"Thank you for your service."

[BubbaFett]

11. When I think back

on my father, uncles, and their friends who fought in Vietnam - they were all tough, burly guys who wore hard hats, operated machinery, did construction, and were union tradesmen as civilians.

I sincerely doubt even the most macho hippie would have gotten away with saying anything negative to them, let alone spitting on them and not ending up in traction.

Of those men who had a hand in raising me, they were mostly all combat veterans from either WW2, Korea, or Vietnam, they took no shit.

YMMV, but in the industrial/trades milieu where I came up, men expressed themselves very often with their fists.

Especially 40+ years ago when cops didn't arrest you for every little thing.

2nd edit: the biggest Friday/Saturday night fights that busted out around the card table in the basement were when the WW2 guys started questioning the toughness of the Vietnam guys and their "generation" and the fact that some of the WW2 guys thought the Vietnam guys didn't have as much "heart" as the WW2 guys did.

Again, YMMV.