Overview

The locale, once again, is Bradleyville, Texas, where Colonel Kinkaid, a crusty World War I veteran now confined to a wheelchair, regales anyone who will listen with tales of "Black Jack" Pershing and his days of campaigning in France. His son, an aggressive wheeler-dealer, learns that the Colonel is the oldest living graduate of Mirabeau B. Lamar Military Academy, and when the school comes forth with the idea of holding a celebration in honor of the old man, the son persuades them to do so in Bradleyville—hoping to benefit from the resulting publicity. But getting his father to agree to the plan, and to parting with a piece of property which the son covets for commercial purposes, are other matters. Resolute to the end, Colonel Kinkaid resents being the "oldest living anything" and, with his dying breath, continues to resist the loss of his ideals to expediency, and to a way of life which he can only regard as shoddy, second-rate and lacking in the values which he has striven to uphold.