belong to any one veteran or to any group of veterans. It belongs to all of us, to you, me, and all the rest of us who served our country honorably.

Who are those veterans? They're men and women who put their lives on hold, put on a uniform, and served their country to the best of their ability. Veterans have done so since 1775 and have continued to do so through two world wars and several "conflicts" that felt like war to the men and women who served during them, but were deemed by the politicians to be something that sounded more politically acceptable than "war".

They are part of the one percent who have served as protectors of our nation's freedom and they have a DD-214 to prove that. Up until 1973, many served because they were drafted, but still answered the call from their country. Most will tell you that the oath they took on their first day in the military has never expired.

Other young men and women will follow in their footsteps, for as Lieutenant Colonel Allen Bernard West stated:

"We must never forget why we have, and why we need our military. Our armed forces exist solely to ensure our nation is safe so that each and every one of us can sleep soundly at night, knowing we have 'guardians at the gate."

I wrote this story for them, because Veterans Day has become just another day for some people, just another day they don't have to go to work or school. It seems to me as if the Veterans Day parades get smaller every year. On this Veterans Day, thank a veteran so he or she knows you do remember and appreciate their service. They may just shrug and keep walking, but I promise they do hear what you said and they do appreciate the words.