short-wave radio, tattoos, and guns

 While I was employed at one of my many jobs in Boulder (a smaller college-centered city about forty-five minutes northwest of Denver) a co-worker who was in the Boulder Amateur Radio Club, having discovered that I was into amateur radio also, suggested I go to their (weekly? monthly? I forget) lunch gathering.

 So I went a few times, and I got to know this interesting and very old (and very pleasant, soft-spoken, smart, vibrant, and terribly wrinkled and weathered-looking) Jewish couple.  This was nearly twenty years ago, I expect they are gone now, and a good thing, too.

 This couple were avid radio enthusiasts. They were into long-distance HF contacts, and not many of the other possible aspects of being a "ham".

 They were also very into guns and shooting, which surprised me.  Honestly, they both looked so frail, short, and thin to me, that I thought the recoil of most firearms would break bones.  Which just goes to show you that not all old people are frail and weak... or defenseless.

 But it all clicked on the third luncheon or so, when I spotted the fuzzy, faded, blue numbers tattooed on the insides of both forearms.  Very old.  Jewish.  Into guns and long-distance communications which are nearly impossible to block or interfere with or even locate.  Huh.

 They had been in - and survived - the camps in Germany during WW-II.

 And they had no intentions of ever entering one again.  We never talked about that.  Why would anyone ever bring it up?  You already know everything there is to talk about.

I am so glad they didn't survive to see their adopted home descend to what it is today.