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Comment by will_brown | Hacker News Reader

For those that are interested my Dad was a Diplomatic Courier and published 10 years worth of personal letters traveling the world in the Navy and then as a Courier from 1956-1966.

https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Mom-Odyssey-World-Travel-ebook/d...

“DEAR MOM” is a book told through 591 letters to my parents while living throughout the world. The letters seen here are transcriptions of all letters I wrote to my parents for ten years following college graduation. They record my daily life in surprising detail from Navy Officer Candidate School until resigning from the U.S. Foreign Service in Viet Nam. This was a decade of practically non-stop travel throughout most of the world – some 4 million miles.

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I'm already laughing at the story before the adventure begins, where your dad was trying to meet up with someone via car, on the GW bridge. It's amazing how we take for granted the ease by which we can now coordinate meetups. The days of, "I'll meet you at the GW Bridge at noon" certainly lead to many missed connections, or in your dad's case, pulling a 180 across 4 lanes of traffic. I'm really going to enjoy this book.

My aunt was a courier in Brussels in the 90s/2000s! I visited her when I was backpacking and she gave me the low down. It was pretty funny, really boring job but she had to get security clearance, get hand to hand and firearm training. It came up because she was giving me a ride somewhere and when I first got in her car she was like “now be careful, there’s a gun here, here, here, there, there, under the seat between the seats behind the seats, in the glove box” just all over the place!!!

Did she ever get pulled over by the cops? Asked if there were any weapons in the car lol. Or do they get diplomatic plates?

4 million miles of traveling, wow. Did that cause any systemic back-pain issues for him sitting on long-haul flights non-stop for a solid decade?

This is a generous gift of stories that help provide a glimpse into a world that maintains a certain cinematic quality. I look forward to reading this book. Thanks for sharing and thank your pop for these snapshots.

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