It’s archery season, which means a lot of people in West Virginia are sitting in tree stands waiting for deer to happen by.

It’s also election season.

In the days after the Civil War there was an industrious West Virginian who went into the counterfeiting business. He began making and using his own US silver dollars. He was eventually visited by agents of US government who had tracked the counterfeit dollars back to the man. They did not arrest him, but they did tell him to stop minting his own silver dollars. The reason they did not arrest him is simple: He was using more silver in his counterfeit dollars than the government was, so his homemade money was worth more than the government sanctioned currency.

If you haven't read Part One of Bil Lepp's "Last Vet Standing" interview with WWII Navy Veteran Glen Wise, click here. Part Two picks up where Part One left off, with Wise's LSM (Landing Ship Medium) carrying the 37th Infantry Artillery onto Purple Beach II, at Okinawa.

We were part of a simultaneous landing, with infantry and tanks.  The first run in was always nip and tuck but the Navy had prepared the island for invasion.  A few days before the landing aircraft bombed and strafed the beaches, then battleships and cruisers would bombard the island from about 5:00 in the morning until kick off.  They just blasted the dickens out of everything there was. There were craters all over the place, they shot up the caves, everything. It must have been pretty unendurable for the Japs, being shot at all night and then attacked.

LSM 13 landed wherever there was action: Wake, Enewetak, the Marshals, Guam, Saipan, Ulithi, Guadalcanal, Okinawa, and our ship was the first boat to land in Japan.  For two years straight we never stopped. In all that time we never suffered a single causality. I'd say 13 was pretty lucky. But most boats suffered quite a few casualties, mostly from mines or aircraft.

I was in an archery shop in a West Virginia town that sees more than its share of poverty. There is a gas station, a Dollar General, and a hunting shop. Probably a bar and mechanic as well, but I didn’t see either. Maybe the mechanic was at the bar.

Morsels Of Truth: By Bil Lepp

Imagine planning to build a big multiuse business park with greenspaces, shops, a transportation hub, restaurants and other pleasant business. This facility would employ up to eleven people an acre on about 300 acres of land. I wouldn’t really want to go there, but more sociable people than I find such places agreeable. It would theoretically entice people to move to West Virginia, provide jobs, benefit the economy and draw tourists.

We don’t always get the government we want, but is it too much to ask the government to be good, efficient and effective?

Morsels of Truth: By Bil Lepp

One of the funniest things my wife ever said was, “Oh, she looks like she’s auditioning to be the Grand Marshall of the Redneck Parade.” My editor is going to immediately object to printing that. He’s going to say it is offensive to the people we are trying to reach. But I am going to argue that the people we are trying to reach know full-well - and are proud of- their redneck heritage. We’re here. We like domestic beer. Get used to it.

Morsels Of Truth: By Bil Lepp

HALFDOLLAR, WV- Rev. Lester Gwinn, a local pastor, was arrested on Monday for polluting the stream that runs behind The Church of True Believers. It would seem that a mass baptism last spring introduced so much sin into the creek that widespread corruption was caused downstream. Rev. Lester Gwinn started the church in 1984 following a medical discharged from the US Army after losing an eye in a freak corn-dog accident.