Coming Home

He confessed he let the pear trees go. “The pears fall to the ground and rot.” He eyes locked onto a distant image I could not see. “I got so tired of them. My wife cooked everything with pears. When she died, I let the trees go. They need lots of care. You have to prune them if you expect something larger than a baseball. Otherwise the pears don’t get that big.”

In his steady yet age-blemished hands, he clutched an imaginary ball and rubbed the seams like his hero Joe DiMaggio would have done. But all he was really doing was demonstrating the size of the Bartlett pears that litter the ground of his Texas ranch outside of San Antonio. I saw the golden fruit lying in waste, buried by the fallen leave and small branches that had not been pruned in years. If mom were still alive, I would get a box of pears for Christmas. Had he ever told his wife that he wasn’t fond of the pear gelatin salad with the soggy pecans, pear pie and other pear dishes?

He told me that he put Vista on his desktop, but the program took too much space on his laptop. “Wait a minute,” I challenged. I didn’t want to be rude or disrespectful. But he certainly wasn’t the stereotypical Best Buy Geek Squad member. “How do you know all that stuff?”

“I spent thirty years as a systems engineer,” he replied with a smile.

Gilbert Meyers was a long way from home, his rotting pears and his pecan orchard. He traveled alone, carried one small piece of luggage and a cane. He sat at the airport gate, waiting for the flight to Honolulu. Behind him two children, a brother and sister, entertained themselves on a Gameboy, unaware of the man who wore a hat that said USS Utah. But I noticed it and his jacket that said Pearl Harbor. Men like Gilbert wear them, like sports fans wear the ball caps of their favorite team. Except, men like Gilbert wear them like badges of humble honor. So they don't forget. So we don't forget.

Many times, I've been with Dad, when he sported his Battle of the Bulge hat. Strangers have come up to him and thanked him for his service. Occasionally, a person will press a twenty dollar bill into his hand, shake it as if meeting a dignitary and walk off as quickly as they approached. I wasn’t compelled to offer Gilbert a Jackson, but I felt obligated to acknowledge him, to thank him and to tell him about my Dad.

He had been seventeen and he and his buddy knew a place where they could get a couple of beers. They made plans to go there on Monday, when they got off duty. “You see, we were on duty that day.”

That day, when young men didn’t make plans much beyond their day off. His buddy never made it out of the USS Utah. “The first time I came back was about five years ago. When I saw his name on the plaque, I cried like a baby.”

No Gilbert Meyers cried like the man he is.