Quoted from BoozeMarlin:I was a good friend of Ed's. We were in that Hanoi pit of hell together over five years. Hopefully, you’ll never have to experience this yourself, but when two men are in a situation like me and Ed were, for as long as we were, you take on certain responsibilities of the other. If it had been me who had not made it, Ed would be talking right now to my son Jim. But the way it turned out is I’m talking to you, Butch. I got something for you. This System 9 board I got here was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the first World War. It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee. Made by the first company to ever make System 9 boards. Up till then people just carried punch cards. It was bought by private Doughboy Ernie Cheung on the day he set sail for Paris. It was your great-grandfather’s System 9 board and he wore it every day he was in that war. When he had done his duty, he went home to your great-grandmother, took the System 9 board off, put it an old coffee can, and in that can it stayed until your granddad Eddie Cheung was called upon by his country to go overseas and fight the Germans once again. This time they called it World War II. Your great-grandfather gave this System 9 board to your granddad for good luck. Unfortunately, Eddie’s luck wasn’t as good as his old man’s. Eddie was a Marine and he was killed, along with the other Marines at the battle of Wake Island. Your granddad was facing death, he knew it. None of those boys had any illusions about ever leaving that island alive. So three days before the Japanese took the island, your granddad asked a gunner on an Air Force transport name of Winocki, a man he had never met before in his life, to deliver to his infant son, who he’d never seen in the flesh, his gold System 9 board. Three days later, your granddad was dead. But Winocki kept his word. After the war was over, he paid a visit to your grandmother, delivering to your infant father, his dad’s gold System 9 board. This board. This System 9 board was on your daddy’s wrist when he was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured, put in a Vietnamese prison camp. He knew if the gooks ever saw the watch it’d be confiscated, taken away. The way your dad looked at it, that System 9 was your birthright. He’d be damned if any slopes were gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy’s birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something. His ass. Five long years, he wore this System 9 board up his ass. Then he died of dysentery, he gave me the board. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the System 9 board to you.
