OT

Come to think of it, I might have a use for the atomic bomb model I linked in the last string, as a present for a certain Mr. Richey, who was one of our neighbors in Colorado Springs when I was a kid there in the late 50s and early 60s.

Mr. Richey was an insurance salesman with a horse-face wife and two annoying kids a couple of years younger than I was. He was also a very pious fellow who disapproved of violence, the military, and toy guns. He especially disapproved of my brothers and me because our dad was in the Air Force and we were southerners. Possibly he was still seething over the death of his great-uncle at Chancellorsville or something.

There was a minor war scare at the time of the U-2 incident in 1960, and we were getting quite a bit of the “duck and cover” propaganda at school. I had walked home with the Richey kids and was leaving when Mr. Richey cornered me in his backyard and started screaming at me, “I don’t my kids hearing any more of this shit about the goddamned atomic bomb! We’re not in the goddamned military and we don’t believe in that kind of shit! Keep that fucking shit to yourself and get the fuck out of here!”

Those were his exact words. I made a point of never forgetting them.

I was TEN YEARS OLD. I didn’t know anything about atomic bombs other than the nonsense from school and I had certainly never mentioned them to his brats, who were morons anyway. I was so frightened and shocked, I ran home crying and I avoided his kids like the plague from then on. My dad was out of the country and I didn’t mention it to my mom for fear of starting a row with the neighbors, something she was always warning me not to do.

Mr. Richey was only about 30 at the time, so it is entirely possible that he is still alive, probably kicking back smugly in his old age and enjoying his retirement. His daughter may be a retired pole dancer and his son might have died of a heroin overdose but he has the satisfaction of knowing that he managed to protect them from the military-industrial cooties.

That is where the precision replica A-bomb comes in. I would like to find Mr. Richey and tell him about my military career, show him my medals and insignia, and give him the model bomb as a present————- liberally covered with vaseline and applied as a suppository.