“It was a wonderful world, the post war world...”
Nice picture.
In my minds eye I see the nurtured, freshly clipped lawn, the slow drifting smoke of the barbeque. I can hear the strangely soft voices they used when discussing the war or the politics of the war, cupping their Pabst or Schaffer, ‘Lucky’ pinched between their fingers, one of those blurry tattoos peeking from a white undershirt sleeve.
Sometimes something such as your post spurs one of those mental videos and I feel a terrible nostalgia. Maybe it wasn’t as special (the time, the era)as we make out but it was the bit of theirs that they shared with us and it is gone...and here we are...
Your post is so beautiful it brought tears in my eyes. All my vet relatives playing poker on a summer day. The grass always mowed and emerald green. Kids, completely unsupervised (after the war, who gives a damn if your kid falls off his bike?!) and if you did yourself harm, it was your own fault. Baseball, stickball and stoopball. Lucky Strikes and yellow fingers (remember those nicotine-stained fingers?!) One thing I remember: no one every spoke abut the war.