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My dear lysie, reading about your mom, and how you miss her, reminds me about an interesting story about me and my little Mom.. Little, because she was tiny, as in 4’10” and skinny as a pencil when she was young..

Her birthday was Nov. 11, Veterans Day every year.. As such, I always associated the flying of the Flags with her birthday.. I just thought everyone was celebrating her when everyone put flags out.. LOL..

However, her apparent patriotism caused me some distress when I was a very young typical Italian, inner city hooligan.. We, my buddies and I were playing stick ball in the middle of the street, when a ball that I hit broke a window.. We were warned that this would happen if we persisted in playing ball so close to the buildings.. But as kids, who didn’t believe it would happen because we were too good at hitting.. LOL

Well we did what kids do, we ran away and hid.. However, it wasn’t long before there was a big Irish Cop at our front door, asking for my Mom, and I to come out to the stoop, and answer a few questions.. GULP

The policeman had a few of my friends with them.. They were starring down at their shoes, so I knew I was doomed.. When he asked if I was the one that hit the ball, I looked at the Cop, and at my Mom, and answered yes.. I did it, and I thought that was it, I was going to the Big House for Life, or maybe even the Electric Chair..

Here is were the Flags come in, this window that we.. “I”.. broke, had Flags all over the place and the window I broke, had a Red Banner with 3 Stars on it! (an indication that the home had 3 veterans) Also the Cop said this home was an old widow, that had little or no money to fix the window..

I felt horrible, and looked up at my Mom and a tear was running down her cheek.. That was it, I wanted to die! I put my hands out, as if asking for handcuffs, like I saw at the movies.. Ha!

After a few torturous moments, the Cop said that the VFW would pay for the window if I and my friends would agree to clean off the headstones, and clean around the graves at the Memorial Cemetery before Veterans Day??..

Thats it! Sure we would, and we would get off SCOTT FREE? Not so fast, my Mom said we should do it before every Holiday that year.. There were 500 headstones, and we ended up doing it every year until I/we, graduated from high School..

With the Korean War there were so many more new graves, some of which were cousins, brothers, friends, and fathers of ours, that it became a real tear-fest toward the end..

I never regretted doing it, and every family of ours brought the rest of their family with us to add flowers to the graves.. I bring small Flags for each grave to our little Memorial Cemetery, each and every year to this day..