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Press play on a living time capsule: we set out to record our parents before the details slip away, and Jerry shows why it matters. From a slick-tired Plymouth that fishtailed into a power pole and blacked out half a town to a Navy career that made Japan home port as Vietnam heated up, this conversation swings between laugh-out-loud mischief and moments that make the room go still. Jerry’s fear of needles meets the blunt efficiency of shot lines, and his sea stories carry the hum of engines, the order of decks, and the snap of new orders after Kennedy’s assassination.

Then comes the memory that lingers: responding to a jet crash off Hong Kong, laying an American flag on a small boat so a burned, drowned body wouldn’t stick to the deck, circling the seawall while fuel floats on the water and bureaucracy waits on a coroner. It’s raw, unvarnished, and deeply human. The shoreline isn’t softer. We tumble through harvests and flipped combines on a ballfield, a Mercury flying dark between two parked cars at 2 a.m., a shop fire that races down an intake, and a prankster launching a PVC “missile.” Jerry maps the people and places that defined a small Texas town: segregation across the tracks, a water man who knew every hidden valve, and a hospital stitched together from old Air Force barracks.

By the end, the stories stack into a portrait: a .22 Magnum “quick draw” that leaves a scar and 21 days in a hospital bed, beer money made by selling the gun, and a family line that stretches from sons to great-grandkids. It’s memory saved in full color—Navy veteran stories, small-town Texas legends, farm accidents, Hong Kong crash recovery, and the humor that keeps you going. If you’ve ever wished you hit record on your elders, this is your nudge. Listen, share with someone who needs a reason to ask better questions, and leave a review to help more families capture their own stories.