Mr Martins Garage

He served his country in WWII. He saw the horrors of Guadalcanal in real HD as his buddies died around him. He suffered from jungle rot all these years later. He told me he had lots of photos of dead Japs. His wife didn't talk to him, but she talked to me. She was very sweet, but she didn't have much good to say about him. On most summer days he would sit in an old lounge chair out in his back yard between his fruit trees to get some sun. He said it helped relieve the jungle rot. He had a driveway. He didn't have a car, but there had been a pale yellow 70 something Barracuda in the garage for years. One day it was gone. He cut grass with a old push mower, it's still in the garage. He trimmed his fruit trees with hand clippers while perched high on a wooden latter. He would walk to and from the Senior Center in New Kensington. He wore short sleeve dress shirts. He wore a porkpie hat and thick glasses from another time. He wouldn't stand during the Pledge of Allegiance if a black woman was saying it. I often offered him a ride if I saw him walking, he always thanked me, but he always turned me down. I was only in his house briefly once to help unstick a stuck window. He lived in a house full of antiques. I live next to him for nearly a quarter of a century, but I didn't know him well. Everything he had was old. He was my neighbor George Martin and I was told he died a millionaire. Who knew? This is his garage.