I'm down here in Nashville, and just finished a breakfast of fried eggs, biscuits and vension backstrap. Fred Tucker, Ret. Marine, was the cook. He even handed me a cup of Maxwell House coffee as soon as I woke up. His wife, Deborah, gets her coffee and morning newspaper in bed. An old habit of his, she said.

Fred said, "I think a man should be good in every room in the house."

Not a bad motto. Especially for a Marine. We spoke with Joe Galloway this a.m. He's headed south. Joe said the speed limit must be 90 or at least that's what he's hoping it is. Joe's returning to south Texas from Colorado, where he went to finish up his latest book.

Fred picked me up from the airport last night and rushed me over to VFW Post 1970, where I was greeted by a state senator and a host of other very nice people. One a former POW from WWII. He recounted the story for me of how he was taken hostage. He was hiding under a house, along with his unit, when the German's came striding up, guns pointed.

"They'd throw hand-grenades under the house and we'd toss them back," the POW said.

Imagine a Fear Factor show where you do that.

The event last night was a thank you for Vietnam Veterans. All the Vietnam Veterans sat at a middle table -- think Last Supper version. Each was given a certificate, and welcomed home. The last time I was in a VFW Post in Tennessee was to receive my father's Purple Heart. It was Sept. 11, 1966.

Deborah Tucker's father was also a POW. Fred Brown enlisted in the military in 1950, during the Korean War. Sixty-two days after he enlisted in the Army, he was taken captive and held in a POW camp in Pyoyang, North Korea for the next 3 years. He served with the 1st Cav Division, 8th Calvary Regiment.  

Deborah said the experience left her father with a nervous condition that made him tenderhearted. "He would cry over things that upset him, especially later in life." He would tell the kids that noodles looked just like worms -- he knew because worms were a part of his steady diet in Korea.

And like every other soldier who goes looking for his records, Fred was advised that his records had burned up in 'that disastrous fire of July 12, 1973."

That's the same fire that they told me that my father's records had been destroyed by. That must've been some fire to destory the military records of half of the WWII, Korean and Vietnam veterans.

It's like the fisherman's tale -- keeps growing bigger the more they retell it.

When Fred Brown finally came home in 1953, the town of Hornbeck, Tenn, turned out at the train station to welcome him home. Only Fred wasn't on the train.

He'd gotten off the train in Michigan and bought himself a car. Then spent an extra three days getting home. His loved ones had no idea where he was, or why he wasn't on that train. I suspect Fred need some time to decompress. Talk himself into going home, and pretending nothing had happened to him in those 3 years.

Maybe he just wanted to roll down the window and let the breeze wash over him like annointed freedom.