I walked into the La Quinta Hotel in Spokane at about 5:30 on Saturday and placed my reservation confirmation on the desk.

The young woman behind the desk looked at me as if I were some kind of weirdo. She asked what I was doing there.

That's strange, I thought.

I told her I was there to pay for the reservation so Pat and I could check into our room.

"Mr. Escobar," the young woman said, "this is the 23rd. Your reservation is for the 24th."

She handed me the confirmation printout so I could see for myself.

She was right. And worse, there were no rooms available anywhere in Spokane.

As I walked to the car, I wondered how was going to explain this to Pat. She doesn't like to admit to mistakes.

Apparently the problem registered on my face because the first thing Pat asked was "What's wrong?"

I decided it would be better not to speak. I handed her the confirmation and told her to look at the dates.

"Well how could that be?" she asked. "I typed in the 23rd."

The computer did it, I said, and we moved on to Idaho.

Before we could check into another hotel, our son Grover called. He was a bit upset that we were not staying at his place.

I explained that, because of my leg and back issues, we needed two queen beds. He said he had two queen beds for us. So we headed back to Spokane.

After a scrumptious dinner prepared by our daughter-in-law Laura, we settled in for the evening. Grover brought out an un-opened DVD he had purchased a couple of years previously of "To Hell and Back."

I had told Grover about the movie years ago. It was filmed in and around Yakima, and that got his attention. He bought it so he and I could watch it together some day, and this was the day.

"To Hell and Back" was released in 1955. It is the story of America's most decorated war hero, Audie Murphy.

What surprised Pat and me was that Grover's two young boys, less than 10 years old, sat down to watch the film with their grandparents. They did not run off to play video games.

The grandsons became engrossed in this Texas boy who had to become the man of his house at age 12 and went off to World War II at the age of 17 so he could support his orphaned siblings. He was America's most decorated war hero by age 19.

The boys had questions throughout the movie, usually after each death of a Murphy buddy that was shown on screen. Mostly, Juan and Mateo asked: "Did he have to die?"

That's a tough question. All I could say was that people die in war.

It was opportunity to explain that war is no Mortal Kombat video game.