#9. Butch&His Watch
MOTHER: Butch, stop watching TV a second.
BUTCH: Yeah.
MOTHER: You've got a special visitor. Now do you remember when I told you your daddy died in a POW camp?
BUTCH: Uh-huh.
MOTHER Well this here is Captain Koons. He was in the POW camp with Daddy.
CAPTAIN KOONS: Hello, little man. Boy, I sure heard a bunch about you. See, I was a good friend of your Dad's. We were in that Hanoi pit of hell together over five years. Hopefully, you'll never have to experience this yourself, but when two men are in a situation like me and your Dad were, for as long as we were, you take on certain responsibilities of the other. If it had been me who had not made it, Major Coolidge would be talkin' right now to my son Jim. But the way it turned out is I'm talkin' to you, Butch. I got somethin' for ya.
CAPTAIN KOONS: This watch I got here was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the First World War. It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee. Made by the first company to ever make wrist watches. Up until then, people just carried pocket watches. It was bought by private Doughboy Erine Coolidge on the day he set sail for Paris. That was your great-grandfather's war watch. And he wore it every day he was in that war. Then when he had done his duty, he went home to your great-grandmother, took the watch off and put it in an old coffee can. And in that can it stayed 'til your granddad, Dane Coolidge was called upon by his country to go overseas and fight the Germans once again. This time they called it World War Two. Your great-grandfather gave this watch to your granddad for good luck. Unfortunately, Dane's luck wasn't as good as his old man's. Dane was a Marine and he was killed with all the other Marines at the battle of Wake Island. Your granddad was facing death. He knew it. None of those boys ever had any illusions about leaving that island alive. So three days before the Japanese took the island, your granddad asked a gunner on an Air Force transport name of Winocki, a man he had never met before in his life, to deliver to his infant son, who he had never seen in the flesh, his gold watch. Three days later, your granddad was dead. But Winocki kept his word. After the war was over, he paid a visit to your grandmother, delivering to your infant father, his Dad's gold watch. This watch. This watch was on your Daddy's wrist when he was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured and put in a Vietnamese prison camp. Now he knew if the gooks ever saw the watch it'd be confiscated, taken away. The way your Daddy looked at it, that watch was your birthright. And he'd be damned if and slopeheads were gonna put their greasy yella hands on his boy's birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide somethin'. His ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid with uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.
