They were soldiers once, and young

America is a never ending knock knock joke:

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

America.

America who?

That is exactly the question we should ask when we ask:

What has America ever given me?

A: You mean now?

I had the honor of sitting at a dinner table with a bunch of Vietnam War helicopter pilots in town for a convention this week. They loved Dirty Franks. They loved Philadelphia. They were happy to be alive. And so was I to be in their company. These are men in their early 60's mostly. Out of their freakin' minds certainly. Committed to their past. Honor bound to show up in some strange city for a convention on the Fourth of July. There is worse duty than sunny Philadelphia on the Fourth of July.

Being the hippie commie pinko agent my Cobra-flying friend Donny Darko believes me to be, I told him and his death-from-above helicopter pals what I thought of their stinking rotten Vietnam War and everything they did in it. "Thank you," I said. "Thank you very much." I told them about my dad being 36 years old in the army and on a ship off the coast of Japan awaiting the invasion when we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. ( I keep feeling the need to point out that I didn't know this about my father until eight years after his death. He never talked about it.)

And they didn't talk about their war in front of me. They were gentlemen and dads and grandads and they acted their parts. They got crazy on their own time maybe, but believe me, I've looked these men in the eyes. They get crazy. Which feels familiar. The next morning on Chestnut Street before the Fourth of July Parade near Independence Hall I see a unit of Vietnamese veterans from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (the good guys) our allies so often made to sound like the enemy merely by their initials, ARVN.

To me and many others, arvin meant fuck up. And there they were standing in front of Benjamin Franklin's house on the Fourth of July. And you know what I did? I walked up the the officer in charge and told him about the helicopter pilot convention. He said he knew that. And then I said, "Thank you. Thank you very much."

And I meant it and I always have.