I used to carry mail. I got on a new route and was just getting to know it, and the people. One day it's the third of the month. This lady is out on her porch waiting on me and, more importantly, waiting on her social security check. I didn't have the check. She began giving me what-for. Of course, I had no say in what mail was given to me to deliver. The check was there or it wasn’t. When I had an opportunity to speak (!), I tried to tell her about direct deposit, and if she signed up for it she wouldn’t have to worry about the mail, because the funds would go directly to the bank. Well, she had come up during the Great Depression. Most of those folks didn't trust banks. Direct deposit? To the BANK? Oh boy. Talk about pouring gasoline on a fire.

 

I’m happy to say that we got to know one another over the course of time and became friends. Hers was one of my last deliveries and when I was running ahead we would talk. Sometimes I'd help her out with stuff. She fed me at times. Some of the best greens I ever had, and I had lived in the South for 4 years. I learned her husband had been in the Army, and she told me about "bullets" he brought home. She knew little or nothing about guns and I don’t recall exactly how she described this clip other than saying “It’s a WICKED looking thing!” I had no idea what she was referring to, and at that point in my life I had been messing around with guns for a dozen or more years.

 

One day she came out of the house with that "wicked looking" thing, an M-1 Garand clip, which she gave to me. I’ve had a lot of them over the years, and as I type this I probably have a hundred or more in the basement, as well as another thirty or so that are empty, but that one still resides on my desk.

 

Touching story.  She obviously thought enough about you, that she wanted you to have it.