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Thursday, December 20, 2012

Christmas, 1942



by Charles Langley
 


It was Christmas at Fort Dix. It hadn’t snowed and there were no twinkling lights ordecorated Christmas trees, but there was a nip in the air and it was Christmas. And I was alone.

There were seven thousand troops scattered around me, but I was alone.    I came off guard duty at two o’clock, showered, changed into olive drab and was free until reveille the next morning.

Well meaning civil authorities had decreed that military personnel without emergency passes could not use public transportation over the holiday. The hard working defense workers needed all the space. Those few soldiers who had their own cars, and ration stamps for enough gasoline to fuel them, were packing their vehicles with paying passengers for the trip home. For the rest of us, it was hitchhike or stay put.

Cpl. Al Walters and I stood by the road to New York and waited. Not a car passed in half an hour. My chances of seeing my wife for the holiday became very slim. We saw a lone car coming from the opposite direction and  changed our minds, crossed the road, and  got a lift to Philadelphia. We didn’t know a soul in the city, and it was foolish to go there, but it was Christmas. Philadelphia at its best is not a bright, fun loving town.  On Christmas in wartime it was really a drag.

We made our way to the Salvation Army Canteen. We were too late. The last of the food had been eaten, and the only ones there were four weary women who had spent the day feeding hungry soldiers.

They eyed with dismay the mountain of dirty dishes in the sinks, and the smeared pots and pans on every sinktop. But they were game and were ready to go forth into the fray when Al and I intervened.
 

KP in the army is a dreaded task. Elbow deep in hot soapy water scraping the stubborn grime from the bottom of a cooking pot is not a proper job for a first class fighting man. It isn’t even a fit task for untried dogfaces such as we, but we tied on aprons and dived in. The ladies,tired as they were, argued against our endeavor, but we persisted. We washed, dried and stacked the dishes, shined the pots so they gleamed like a shavetail’s boots, and then tackled the floor.

The ladies somewhere found two pieces of pumpkin pie and made fresh coffee. They sipped coffee with us while we pigged out on the home-made pie. I hoped that their sons, where ever they were, had such caring people near.

They gave us each a hug and a hand-knitted O.D. Sweater, and we were on our way. We had taken a chance of getting back to the camp late and missing reveille, but luck was with us and we got a ride almost immediately. The car radio was playing Christmas music.

"I’ll be home for Christmas, you can count on me."

I wished it were true.

"Please have snow and mistletoe, and presents on the tree."

 Not this year.

It had started to drizzle, but the moisture on my cheek wasn’t rain.   The barracks was silent and dark. I hit the sack, hoping to get a few hours sleep before the five o’clock reveille call. I said my prayers and hoped that my wife wasn't as lonely as I was.

God was in His Heaven. All was well. It was Christmas, and I was alone.



                                         copyright 2012, Charles Langley


Charles Langley  returned to writing after a long hiatus.  He has written over two hundred stories, articles or poems for anthologies, magazines, and ezines. Gannet newspapers featured Charles with  full page coverage of his work at the Bruno Richard Hauptmann trial in Flemington, NJ in 1935.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Two Poems

 
 
by William D. Cecil, Sr.
 
              (1929) 


Black birches bulging between boulders
straightened by time
into trees sublime.

Seedlings once - heaving for light and air
who could know such power
in growth, that shower

and sun would force a young half-buried thing
to lift its heart
in gnarled splendor.



I like to think

of a brittle sassafras
extending itself
to the full height

of a precipice-
trusting blindly
in its strength.

Yet slowly dying
beaten by wind
into sharpened rock.
 
 
 
 William D. Cecil, Sr. was born in 1906 and lived 
for 96 years.  He was a lifelong educator, people person, 
and believer in nature.  He spent time recuperating 
from an illness in the late 1920s and thirties.  He used 
this time to write poetry and to heal.  He was a member 
of the Shakespeare Symposium in Lewiston, NY and 
wrote biographical material on an artist known for his 
depictions of Niagara Falls (Amos Sangster).
 
 
copyright 2012, Carolyn Cecil 

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Marks On Paper

by Greg Shattenberg



Marks, my father’s carved blocks leave marks. Marks on paper. Stare at them and search for meaning. Search for a meaning that speaks to life. The blocks are not perfect. They leave imperfect marks. That can be fixed. Make a perfect context. Purchase a perfect context. Then the marks are all right. What do they need to speak of in this perfect world? They can convey the unspoken, they can talk of liberation. Demonstrate the boundless.

These crooked lines call to be touched. Smudged. Rubbed and felt. Senses as restrained now as they always have been. How is another touched. There is nothing to be fixed. Nice neutral paper. Stacked in a pile. The neutrality is a relief. All senses can be invested in the blocks, in the paper, making something containing a content, triggering a content, more than it is. More than a piece of paper. More than ever was there between my father and me. We keep our constraint. Maybe it is contentment. Knowing that something is there is enough. Everything does not need to be saturated with passion.

So the blocks sit and the papers sit. Tools. Objects to be manipulated. An arbitrary deck of given pictures. Not demanding anything, but irresistible in how much can be thrown into them. There is really little to fathom. A step up from arbitrary.

I now want art. Not knowing how to make it, it will have to be stolen. A bit of license, a bit of larceny and off to the races. Separate enough to be manipulated. Close enough to sense some risk. A bit unpredictable and the formula is in place. And no one is there to take back pieces which may not have been given. It is a search for order. Take and give. Hope for cumulative sense. Hope that the relief felt is not cumulative meaninglessness. Relief because it is a place which will not have to be revisited.

The press gets adjusted. The senses are recurring. Variations in paper thickness can be felt. Sometimes the ink lies down perfectly. Sometimes, without thinking, each part goes together as exactly as can be expected, and the colors talk to each other. The ink is saying yes, and the block prints. Little investments in thought staring back invisibly, being cumulative. A bit of language becomes a voice. My own voice is interjected. As imperfect as the blocks and something is heard. No, it is seen. No, it is felt and hopefully there is a song.

                      

 

                            copyright 2009 by Greg Shattenberg

 Greg Shattenberg is an artist residing in West Paris, Maine.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Before a Storm Breaks in Midsummer



 
 by William D. Cecil, Sr.
 
              (1929) 
  
 
Out swings a limb
 brushed by the wind.
 
Out slips a bird,
 hardly disturbed
 
by sharp swishing
 of leaves, wishing
 
their time had come-
 their flight begun.
 
 
 
William D. Cecil, Sr. was born in 1906 and lived 
for 96 years.  He was a lifelong educator, people person, 
and believer in nature.  He spent time recuperating 
from an illness in the late 1920s and thirties.  He used 
this time to write poetry and to heal.  He was a member 
of the Shakespeare Symposium in Lewiston, NY and 
wrote biographical material on an artist known for his 
depictions of Niagara Falls (Amos Sangster).
 
 
copyright 2012, Carolyn Cecil