From Gene’s Notebook
…continuing those never-ending moments, and they come faster and faster as my end nears ….
The man has a Marine cap. I say, “Former Marine?”
He leaps at me and growls, stopping short of hitting me, and says, “Never former, never ex, always a Marine!” Shoppers jump back at his growl.
“What war?”
“Three, WW Two, Korea (Pusan) and Vietnam, fighting drugs in the last one? And you, what war?”
I say, “Between Korea and Vietnam. I was lucky.”
“I guess so, and let me tell you, Vietnam was the worst, the drugs making it so.”
He goes down an aisle, I another, my heart still pounding from his leap and growl; he could have flattened me, though 15 years older and a lot shorter and lighter ….
And with my heart slowed, I pedal home, and a motorbike turns in front of me, a redhead hanging on, sideways, to the driver; then I see an object fall to the street, one of her black loafers.
I stop in the middle of street, pick up the loafer - yes, it has a sexual tone - and the motorbike circles back. I hand the redhead her loafer, and think the “red” is a wig - so what! She then moves from sideways, hangs on from the full rear and the bike goes off, unhelmeted man with grey hair, unhelmeted woman with “red.”
Brownsville, May 29, 2008
1 response so far ↓
1 Jack // May 29, 2008 at 1:05 pm
On Tuesday, I, too, had an encounter with a Marine, but it was very friendly. We had breakfast together at Whataburger. He is my Cousin, Tom King, six foot one, 220 lbs., bald and now 78. He fought with the First Marines at the Chosin Reservoir under Colonel Chesty Puller, and even though Chesty is gone now, he is still remembered in the Corps as the Marine’s Marine. I knew that my cousin admired him, and I had seen books about Puller, but since Tom’s vision was failing to the point that he didn’t try to read anymore and got his entertainment from TV and video, I had been looking around for a tape or dvd about Puller. I found one, bought it, and gave it to Tom at Whataburger. He told me that in Korea, the smiling Colonel had once announced, “Men, I’ve scouted the perimeter, and we’re completely surrounded by the enemy. By God, they won’t get away this time.”
“And by God,” said Tom, ” they didn’t.”
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