Creative Writing (Untitled), by Cecil Bethea

Keith Kirchner lived on the next block down from ours.  He must have been five years older than me because he finished school in 1940.  He was drafted in the spring ‘41.  After basic he went into the Army Air Corps.  Knowing the army like I do, I’d say he was pushed into the Air Corps–bombers, a machine gunner.  My mother and his used to talk on the phone several times a week. This way we kept in touch with him and his training.

First the telegram came telling that he was wounded, for anybody with a star hanging in the window, any telegram was almost as bad as a death notice. Not knowing anything except he was alive and wounded must have been mighty bad.  Slowly the news slipped across the ocean that he was badly burnt and couldn’t write.  I wondered if his arms had been burnt off,  A month or two later we found out that he’d been awarded a Medal of Honor.  Talk about a splash!  The paper printed on the front page the whole citation about how an incendiary bomb had exploded in his plane.  He’d picked it up and thrown it out the window saving the other men but burning himself just about to a crisp.  I was taking chemistry then and had just learned what a bitch phosphorus is.  Now I know he was wearing one of those heavy leather flight suits which would have protected him somewhat.  I see how he picked the bomb up in the first place.  What I can’t understand is how he continued to hold on to the thing.

When he finally came home, we didn’t see him without his long-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way up.  Of course most of the time he had a tie on.  His face and neck were scared something awful and his hands too.  Couldn’t hide those parts.  I’d wonder what his body looked like naked especially down there, you know

I have been cogitating about this ever since.  I did my time in Korea, All I got was a Purple Heart for being stupid and a Good Conduct Badge for not getting caught.  Keith and I’d have a beer ever so often.  While we were talking and drinking I noticed that his hands weren’t the color of mother-of pearl but more like unpolished opal.  Another time I remember regretting to him not doing something brave and famous like him.  He just said, “You didn’t have the chance.”

© 3 Sep 2008 

About the Author 

Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18th, 2012. 

Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression.  No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era.  No matter we survived.  I am talking about my sister, brother, and I.  There are two things that set me apart from people.  From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar.  Through our early life, we traveled extensively in the mountain West.  Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience.  We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now those happy travels are only memories.

I was amongst the first members of the memory writing class.  While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback.  Also, just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

Carl is now in a nursing home; I don’t drive any more.  We totter on.

Travel by Train by Ray S

Sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 AM you can you can hear the low but urgent call of the diesel coal train winding its way from Wyoming through Denver to somewhere south on the Santa Fe (now Burlington-Northern-Santa Fe) railroad line.

That familiar horn brings to my mind the first time I thrilled to that same sound.  It was the year of the “Chicago Century of Progress” World’s Fair 1933.  The CB&O ( Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Rail Road) ran west through my hometown, a suburb of the Windy City and every day that new sound of the diesel horn warned the passing of the “City of Denver” Zephyr.  It was a custom for the kids, unbeknownst to their elders, to place copper pennies on the track anticipating the arrival of the premier silver streamliner, and then retrieve the flattened coin as a souvenir of the great new advance in modern passenger rail service.

Many years and various national and international conflagrations, marriages and births our family rode the Zephyr from Denver to Chicago to visit family.  That train carried the four of us as well as all the other passengers on the final run of the CB&O Denver Zephyr.  The tracks were the same but the advent of Amtrak and “The California Zephyr” had arrived and were different.  Chicago’s Union Station marked the conclusion of a long and marvelous historical railroad train trip for us and the Zephyr. 

Another time, another place and another train trip.  Just a kid, barely 18 years old and almost Christmas in 1943.  The “bigger war” had been going on since Pearl Harbor and ’41.  Either wait for the draft and whatever fate it held or enlist in a military service of your choice.  What could be more glamorous, adventuresome and heroic than becoming an air cadet in the United States Army Air Corps?  None of the above adjectives quite fit my personality or abilities, but “Off We GO, Into the Wild Blue Yonder,”  or went.

After necessary induction processes at Chicago’s Great Lakes/Fort Sheridan installation the newly hatched cadets were outfitted with all the appropriate clothing necessities, either on your back or in the ubiquitous barracks bag and off to the south side of Chicago and the Illinois Central Railroad station.  Then my first and only really troop train adventure.  No, not cattle cars, a great number of coach cars and even some of Mr Pullman’s sleepers, but no porters to make up your births.  A mess hall was in a converted coach car and you passed through it to receive whatever they prepared in the way of portable food to be carried back to your respective car.  The I.C. (Illinois Central R.R.) rolled on and on finally depositing the potential air warriors at a cold, dank, coal smoke clouded (potbellied space heaters in each barracks were the only means of heating) Gulfport Field, Mississippi.

The trip continued to cover needed physical exams and intrusions, shots, and. of course, six weeks plus of basic training and then as they say, “at the convenience of the government,”  the cadet program was declared over-subscribed to.  The hundred or so fledgling flyers were assigned to various other Air Corps tasks and dispatched to their new homes for various “military careers.”

So the story goes of this train trip--from potential “fly boy” to guard duty in a Military Police company.  The closest thing to flying was midnight patrol of a deserted flight strip in North Carolina.

A train trip never to be repeated and hardly ever remembered.

© 25 Aug 2014  

About the Author