Memory Of A Veteran

[Songcatcher]

What If?
by Theodore Lustig
Morgantown, West Virginia

I received my discharge papers on April 25, 1946. I had survived three years of army service in World War II, and now I was heading home on a train to Newark, New Jersey. The last thing I'd done at the base in Fort Dix was to buy a white shirt at the post exchange - a symbol of my return to civilian life.

I was eager to put my grand plan for the future into action. I would return to college, launch my career, and look for the girl on my dreams. And I knew exactly who that girl would be. I'd had a crush on her ever since high school. The question was: How could I find her? We hadn't been in contact for four years. Well, it might take some time, I thought, but find her I would.

When the train pulled into the station, I gathered up my bags, tucked my new shirt under my arm, and headed down to the bus platform - the last leg of my journey home. And then, miracle of miracles, there she was, just as I had remembered her: a short, slim, dark-haired winsome beauty. I walked up to her and said hello, hoping she hadn't forgotten me. She hadn't. She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek, telling me how glad she was to see me. Fortune was truly smiling on me, I thought.

It turned out that she had been on the same train, coming home for the weekend from Rutgers University, where she was studying to be a teacher. The bus she was waiting for wasn't mine, but that didn't matter. I wasn't about to let my opportunity slip away. We got on the same bus - hers - and sat together reminiscing about the past and talking about the future. I told her of my plans and showed her the shirt I had bought - my first step toward making my dream come true. I didn't tell her that she was supposed to be step two.

She told me how lucky I was to have found that shirt, since men's civilian clothing was in such short supply. And then she said, "I hope my husband will be as lucky as you when he gets out of the navy next month." I got off at the next stop and never looked back. Alas, my future was not on that bus.

Thirty-one years later, in 1977, I met her again at a highschool reunion - not quite so dark-haired, not quite so slim, but still winsome. I told her that my career was going well, that I was married to a wonderful woman, and that I had three teenage children. She told me that she was a grandmother several times over. I thought enough time had passed for me to mention that meeting three decades before - what it had meant to me, and how every detail of it was etched in my memory.

She looked at me blankly. Then, putting a coda to half a lifetime of "what ifs," she said, "I'm sorry, but I don't remember that at all."

 

[Guest]

What a bittersweet tale. Thanks for sharing, that was quite poignant.

Lou

 

[oggbashan]

The critical sentence in that story is: 'We hadn't been in contact for four years.'

How could she know what he thought of her if she hadn't heard from him in four years? Throughout WWII soldiers were writing to and receiving letters from their wives and girlfriends. Some were writing every day even if the mail took months to arrive.

To her, the returning soldier was someone from her past that she greeted as she would a friend, nothing more. It is no wonder she didn't remember that kiss years later. To her it meant nothing more than a handshake would do a man.

To him, she may have been the embodiment of what he was fighting for. If only he had told her...

Og

 

[Guest]

The critical sentence in that story is: 'We hadn't been in contact for four years.'

Og

That maybe so, Ogg, but don't you think the SC's post was a bloody good one for his or her very first post? I mean, to my mind, it's better than the one ItGirl posted the other day.

SongCatcher, I dig you style, man (pardon if you are a chick, but frankly, chicks don't have this kind of balls, to be honest).

So, as a warm Lit welcome, let me copy your style (this seems a best compliment I can think of at this moment in time).

Here goes:

For MathGirl and superlittlegirl who doesn't post much any more. . .
* * * * *

Mathmatical Aphrodisiac
by Alex Galt
Portland, Oregon

In the days when John and I used to break up all the time, we made a decision to see each other only casually. Dates were okay, but no more than once a week. We were going to lead separate lives, getting together occasionally when the spirit moved us, but without worrying about commitment.

One day at the beginning of this period, we were sitting together on the floor of John's one-room apartment. He was knitting himself a sweater and I was reading Fermat's Last Theorem. Every now and then, I'd interupt his knitting to read him passages from my book.

"Did you ever hear of amicable numbers? They're like perfect numbers, but instead of being the sum of their own divisors, they're the sum of each other's divisors. In the Middle Ages, people used to carve amicable numbers onto pieces of fruit. They'd eat the first piece themselves - and then feed the other one to their lover. It was a mathmatical aphrodisac. I loved that - a mathmatical aphrodisiac."

John showed little interest. He doesn't like math much. Not like I do. It was one more reason for us to be casual.

Christmas fell furing this period, and since I hate to shop, I was glad to be able to cross John off my list. We were too casual for presents. While I was shopping for my grandmother, however, I saw cryptic crossword puzzle book and bought it for John. We had always worked on the cryptic crossword puzzles at the back of the Nation, and for five bucks I figured I could give it to him.

When Christmas rolled around, I handed John the book - unwrapped, very casual. He didn't give me anything at all. I thought I wasn't supposed to care.

The next day, John invited me over to his apartment. "I have your Christmas present." he said. "Sorry it's late."

He handed me an awkwardly wrapped bundle. When I pulled it open, a rectangle of hand-knit farbric fell onto my lap. I picked it up and looked at it, completely confused. One side had the number 124,155 knitted into it; the other side had 100,485. When I looked up at John again, he was barely able to contain his excitement anymore.

"They're amicable numbers," he said. "I wrote a computer program and let it run for twelve hours. These were the biggest ones I found, and then I double-knit them in. It's a pot holder. I couldn't give it to you last night because I still hadn't figured out how to cast off. It's kind of geeky, but I thought you might like it."

After that Christmas, we were a lot of things, but we weren't casual anymore. The ancient mathmatical aphrodisiac had worked again.

 

[Guest]

Good one CV, my love!


Susan's Greetings
by Susan Sprague
Willamina, Oregon

As a single woman in my twenties, I used to send out photo greeting card for Christmas. I had snapshots taken of myself throughout the year in various poses and then would pick the best one to use on the card.

In these pictures I was always nude.

I gained many fans. Men would stop when they saw me and say, "Susan's Greetings?" I sent out these Christmas cards for six years, and by the last year my list had grown to 250 names.

One subscriber was the man who took care of my car, Ted. He was thirty years older than I was and a heavy drinker, but he was a great mechanic. He also had a heart of gold. I knew he had girlfriends, but I never met them.

I needed Ted, so every year I sent his a card. He started sending photo greetings to me, too, but in his pictures he was always holding up a huge fish.

After I moved out of town, I seldom saw Ted anymore, but we kept exchanging cards until I stopped the practice.

Fast forward twenty-three years. I'm back in my old neighborhood, having a radio put in my car. While I'm in the waiting room, a man comes up to me and says, "Susan? I'm Paul, Ted's son."

"Oh, sure," I say, "how you doin'?"

Paul told me that Ted had died in the fall. He and his sister had to pick out a suit for their father to be buried in.

The sister opens a sock drawer and sees my Christmas picture in there. "Hey," she says to Paul, "Dad's gotta keep this," and so she slips the picture into his breast pocket. Which means that Ted is buried with me naked at his breast. He would like that.

A week later, I find one of Ted's cards in my house. It's the photo of him holding the fish and smiling at me. The corners of the card have been chewed away by mice.

I turned it over, and there, in Ted's writing, I read, "Susie, you've been on my thoughts and in my heart for seventeen years. I hope you're well and wish you the best. Love, Ted."

 

[Guest]

Fuck off, you psycho!

 

[ChilledVodka III]

A chill pill for CV.

 

[EnglishMuffin]

*Hugs*

 

[SugerWhite]

songcatcher, welcome on board!

CV

CV2, be nice!

 

[carsonshepherd]

Hmmmm....

I think I get it....

 

[Guest]

*Hugs*

Thanks babe. Hugs back to you.

 

[SugerWhite]

hey thats no fair!

 

[Guest]

hey thats no fair!

LOL

Loser.

 

[Guest]

hey thats no fair!

Sorry babe. I'm already taken.
But, hugs to you too.

 

[Guest]

LOL

Loser.

:Rolleyes:

 

[SugerWhite]

oh you are so sweet.

 

[Guest]

 

[Songcatcher]

Mmm... Thank you, I think.

 

[Guest]

You know that there is something quite not right about what CV2 posted, right?

 

[Songcatcher]

Hey ChilledVodka, I saw something funny in papers today. It said; LITERARY, CHILLED: Sexy brunette, late 30s, size 12, seeks clever, funny M for no-strings delightful times. Central London. Tel -------
And below this add was; SPARKY, INDIPENDENT: 49 year-old F seeks M for fun, laughter & loving. Bristol. Tel --------
There were many more funny things in there but I'm too busy to write for you now. I'll PM you later.

 

[Guest]

LITERARY, CHILLED: Sexy brunette, late 30s, size 12, seeks clever, funny M for no-strings delightful times. Central London. Tel -------

LOL
SC, she maybe one of my lurking fan! Send me her number. I'll try calling her.

Baby, I'm 40 minutes away from the City!

____________________________________

Pooh
by Patricia L. Lambert
Eugene, Oregon

In my hippie days thirty years ago, I took on the ownership of a dim white German shepherd, the former pet of a married couple in Leadville, a rough mining town ten thousand feet up in the mountains.

I was two people, as many wage-earning hippies were. One of me lived for free as caretaker of a house in downtown Leadville and worked as a reliable medical transcriptionist at the hospital. The other me lived in the endless pine woods, sharing a two-story converted garage with Pooh and Jak, an energetic six-foot-three Dutch-Korean speed0freak gunsmith with long black hair in a ponytail. The wage-earning Jak was a reliable machinist who possessed a presidential commendation letter for machining components used in a moon lander.

Like most of the pets that lived outside town, Pooh roamed freely in the woods and checked in at home base more and more infrequently as winter turned into spring. We saw that she was pregnant, but then she was off and away. Next, we received a complaint from some neighbors that Pooh had given birth under their trailer. Thirteen puppies! We brought the dogs back home. Dim little Pooh became a pretty good mom.

One morning, just as I was starting work at the hospital, the sheriff called. Pooh had moved her pups back to the neighbors'; they'd called out animal control, and could I please come to the sheriff's office and do the paperwork to get my dogs out of the pound? My motherly boss, a stout Oklahoman named Lahoma, allowed as how usually I was not a troublesome girl and gave me an early coffee break. I tore downtown. To my horror, there was a release fee of ten dollars per dog. One hundred and forty dollars! It might as well have been a thousand. I raised a huge stink, to no avail, and stomped out.

Up the revolution! I was a wolf in sheep's clothing! I rushed to my "town house," grabbed implements of destruction and big clothes basket, and headed out to the dog pound. Astonishingly, at ten in the morning the runs were unlocked and unguarded. I heaped the pups into the basket, threw Pooh in after them, and drove hell-for-leather up the mountain pass. A mile out of town, I decanted everybody by the river and drove back to work.

About an hour later, the phone rang. It was Jak. The puppies and Pooh were missing! The sheriff's office was mortified! An all-county alert had been issued for the dognappers!

At lunchtime I joined the law and Jak at the pound. Jak went satisfactorily berserk, so much so that I took him aside and filled in before he could organize a lynch mob. He wasn't much of an actor, so we decided that I would live in town for a while, leaving him in the dark about developments to preserve his innocent relationship as a good drinking buddy of the sheriff and his deputies. Not that he wasn't extremely proud of me. But I was a criminal now, and on my own.

After work I drove to a neighboring town to buy a big bag of Purina. In the cold night, under a big moon, I took food to Pooh by the river. And every night I visited the dog family. Here would come proud Pooh, looking like a white wolf. And after her, flowing toward me in the moonlight, stumbling a bit over the willow roots, came her thirteen beautiful, sturdy puppies, eager to be cuddled. It was one of the most magical times of my life.

Then, one night, nobody came to meet me. The dogs were gone. I had no way to investigate, and the only thing I could do was wait at the town grapevine.

When Pooh's puppies were given out for adoption from the sheriff's office, wasn't it strange that nobody phoned to let us know that they had been found?

A few weeks later, Jak got into a bar fight when one of the deputies got to boasting about how he shot himself some white bitch that was guarding her pups so ferociously he couldn't get near them.

 

[carsonshepherd]

That last one made me almost cry.

 

[Guest]

You know that there is something quite not right about what CV2 posted, right?

I didn't write it myself. So not my fault, OK?

~~~

A Lesson in Love
by Alvin Rosser
Sparta, New Jersey

My first girl was Doris Sherman. She was a real beauty, with dark curly hail and flashing black eyes. Her long tresses would flow and dance in the wind whenever I chased her on the playground during recess at the country school we attended. We were seven years old and supervised by Miss Bridges, who would slap our faces for the slightest infraction.

To my eyes, Doris was the most attractive girl in my class of combined first- and second-graders, and I set about winning her heart in the feverish manner of a smitten seven-year-old. The competition for Doris's affection was strong. But I was undaunted, and finally I was rewarded for my persistence.

One balmy spring day, I discovered in a tin badge on the playground. It must have been an election badge (perhaps for FDR). The front was still bright and glossy, but rust was beginning to show on the obverse side. With little hesitation I decided to offer this newfound treasure to Doris as a token of my love. As I proffered the badge (bright side up) on my outstretched palm, I could see that she was impressed. Her dark eyes sparkled, and she quickly took it from my hand. Then came these memorable words. Looking me straight in the eye and whispering in solemn tones, she said, "Alvin, if you want me to be your girl, from now on you must give everything you find to me."

I remember thinking it over. In 1935 a single penny was a small fortune to a boy of my age and circumstance. What if I found something really important - like a nickel? Could I hide it from Doris, or would I tell her I'd found a penny and keep a four-cent profit for myself? Had Doris made this same arrangement with my many rivals? She could become the richest girl in the school.

Faced with all these questions, my regard for Doris suffered a slow decline. If she had asked for 50 percent, we might still be an item. But her imperious demand for everything so early in our relationship nipped it in the bud.

So, Doris, wherever you are and whatever you may be, I would like to thank you for my early lesson in love - and, more important, that tricky balance of the love - economics equation. I also want you to know that from time to time, when dozing off, I am once again chasing you in that school yard, grasping for your dark and dancing curls.

 

[Guest]

I didn't write it myself. So not my fault, OK?

That's not even a good excuse for posting a story that doesn't stick, you fuckwit.

 

[carsonshepherd]

That's not even a good excuse for posting a story that doesn't stick, you fuckwit.

I give up. Is there some kind of code in it?