My father was stationed at an Air Base in Salinas, California in 1945. He was with a buddy partying in a neighboring town and they hitchhiked back to Salinas, getting a ride from a pipe smoking old man in bib overalls. "Where you fellas headed?," he asked. Dad told the old man that they were on their way back to the base and the elderly gentleman informed him that he couldn't take them all the way, but that he would be able to take them most of the way. "We're about to head out to Hawaii where we'll be training as flight officers," my father said enthusiastically. The old man pulled his 1937 Chevy truck to the side of the road and looked my father in the eye. "How long you think this war's gonna last, son?"
"Hell, I don't know."
"Well, I don't think it's gonna last much longer...I don't think you fellas will be goin' anywhere," the rugged old man said with a self-satisfied smug on his weathered face. "You ever hear of the Manhattan Project?"
"No," answered dad. The man pulled back onto the road.
"Well, you will," he smiled. "You will."
Two days later, as my dad chowed down at a Chinese restaurant in Salinas, news came over the radio that the Japanese surrendered after a second atomic bomb exploded over the city of Nagasaki. It had been a top-secret project labled "Manhattan."
Dad still doesn't know who the old man was.
(scroll to the bottom to hear an audio version of this story)
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