Eighty-two years ago today, a chilly, gray Sunday afternoon, my father, John J Oliver, was installing a linoleum tile floor in the cellar of his house in Albany, NY. The radio was on and swing music filled the air. Suddenly the music came to an abrupt halt and a somber Big Radio Voice said the Japanese just bombed Pearl Harbor. He didn’t know it then, but that news occasioned my father’s all-expenses-paid trip to Europe, the only foreign journey of his long life. After he returned to America, he couldn’t fathom why anybody would willingly go to a ghastly place like Europe. Soon after Pearl Harbor, his circumstances changed dramatically.
© 2024 John Oliver
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