Armistice Day.

Today is Veterans Day — or, as it was known before 1954 in the U.S., Armistice Day.

100 years ago today marked the end of the "War to End All Wars." 

If only that had been true.

Of course, there was a second world war only a generation later. That was my grandfather's generation; the generation that lived through the Great Depression and then endured the horrors of World War Two. 

After the war came a period of prosperity in the U.S. It was the golden era of Chris Craft's beautiful wooden boats — a childhood icon of summertime for a whole new generation growing up on the water.

Not all veterans who returned from World War Two came home to jobs and prosperity.

Some came home to the grinding poverty of the Appalachian foothills in the Jim Crow south. They started families, tried to put the war behind them, and continued their struggle to survive.

For my grandfather, those beautiful golden-era Chris Craft boats were nothing but a daydream parked on a showroom floor. 

My mom has told me about going to the boat dealer with him when she was very young. But while my grandfather was assuredly salivating over those mirror-polished mahogany boats, for my mom, these trips were memorable for another reason. It wasn't the boats. It wasn't even getting to go to town.

It was getting to ride in a car.

Not their car, mind you. It belonged to someone else, because they were too poor to own one.

That puts a little perspective on just how much of a daydream it was to imagine zooming around on the lake in one of those Chris Craft boats.

I love those classic wooden boats, and I am thoroughly enjoying the process of building one that was designed in 1954 (by another veteran, I might add). 1954 would have been around the same time as my grandfather was eyeballing boats in a showroom. It was the year that the U.S. Congress changed the name of the national holiday from Armistice Day to Veterans Day.

I've been told that my grandfather at one time wanted to build a boat of his own. I'm not sure why he didn't. The man loved woodworking. But, for whatever reason, he never built one.

In that way, I feel a little bit like I'm getting to live out his daydream on his behalf — a little for him, a little for me perhaps.

It's an opportunity I'm immensely and humbly grateful for.