BUS STORY # 379 (Old Tex Bus Story # 1)

Veterans Transportation Service van wrap, downloaded from Banner & Sign Express.

This is part of a series I call the Old Tex stories. You can read about Old Tex here.


Old Tex is telling us about ‘dozers back in the day.

He is talking about the bone-rattling seats when he goes off on a tangent about how the Japanese invented a way of adjusting the treads with just a half-turn of a screwdriver so the treads would stay aligned when you started up.

Just a half-turn with a little ol’ screwdriver. He wouldn’t’ve believed it if he hadn’t seen it.

That leads to the push buttons they replaced some sort of stick shift with (the way I visualize his rendition, anyway).

Finally, he returns to those old seats and wonders what the Japanese might do about them.  Maybe they have already. It’s been a while since he’s been on a ‘dozer.

He’s had offers. But ever since the accident, he’s been done with all that.

He’s had some trouble with his feet, too, with blistering and peeling.

I’m sitting just across the aisle from him, and the guy next to me asks him if he thinks it was Agent Orange that’s causing the foot problems.

Well, maybe. But he knows a guy who was never in country who’s in way worse shape than he is.

He doesn’t know exactly what happened, but somehow this guy got crosswise with the Marines, and they stuck him in the Philippines. He never did get to see combat.

But now he’s got some kind of skin condition nobody knows what it is. He’s diabetic, but they don’t think it has anything to do with that.

Anyway, his skin is falling off. Started on his feet and is moving right on up his legs. Looks like a new-skinned cat.

He went to the VA and they turned him away.

He went to the University Hospital and they couldn’t figure out what to do with him. They were gonna cut one of his legs off for a while, but they decided to move him to a rehab center instead.

He thinks the VA turned him away because they’re overloaded. But somebody’s got to step up for this vet.

He’s been in contact with folks in San Antonio -- he knows a lot of people -- about getting this ol’ boy into Fort Sam.

That’s Fort Sam Houston, he explains, you know, for the Texas general. They do a lot of burn work down there. He thinks they would take a real interest in this guy’s condition.

They run a first-rate operation down there. He’s never been in the clinics himself, but everybody knows about Fort Sam.

Somebody’s gotta step up to the plate.

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The photo at the top of this story is downloaded from Banner & Sign Express.