The Colonel

I met the Colonel in the 90s. After Garland Meadows died, the Colonel began sharing counter duties with a lady at Graves Apple Shed Store in Syria, Virginia. I met him one day far into the year when business had dropped off. I was looking for cider. He was tall, a good six – five I’d say, with a high fore head, straight as an arrow, rail thin, with close cropped hair, and getting on in years.

He smelled of Army. As retired Navy, I could sniff out a Marine, and he wasn’t one. That left Army. No Air Force guy would look that razor sharp in retirement.

I was wearing one of my many Navy ball caps, so he recognized me as a fellow military man, and we chatted often over the years. His name was Ervin Kattenbrink, from Tennessee, but Army travel or habit had squeezed most of his accent out of him.

Like everyone who minded the Apple Shed Store, the Colonel was a volunteer. I never understood what volunteers got out of their work, but the Graves must have given them something; volunteers tended to be long term “employees”.

Like me, the Colonel had come to live in Syria from his last active duty tour inside the Washington Beltway. He and his wife Jean, whom he had known since his days at West Point, which he pronounced WEST point, had one of the great romances of the 20^th century. They lived atop a mountain, overlooking the valley. Their house included a fish pond, for she loved to fish, and he loved her with all his heart. If she loved to fish, she would have a fish pond.

The Colonel had seen her picture via a friend while he had been at the Academy. She had run into a burning building to save someone. He had written to introduce himself, but her parents thought it improper for her to date a stranger, even one acquainted with someone she knew. But eventually they came to know each other, fell in love, and had a life long romance.

Sadly, Jean died of cancer in the mid 90s, and was buried in the Criglersville Cemetery, next to an empty plot where the Colonel would eventually join her. As far as I could tell, they were so much in love that neither was meant to outlive the other, but such is life.

I would often go bicycling, and end up at the store, talking to the Colonel. He would tell me about his life with Jean, his time in Vietnam (he had pictures), his admiration for Lou Gehrig (he had one of Lou’s jerseys!), the fact that he played a small role in the 1950s movie “The Thin Gray Line” (he was actually on camera for several seconds).

He was a faithful New York Yankees fan; he seldom missed a game broadcast on his satellite TV, and they carried every game.

One day the Colonel was gone. He could no longer live alone. He had moved to a nursing home, but his days there were short. It seemed that most of Syria and the surrounding area accompanied his body up the hill to be interred next to his beloved Jean. And there they will spend eternity, looking down together on the valley they loved.