WhereRWe?
10-08-2005, 04:21 PM
I just have to share this...
Many of you know that RULOST2? and I recently went to Chicago to see our younger son graduate from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. (We also managed to get in quite a bit of geocaching furing the trip, too, adding 7 states to our list!)
It's hard to believe that the center graduates approximately 1,000 new sailors EACH WEEK, all of whom are released for their first off-base weekend in 2 months. And like many other parents, we headed for the car and "anyplace off base". Well, we headed north, to Wisconsin, just to get a couple of caches, and then returned to the HUGE mall just north of the base. where we window shopped along with several hundred other new sailors in their dress whites.
Since one of our "goals" for the trip was to have a REAL Chicago-stype pizza, we found a nice Italian restaurant and had one of their 2-inch thick monstrosities. Afterwards, we kept waiting for our waiter (he had admitted when we arrived that it was his first day on the job). He finally came up and told us that we were all set to go, that our meal had been taken care of. Somewhat surprised, I presssed him to know who had paid for our meal, but he said that our benefactor had already left. We left him a nice tip, and as we rose to go, the man at the next table rose, shook my son's hand and also thanked him for his service.
I left the restaurant with tears in my eyes, remembering the reception I had received when I returned from Vietnam 35 years earlier.
:) :) :)
Many of you know that RULOST2? and I recently went to Chicago to see our younger son graduate from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. (We also managed to get in quite a bit of geocaching furing the trip, too, adding 7 states to our list!)
It's hard to believe that the center graduates approximately 1,000 new sailors EACH WEEK, all of whom are released for their first off-base weekend in 2 months. And like many other parents, we headed for the car and "anyplace off base". Well, we headed north, to Wisconsin, just to get a couple of caches, and then returned to the HUGE mall just north of the base. where we window shopped along with several hundred other new sailors in their dress whites.
Since one of our "goals" for the trip was to have a REAL Chicago-stype pizza, we found a nice Italian restaurant and had one of their 2-inch thick monstrosities. Afterwards, we kept waiting for our waiter (he had admitted when we arrived that it was his first day on the job). He finally came up and told us that we were all set to go, that our meal had been taken care of. Somewhat surprised, I presssed him to know who had paid for our meal, but he said that our benefactor had already left. We left him a nice tip, and as we rose to go, the man at the next table rose, shook my son's hand and also thanked him for his service.
I left the restaurant with tears in my eyes, remembering the reception I had received when I returned from Vietnam 35 years earlier.
:) :) :)