Veterans Day

Memories of my great-grandfather.

Today I was given four packets of Fig Newtons. I’ve heard they are an acquired taste, and I suppose that would explain why no one wanted the rest of them. Personally I love them, though not as much for the taste as for what they mean to me. You see every time I bite into one of those sweet little cookies-without-crumbs it takes me back, back to when I had one sister, back to when I lived on Wellington Place, back to when the world was so much bigger yet so much simpler all the same. One bite takes me back to a small house in Pennsylvania where a strawberry patch was grown and the maple syrup was made from the trees outside.

 

My parents had a blue Nissan Sentra back then. We used to take long drives to visit family, much longer drives than we take now. Sometimes we’d go to the mountainous country of West Virginia and other times we’d head north up towards the very edge of Pennsylvania, stopping just before we hit New York. It was up in Bradford, a dying oil town famous for its Zippo lighters, when we would visit my dad’s mother, and in turn her father. Those were the most special trips of all.

 

My great-grandfather was an Army vet who reenlisted after Pearl Harbor in 1942. He was also a writer and a storyteller who loved recounting the events of his days as a soldier. I still remember sitting with my parents around his small kitchen table, listening to him as he shared his stories. He would tell of storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day and how his boat was hit on the way in. He would also tell of liberating a concentration camp, and fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. Each time we went I would inevitably get hungry, and as these stories were told my great-grandfather would offer me a Fig Newton. Usually I’d accept and sit by the table, eating my treat and listening to him talk.

 

I remember a lot of things about his house and the times we spent there. But of all the things I associate with it there are none I remember better than the Fig Newtons, not even that sweet homemade maple syrup. Something about that cookie just brings me back, and all of a sudden I’m sitting in that kitchen again listening to a great person tell tales of heroics and bravery. I’m not even sure I like the cookies anymore, but I don’t really care. For me there’s nothing like a Fig Newton to make a perfect Veterans Day.

Reviews

[Emily Filkins]

I Really liked this:)
Good job