Photo by Dan Felstead
______________________
Arriving home after the Midway Pacific Campaign....
Can they see me...are they looking out of the windows? They surely heard the greyhound stop out front. (Breathing deep)...my God its great to be back home on this solid earth...the death and destruction is behind me...I have to find a way to put that aside now.
Spike! Here boy...it's me! I can come back and pick up my duffel bag, come here boy...I'm on the ground to wrestle just like we used to do.
The blind...I saw movement...Sarah!
I'M H0ME...MY GOD
I'M HOME! Your
beautiful, I missed
you so much...It's
over Sarah...We
can start our life
again....Grace? Sill
asleep in bed? I'll
surprise her...No, I'm
fine...I'm ok......
I've always imagined what it was like that day that dad arrived home from the war. I was too young at the time to realize anything but the fact that my dad was back home. Even as young as I was, I remember the first thing my eyes saw as I wiped the sleep from them...looking at dad's face...so close to mine. Was I dreaming? No , it was true...dad was home.
With dad's passing last month, I will remember this as the most important day in the lives of three people on that September morning in 1942...never again separated after that day...mom, dad and me back together again.
Journal entry: July 31st, 2009
Grace
Dan Felstead
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6 comments:
Arriving home after the Midway Pacific Campaign....
Can they see me...are they looking out of the windows? They surely heard the greyhound stop out front. (
Breathing deep)...my God its great to be back home on this solid earth...the death and destruction is behind me...I have to find a way to put that aside now.
Spike! Here boy...it's me! I can come back and pick up my duffel bag, come here boy...I'm on the ground to wrestle just like we used to do.
The blind...I saw movement...Sarah!
I'M H0ME...MY GOD
I'M HOME! Your
beautiful, I missed
you so much...It's
over Sarah...We
can start our life
again....Grace? Sill
asleep in bed? I'll
surprise her...No, I'm
fine...I'm ok......
I've always imagined what it was like that day that dad arrived home from the war. I was too young at the time to realize anything but the fact that my dad was back home. Even as young as I was, I remember the first thing my eyes saw as I wiped the sleep from them...looking at dad's face...so close to mine. Was I dreaming? No , it was true...dad was home.
With dad's passing last month, I will remember this as the most important day in the lives of three people on that September morning in 1942...never again separated after that day...mom, dad and me back together again.
Journal entry: July 31st, 2009
Grace
So moving Dan... well done!
Thanks Laura...I think I have seen too many movies! That scene played out in my mind when I took the picture.
Dan
It was the same. Yet different.
I was back at the home I grew up to the age of 10 years. I remembered running around the wrap-around porch on summer days with a bubble wand, watching them shimmer and float in the light. Feeling invigorated as my young dog chased me around and snapped at the floating spheres.
The home was different now. Yet it was still my home. It was still the same shape that had been etched in my mind since the time I left it. When my parents had passed and I was taken away to live with my aunt. I didn't like to remember that part.
Now other people lived within those walls, but I found myself drawn to return. To see what had become of it. This home was mine, in spite of the years I spent away. It was mind, in spite of the new white siding now covering the old lovely brick I remember. It was mine, in spite of that black dog- instead of the white mutt with the brown and black spots I remembered standing on the porch last.
I approached, knees trembling a touch, and stepped up onto the first step. Everything seemed fresh and new. I was pleased. The home, although now different than how I remembered it, had been well kept. I knocked.
The woman who answered allowed me to walk through what was now her rooms, her walls, her furniture, and I told her stories about the way I remembered the place.
As I departed, I was again invigorated from the experience. Time goes on. People grow up. People die. What is left behind either can fade or bring new meaning and memories to others.
That's what made this house a home, not only to me.
I parked the Toyota over by the garage, wondering when Grandma had had the driveway gravel replaced. It looked nice, she picked the big white gravel, and didn't go for that cheap pea gravel that gets caught in the tread of your work boots.
The empty rocking chair made me sad. Usually, I could see Grandpa sitting there, either smoking his pipe or whittling a piece of birch from the woods out back.
Brutus, the pinscher Grandpa loved (and Grandma barely tolerated) stood guard by the kitchen door. I'm sure the old hound was missing Grandpa as much as I did, and certainly not more than Grandma. After all, she had been his wife for 52 long years.
Hard to believe he was gone.
Damn that waitress Sophie! Why'd she have to go and win the lottery and run off with Grandpa?
As I got out of the car, I hoped Grandma was ready to go to the airport. The Philanderin' Fillies singles group was flying off to Miami for a ten-day Caribbean cruise.
I sure hoped Grandma wasn't wearing those hot pants of hers - it just wasn't right.
Man, that woman had some vericose veins!
Old Home Place
The drive from the sleepy hamlet in South Carolina to the dusty crossroad community in Nacogdoches County Texas was uneventful. Twenty plus hours of driving can spirit a lot of swirling thoughts through a person’s consciousness. J. D. Crowe’s bluegrass classic “Old Home Place” kept running cadence through my mind as the miles clicked past. “Why did I leeeeave the plooooww in the field and loooook for a jooobb in the tooowwwn”.
Johnson grass obscured the red iron ore gravel road cut off that led up the hill to the home place. The drooping blades swished hauntingly down the side of the fifty nine Chevrolet Apache pickup as it slowly crunched up the rocky driveway. As the engine turned its last round, the silence was absolute. The clothes line was bare as a highline. Paint hung onto the wooden siding like Pringles. The old dog must have long since passed.
“Hellooo?”
I guess I should have called. Still as a vacuum. Listening. Looking toward the well that my Grand Dad had dug with a shovel, I could see that the bucket was swaying , knotted and clinging to an ancient coil of hemp. Strolling toward the well, I could see one of the barn doors hanging precariously by one hinge. There was no way I could be at the wrong place, reckon? Silence.
The splash echoed up the well in reverberating ripples. Sound at least. Hand over hand, the hoist of sixteen pounds of water brought a stinging to my shoulders. Even in the height of summer, the water was always cold. The water spilled from the corner of my mouth, filtered though my beard, down onto my shirt and blue jeans. Gulping, I could not outrun the flow of the skyward bucket. The last eight pounds flowed freely over my head and lower body. The chilled liquid was exhilarating.
Standing there in the breeze, I could feel each droplet as it made its journey southward. The banging bucket as it hit the ground- but it didn’t sound like a bucket. Rustling leaves signaled the wind had picked up. Three blue jays were sitting on the middle clothes line engaged in an arguing match of sorts. Sound? What was that sound? Screen door? Peering over my left shoulder, A blurry movement. Wiping my face with my shirt tail. I got my focus. My old dog “Claude”, ambled up way-laying me with his rhythmic tail. Standing on the porch, just as I had remembered it, were Mon and Dad, speechless.
“Helloo!”
“Why did I leeeeave the plow in the field,,,,,,”
(wate color of 59 Chevy Apache on blogsite)
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