November 3, 2011

Proud day for the Weidners!

Blogging has been slow lately, because Charlene and I are in Columbia, SC, to see our middle son, William, graduate from Basic Training! We've had a couple of awesome days at Ft. Jackson. Will's changed in many ways, all for the better. And is bursting with stories. And eating astonishing amounts of food when we take him out to dinner. He liked the Army chow, especially grits(!) but has lost a lot of weight.

Tomorrow he heads off to Ft. Huachuca in Arizona, for AIT. That's advanced training in his specialty, intelligence analysis. Then he'll come home. He's in the the Army Reserves, in a unit based in Mountain View. Sooner or later, he'll deploy and help America govern an empire she doesn't want, but seems to be collecting just because of the sheer hapless ineptitude of the rest of the world.

Anyway, we are very proud! Here he is with Charlene, who got to shoot off some blanks from an M-16. (No biggie; we have an AR-15.)

Will and Charlene at Basic Training graduation

And here he is with his platoon, kneeling on the lower left, listening to the drill sergeants. (Who I've cropped out; you are not supposed to blog their pictures.) The berets they get to wear upon graduation. Until now they've only worn patrol caps. But Lordy, they look so young! Buncha kids. But very polite and serious, a big contrast with the #Occupy flakes.

Will with platoon

* Update: We are home at last. And Will was sent on a charter from Columbia direct to Ft. Huachuca, (pronounced wuh CHEW kuh.) So he got there before we had struggled home, after driving to the airport in Charlotte, and he called us while we were waiting for a streetcar in SF.

It's a funny thing. I valued keenly the people we met in places like Columbia; they are solid, sensible, patriotic, polite, soft-spoken. You can trust them, you can rely on them. The problem, to an urbanite like me, is that they are also homely and slow-witted. And, well. boring. And then we get back to the city, and trendy kids are schooling past us like quicksilver, and they are electric, and often good-looking. But, alas, they are flaky and relativistic, without ballast or seriousness or good-sense. So it seems like there's nowhere I can really call home.

Posted by John Weidner at November 3, 2011 2:14 PM
Weblog by John Weidner