Again I have had a full week and, right now, I am pleasantly tired.  This week I’ll write about two things, ROMEO and The Traveling Vietnam Wall.  First ROMEO.  At Imperial Plaza ROMEO stands for Retired Old Men Eating Out and we had two meals this month (May).  When we were originally scheduled to go to the steakhouse there was a vicious rain and hail storm.  All of us were on the bus, except for Ron, raring to go.  All of us men were on the bus having fun laughing and joking with the storm raging all around when Ron came on the bus to say the trip was cancelled because of the storm.  We didn’t want to cancel because we knew it would soon blow over.

We went to the White Squirrel and had dinner there.  We didn’t care about the storm or anything else because it was our evening out and we would not be daunted.   Ron came in and we jokingly told him the tab was on him because he cancelled, we didn’t.  He laughed it off and said he would reschedule the outing.  He called me three days later and said we were rescheduled for the following Thursday.  We went to the steakhouse and partied hard because we are ROMEO.

The Vietnam Traveling Wall may not be as good as seeing the real thing but it was something a Vietnam vet should not miss.  While there, the vets had the opportunity to computer research the name of a fallen service member and locate the name on the wall (where it would be in DC at the real wall).  The display also included some small items used in Vietnam along with a few pictures.  Some of the pictures bought back memories that were being suppressed but I made out ok.

I was a little sad but after talking to a couple of vets (we all can start a conversation with another vet at the drop of a hat) we lost that feeling (they admitted they felt bad also) and we had a pleasant but short conversation.  All of us Vietnam Vets are brothers, no matter where we may meet, and all other vets are second.  A hard thing to say but vets understand this because we all went through the same thing.

That was a short week but a full week.  Take care!!