FORD
10-20-2004, 09:51 AM
Why I'm Voting for George
By Dave Joyce
t r u t h o u t | Letter
Wednesday 20 October 2004
This is going to be a mite long winded, but by the time you get to the bottom, you'll understand, so lean on back, take your shoes off and sit awhile. And ah ... no peeking.
Many have asked where I am in Maine. And while I don't have the GPS co-ordinates handy, I can say a little something about my place in the backwoods. Our town's name is something the local natives once said. Not the guys that came over on those rickety, leaky sailing ships, I mean the ones who answered the doorbell and met the boats. The word, quite frankly, has just too many c's, k's, t's, p's, and w's for one human mouth to even try to muckle on to. And as far as spelling it, as a former systems analyst I know that certain combinations of keystrokes can unlock hidden programs that will wipe your hard drive faster than a skunk can raise his tail and say "Hello," so that ain't gonna happen. But what the dang thing means, well that's another story.
Not too many of the original inhabitants are around anymore, so the current natives aren't sure what the thing really means. Ed down at the corner claims it means "Moose too damn heavy," because for the original folks here, when a hunter killed one, rather than drag it back to camp, they dragged the camp to it. Nowadays, during the one week when Moose hunting is allowed, we currents use backhoes, skidders, and the like (I've heard tell of a chainsaw or two being involved) to bring them out of the backwoods. To me, seeing these sizeable critters on an almost daily basis, the originals had it right.
Dalton, down the road the other way, says it refers to some sort of ritual the originals had, a religious thing involving gourds and riverbank mud. Don't know as if I buy it, because, to be honest, I think Dalton's opinion on the matter might be a tad tainted by his father Sam, and that man was a bit peculiar when it came to the originals that once inhabited these parts.
A few decades back, when a ruckus broke out between the originals and the currents over who owned which part of the state, Sam made his opinion known on the matter. He attended one of those public discussion meetings on the various land claims that occurred around this area during that time. Seated in the room were not only the town elders of several towns, but representatives of those originals, and a large number of local citizens who also wanted to be heard. The meeting went back and forth all night, each side presenting its case and neither making any sense to the other. Finally, Sam couldn't take it any more and got recognized to speak. He got up and proceeded to calmly explain with his loud booming voice how no finer friend of the originals existed here in the valley. Why, he boasted, as a young lad, he had acquired his very first hunting rifle by trading a pint of store bought whiskey to Old Indian Joe who lived out by himself on an island in the middle of the river, and that out of the goodness of his heart it was a full pint except for that small sip he had taken to make sure it was indeed the "real stuff," so as far as he was concerned, all this talk of who owned what was a bunch of crap that stank just as bad as the black gunk the mill flushed into the river out where Old Joe used to live. Barely pausing for breath, he then proceeded to go on with his version of the area's history in which, while the originals had fought bravely to hang on to the land, they lost because there were more of "us folk than them folk" and therefore it had all been decided way back when anyways, so we should just all go home and be done with it. The silence that greeted Sam's message was such that Sam figured he had single-handedly stopped what would later become a landmark Supreme Court ruling dead in its tracks, and deciding to set an example by his way of thinking, he promptly left the meeting.
On the other hand, I think Carl, over on the south side of the hill, has it about right. His translation is "Place Too Small for Post Office and Therefore Does Not Exist." You see, a while back we were an independent town. We weren't big, just a few square miles in the woods. We had a post office, a general store, and with a couple of two-story buildings at the crossroads, we considered this our "downtown." But a couple of decades ago or so, the Postal Service decided our Post Office needed to become undeliverable. When that happened, the general store went under, and our town was absorbed into a bigger town nearby. Most, but not all, folks at the time voted for the consolidation and while it passed, it was not without a struggle. And the tale of that struggle involves a now deceased relative of Carl's, his uncle Barney.
Barney had fought WWII in the navy, and had gotten into UDT (Under Water Demolition). He'd been part of a team clearing obstacles on various Pacific island beaches prior to the Marines going ashore. When he came back, he bought himself a parcel of land out in the woods, set up a cabin, got hitched, and raised a packet of kids. But when talk of consolidation started, Barney would have none of it. So on the night of the big vote, Barney didn't bother to go. He decided, instead, to strike a blow for Liberty and Independence.
Our town was separated from the larger one by a small bridge crossing a small rocky creek. The middle of the bridge was the dividing line between us and them. About a mile or so upstream exists a dam owned by a local sawmill owner whose mill was, at that time, on the other side of the bridge in that other town. Now, the dam had been built a few years after Barney had built his place, and the resulting 150-plus acre pond came close to Barney's land, but was not actually on it. Barney didn't mind the dam and pond - its pickerel, bass, and other fish were a good addition to his family's diet.
But Barney was a stubborn cuss and no way, no how, was he going to allow the place where he was born, grew up, lived, and was going to die, to just up and disappear. Plus he was not about to let some "big city types" tell him what size to make and where to put his outhouse. And if he had to make another sacrifice for his independence, so be it. Being a former UDT man, he figured half a stick of 40% would be about right. So while everyone else was at the meeting, Barney was out by the dam reliving his youth.
Barney figured that by blowing the dam, a resulting wash of water would take out the bridge downstream, cutting us off, and as a by product, giving the owner of the mill (and one of the biggest supporters of the consolidation movement) an extra kick in the pants. Things didn't quite work out that way. The pond was lower than normal that year - dry summer - and the frothing churning mass of rushing angry water he envisioned smashing into the bridge was a single wave just barely able to wet the upper supports.
None the less, he was proud that his mission was accomplished, and rather than hightail it back to his cabin, he stood by until the Sheriff arrived, accompanied by the local Game Warden (who thought someone was night fishing), and thus managed to parlay his deed into a county-paid vacation trip. But, in spite of Barney's valiant attempt to defend his independence and his way of life, the outcome of the vote was never really in doubt. Our small place with the weird name disappeared; we lost our autonomy, our independence, and our "dot" on the map of Maine.
Fighting for independence is strong up here. Maybe it has to do with the fact that many of the families in this area have direct ties to veterans of the War of 1812, who, as pay for their service during that war, were given land grants up here. And as each generation passed, folks in this area contributed sons to all the different fights that followed. Back in the woods, there are old graveyards, some tended and some forgotten, with members of entire families listed on the headstones. In just about every case, you'll find a name or two of someone in the family that died during the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Indian Wars or some such. In a lot of cases, it's just the names; the remains are buried somewhere else.
A lot of veterans live in these parts. And if you travel the back roads a bit, sooner or later you'll come across a VFW or American Legion hall. It's usually a larger than normal building, either a remodeled farmhouse or a spec steel frame structure of some sort. There'll be a parking area, tarred or dirt, and flag poles that proudly fly both the American and State of Maine flags. Sometimes there'll even be a cannon or two out front between those poles. And pretty much at most times of the day there'll be a couple of cars or a truck or two in the parking lot.
One such hall I would pass by occasionally when I was working for a nearby paper mill. My commute to and from work was about 45 minutes each way, and there were a number of slightly different routes I could take depending on the weather, time of day, or season of the year. A couple of years back, my choice of travel that day took me by this particular VFW. As I drove past, I noticed the 37mm anti-tank cannon between the poles had been replaced by a US Army surplus M48 Main Battle Tank. And because such a tool of war seemed so incongruous on a peaceful back woods road, I pulled in and stopped.
After getting out and walking around to the tank, I stood there trying to figure out its pedigree, when out from the VFW hall stepped an older gent. He saw me standing there and came over. He was dressed typical backwoods Mainer style: green work pants, red and blue checked flannel shirt, open so that the frayed upper front rim of his whitish undershirt peeked out. His shirt was covered by a blue windbreaker with a faded Red Sox emblem on one side and a shoulder seam that was torn open, a tuft of white insulation exposed, on the other side. His shoes were brown work boots, badly scuffed, the right shoe's tip showing a bit of steel cap through the worn leather. In his right hand was a polished wooden cane (I had noticed a limp as he walked over).
He was a little shorter than my 5' 11" height. The white hair on his head was topped with a grease and oil stained, faded, well worn green John Deere baseball cap. Brown eyes, set in a wrinkled, weathered face, complete with grayish stubble and silver wire frame glasses, looked me over.
"Nice tank," he said.
"Sure is, just trying to figure out what version it is, A1 or A3"
"A1." He paused, "You know who the tank is named after?"
At first I thought he was talking about the personal name combat crews sometimes put on their vehicle, and then I realized he was talking about the official name.
"George S. Patton, too bad he never had a chance to take these babies up against some Mark V's or T-34's," I said.
He laughed, "Yeah, George would have enjoyed that rumble." Then tilting his head and cracking a smile, he asked, "You a tanker?"
"Nope, never had the honor, got 4F'd by the draft board on account of my legs."
That was true. As a young lad, my legs tried to occupy a point in space-time that was also occupied by a moving car. The result of this experiment in quantum mechanics was a fast trip to several medical establishments and a long period of recovery. So when my turn came for a draft physical back in the days of LBJ, old Doc Bessin, who had been treating my colds, sniffles, and other assorted childhood illnesses and was well aware of my leg's reassembled condition, didn't bother with a thermometer, a tongue depressor or any such, he simply looked at me, looked at my legs, wrote "4F" on my form, and told me to go home and have a long and healthy life.
"So how come you know tanks?" he asked.
"Been a World War II buff ever since I was a kid," I said. "Grew up on tales from my relatives that fought in that war."
"Yeah, what part?" he asked.
"My uncle Bobby was a bombardier on 17s over Europe. Got shot down during the Schwienfort raid and spent 2 years as a POW. My other uncle Frank served in the Marines and fought in just about every Pacific battle from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima, where he got wounded and shipped home. I got a second cousin that fought in France, but never made it back."
His smile widened, "Well it sounds as if your folks did ok, then." He shifted the cane to his left hand and stuck out his right, "George Akers is the name."
I grabbed the offered hand and shook it while saying, "Dave Joyce, pleased to meet you George."
"Likewise," he said. Then, dropping the handshake, he switched hands on the cane once again and turned towards the tank.
"Yup, ol' Blood and Guts would have loved this one. Did I mention I served under General Patton during WWII?"
"No. Really?"
"Yup, came ashore with the Third Army, chased the Krauts across France, Belgium, and clean into Germany. That's where I got this." His hand struck his right leg with a soft dull thwack.
"You saw a lot of history then," I replied.
"And a lot of good men die too," he said sadly, then brightening up he added, "You being a history buff and all, you might want to take a look at my collection of photos and stuff from the war up to the house," and pointed towards a trailer with an attached shed, a type of homestead common in these parts, perched on the hillside just above and a short distance from where we stood.
Since I had left work a few hours early that Friday fall afternoon, I was in no real rush to get home. It had been a long week of late nights as we computer geeks finished updating the mill's inventory system. The job was finally done, the programs doing their thing seemingly without a hitch, and the boss was in a good mood, so a slightly longer than normal weekend awaited me. And the offer did intrigue me.
"Sure," I said and pointed at my truck parked nearby. "Hop in."
We drove across the parking lot, around the right side of the hall, and crossed over on to George's driveway. His trailer sat in a small clearing on the hillside, overlooking the VFW hall and the nearby tarred road. The trailer was a single wide that had a fairly new wooden roof supported by posts at each corner. What had appeared to be an adjoining shed from the parking lot was in fact a large addition that was cleanly affixed to the trailer's side wall. An insulated chimney pipe with cap jutted above the roofline, lazily discharged a thin stream of wood smoke. A couple of rusting lawn chairs sat outside, placed around a small circle of stones, the inside of which contained the cold charred embers of a past campfire.
As we pulled into the yard and he was directing me where to park, the door to the trailer opened and a short, white haired woman stepped out and walked towards the truck.
"Well, George," she said, "how many this time?"
"Just one like I promised," George said as he swung himself out of the truck and on to the ground. It took him a few seconds to get his land legs and steady himself with his cane before turning and pointing at me. "This young fella was admiring Bessie down there and I invited him up to take a look at my collection."
She looked me over. She stood there wearing a faded blue and white house dress, its floral print long ago washed into obscurity. Around her waist was a lime green apron whose tint hinted of a brighter past. Covering her shoulder and arm was a dark blue sweater, unbuttoned, but held together at the top with a gold chain clipped onto the sweater collar. The face was wrinkled and well worn with a hint of youthful beauty and grace. What was most remarkable were the two bright blue eyes that shown out from behind a pair of slightly tinted frameless glasses. Those eyes had the same look as a Mother Bear with cubs spotting a potential threat for the first time: situational awareness. And standing there, with her short stocky frame and hands on hips, the resemblance to such a critter at such a time was uncanny.
"And you being?" she said, in a tone that was both defiant and friendly.
"His name's Dave and he works up to the mill, Martha. Just stopped by to look at my collection," George said and headed off towards the trailer.
I introduced myself a little more proper, shook hands, and turned to follow George, all the while answering her questions of where I lived, what I did at the mill, as we strolled up the short walkway and into the trailer. I could sense an ease in her attitude towards me and my intrusion into her life as we talked. But there was still something about her voice that bothered me, something that still did not quite click.
Inside was the typical single wide layout. A kitchen to the right of the front door with a half bar wall dividing it from the living room. Off to the left, a narrow hallway ended with the door to the master bedroom. Two doorways along the hallway's right side showed where a spare room and the single bathroom lay.
The living room and kitchen were clean, neat, and dust free. A three person sofa sat against one wall with a recliner on the right hand side. A coffee table sat on an oval, green and yellow braided rug in front of the sofa. Upon the table's shining surface sat framed photos, both new and old, of young children. In one corner of the living room was a small television. The other corner, the one closest to the front door, contained a small table with a vase of colorful but artificial flowers. The trailer had that comfortable, lived in look.
Where a normal single wide rear entrance would be - the upper left corner of that living room - a darkly stained, highly polished six panel wooden door with a gleaming brass doorknob now stood.
I stood inside their home, feeling a little awkward, when George walked over to the wooden back door. Flicking a light switch on the wall and opening door, he turned his head over his shoulders and said, "Here it is."
As the flickering light from a couple of four foot florescent strips took hold, I could see another room, this one slightly larger than the living room, through the doorway. As I came across the living room and into this new space, I could see it was filled with shelves of books, framed photos, newspaper clippings, flags, pennants, and other memorabilia. A leather recliner, a smaller sofa and a couple of small tables filled the rest of the room. In one corner sat a small TV with an attached VCR, a rack of tapes perched on the wall above.
One wall, however, was nearly unadorned - five framed photos, one centered, with four others aligned to its corners surrounding it. Below, a small table stood against the wall. A miniature flagpole with a granite base and American flag lay on top towards the back of the table. Just in front of that was a highly detailed scale model M4 Sherman tank and in front of that, a small rectangular velvet box displaying a Purple Heart.
George motioned me to have a seat on the sofa. As I sat down, he asked, "So what d'ya think?"
I smiled and said, "Impressed."
Just then Martha put her head in the doorway and asked, "Would you care for a cuppa tea or coffee?" It was the way she said it that caused me to realize what it was that had bothered me about Martha: she wasn't from Maine, she was British.
George and I talked for several hours that day. He told me of growing up on a farm up in potato country and his handiness with farm machinery. When Pearl Harbor happened, he wanted to join up right away, but his mother made him promise to finish high school. So the day after graduation, he hitch-hiked down to Bangor and joined the Army. After Basic, the Army, in a rare fit of sanity, assigned him to tank school because of his mechanical abilities. He trained in Texas and California before being shipped to England, and ended up as the assistant driver/hull gunner in a Sherman tank assigned to Patton's Third Army.
"There were five of us in that tank. Sergeant Bill Puller was the commander. We just called him Sarge," he said with a smile. "And there was Corporal John Nast. Nasty was his nickname. He was our gunner. Bob Swan, the loader, was called Swami, 'cause Bob always seemed to know which kind of shell to grab before Sarge or Nasty could tell him. Dan Black was the driver; "Shifty" we called him because he could never get comfortable in his seat, always moving around trying to get set whenever we were on the road."
Pointing towards the wall with the five pictures, he said, "That's them over there, the lower left hand one."
I got up and looked at the pictures. They were old, faded from black and white into a brownish white. The picture George directed me to displayed 5 uniformed individuals standing along side a Sherman tank festooned with sleeping bags, knapsacks, shovels, and spare treads. Across the turret were the words "Squirrel Huntin' II." The three other photos surrounding the center one showed pretty much the same, but in those photos, the tank and the items strapped to its sides, as well as the men in the photos, were caked with mud or covered with snow, unlike the pristine condition that had existed in the first photo.
As I looked at the photos, George said, "See the one in the middle?"
I looked. Two GIs were standing side by side by a large river. The far bank could be seen in the distance. Both men had their backs to the camera and were looking back over their shoulders. "Yes," I responded.
"That's me and Shifty pissin' in the Rhine just after we crossed in March of '45."
As I stared at the photo, he added, "That was taken about a week before I got hit and Shifty bought it."
I asked him if he minded telling me how it happened.
"No, don't mind at all. We had crossed into Germany and at that time a lot of Germans were just plain giving up. We had fought our way across Europe and them Nazis (he pronounced it like Churchill did, "Nazzis") had put up a hellva fight. About 3 or 4 days earlier, our tank platoon commander had been killed and we got a freshly caught shavetail (2nd Lieutenant) as a replacement."
He paused to take a sip of tea. "We got word from some German civilians that there was a group of SS up the road wanting to give up. Sarge tried to talk this new LT into not going right in, with bands playing and all, to accept their surrender. But the young kid wouldn't listen to any of the more experienced guys, and besides, he was in command and orders are orders. So we headed up the road, the Lieutenant in the lead tank, us second, with a couple of half-tracks carrying a platoon or so of GIs in each behind us. No sooner did we round the corner on this narrow road, when an 88 anti-tank gun opened up, nailing the lead tank with his first shot. The crew of that tank got out before she blew and we fired at where we thought the gun was, but missed. The Germans fired a second shot, hitting us. It was a dud, went right through our armor like a hot knife through butter, in one side and out the other, clean as a whistle. But rather than argue the point with the other fellows, Sarge, because knew we were out-gunned, ordered us to bail out. I went out the hatch above my head, fell to the ground and scrambled behind a nearby tree. The third shot the Krauts fired wasn't a dud; it blew our tank to hell and back. That's when a piece of shrapnel just about took my leg off. I lay there on the ground screaming like the dickens, bullets and what all flying around me, when I realized I wasn't the only one screaming. That first 88 round to hit us had done some damage after all, it had jammed Shifty in his seat; he couldn't get out and was screaming as he burned in the remains of our tank."
He paused, wiping a tear from his eye. "Sorry, even after all these years...." He took a deep breath and a sip of what was now cold tea.
"I got hauled out of there, back to an aid station, and then back to England. They took what remained of my leg off, and taught me how to walk with a new one. That's where I met Martha. When came time for me to go back stateside, I didn't want to leave her, so I upped an' married her. She's been taking care of me ever since."
After a couple of minutes, he said; "Dave, you know why we won?"
I wasn't quite sure what George was getting at, but before I could answer, he pointed to the video tapes in the rack. "Ever see Frank Capra's 'Why We Fight' movies?"
I said I did and owned a copy of the series myself. He smiled. "Kinda figured you had seen it. Actually Capra didn't quite get it right. Look over there," he said, and pointed to a spot on the wall between two bookshelves. Three framed documents hung on the wall.
"Those are why. The one on the right, that's my enlistment papers, the one on the left is my discharge papers. In the middle is a copy of the United States Constitution. You see when you swear into service, you're swearing to defend that document, the Constitution, against all enemies foreign or domestic. Them Nazis, they swore an oath to a man, Adolf Hitler; we swore an oath to an idea. That's why we won."
At this point Martha stuck her head in the room and said that dinner was almost ready and I was welcome to stay if I wanted. I begged off and said I had to be going. We exchanged pleasantries and I promised to come back.
I did too. Over the past years I've visited George and Martha, spending hours with George listening to him relive his youth, his tales of the good fight and the men who fought it with him. But when I stopped working at the mill, my times over there were fewer than they should have been. I'd come on by after a fishing trip and drop off some of my catch, or just drop by when I was in the area and usually end up visiting for a couple of hours or so.
As the years have gone by George and Martha have endured. George's leg started to give him some pain and in the past few months he started to have some trouble with his heart. About a month ago, I stopped by and was greeted with an offer I couldn't refuse, a chance to join him in his one and only, if Martha had anything to say about it, daily beer down at the VFW hall.
We sat at the bar sipping our brew, with a television softly playing in the background, and it was then that I heard George make the only "political" comment I ever heard in the short years since I first met him. A commercial for the ACLU was on; you know the one, the one that talks about the Patriot Act. It has a line in it that goes something like "The government can search your home without ever telling you."
George heard that, shook his head slowly and said, "That's plain just not right."
My wife and I returned from George's funeral a few days ago. He died before the VA could get him booked into Boston for a bypass. The service was at a church down the road from his trailer, and his resting place is up the road from it, in one of those small cemeteries that will someday be hidden back in the woods. The small procession from the church to the cemetery passed by the VFW hall, and they stopped the hearse carrying his flag-draped coffin directly in front of the hall and its tank for a moment. While we waited there for the procession to continue on to the burying ground, I made a decision. I'm voting for George.
When I make my mark for John Kerry, it won't be so much for his positions or plans for America. It won't even be to get Bush out of office. It will be for George ... and Shifty. For Uncle Bobby, and Uncle Frank and even stubborn ol' Barney and all the others that left homes and farms, gave blood, sweat, tears, limbs, and lives in order to protect our Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. They did their duty; on November 2nd, I'll do mine.
Dave Joyce is a retired systems analyst living in the Great North Woods of Maine where he enjoys all of nature's bounty except the black flies. He can be reached via his moose and squirrel powered backwoods dialup connection here: drjoyce_301@hotmail.com.
By Dave Joyce
t r u t h o u t | Letter
Wednesday 20 October 2004
This is going to be a mite long winded, but by the time you get to the bottom, you'll understand, so lean on back, take your shoes off and sit awhile. And ah ... no peeking.
Many have asked where I am in Maine. And while I don't have the GPS co-ordinates handy, I can say a little something about my place in the backwoods. Our town's name is something the local natives once said. Not the guys that came over on those rickety, leaky sailing ships, I mean the ones who answered the doorbell and met the boats. The word, quite frankly, has just too many c's, k's, t's, p's, and w's for one human mouth to even try to muckle on to. And as far as spelling it, as a former systems analyst I know that certain combinations of keystrokes can unlock hidden programs that will wipe your hard drive faster than a skunk can raise his tail and say "Hello," so that ain't gonna happen. But what the dang thing means, well that's another story.
Not too many of the original inhabitants are around anymore, so the current natives aren't sure what the thing really means. Ed down at the corner claims it means "Moose too damn heavy," because for the original folks here, when a hunter killed one, rather than drag it back to camp, they dragged the camp to it. Nowadays, during the one week when Moose hunting is allowed, we currents use backhoes, skidders, and the like (I've heard tell of a chainsaw or two being involved) to bring them out of the backwoods. To me, seeing these sizeable critters on an almost daily basis, the originals had it right.
Dalton, down the road the other way, says it refers to some sort of ritual the originals had, a religious thing involving gourds and riverbank mud. Don't know as if I buy it, because, to be honest, I think Dalton's opinion on the matter might be a tad tainted by his father Sam, and that man was a bit peculiar when it came to the originals that once inhabited these parts.
A few decades back, when a ruckus broke out between the originals and the currents over who owned which part of the state, Sam made his opinion known on the matter. He attended one of those public discussion meetings on the various land claims that occurred around this area during that time. Seated in the room were not only the town elders of several towns, but representatives of those originals, and a large number of local citizens who also wanted to be heard. The meeting went back and forth all night, each side presenting its case and neither making any sense to the other. Finally, Sam couldn't take it any more and got recognized to speak. He got up and proceeded to calmly explain with his loud booming voice how no finer friend of the originals existed here in the valley. Why, he boasted, as a young lad, he had acquired his very first hunting rifle by trading a pint of store bought whiskey to Old Indian Joe who lived out by himself on an island in the middle of the river, and that out of the goodness of his heart it was a full pint except for that small sip he had taken to make sure it was indeed the "real stuff," so as far as he was concerned, all this talk of who owned what was a bunch of crap that stank just as bad as the black gunk the mill flushed into the river out where Old Joe used to live. Barely pausing for breath, he then proceeded to go on with his version of the area's history in which, while the originals had fought bravely to hang on to the land, they lost because there were more of "us folk than them folk" and therefore it had all been decided way back when anyways, so we should just all go home and be done with it. The silence that greeted Sam's message was such that Sam figured he had single-handedly stopped what would later become a landmark Supreme Court ruling dead in its tracks, and deciding to set an example by his way of thinking, he promptly left the meeting.
On the other hand, I think Carl, over on the south side of the hill, has it about right. His translation is "Place Too Small for Post Office and Therefore Does Not Exist." You see, a while back we were an independent town. We weren't big, just a few square miles in the woods. We had a post office, a general store, and with a couple of two-story buildings at the crossroads, we considered this our "downtown." But a couple of decades ago or so, the Postal Service decided our Post Office needed to become undeliverable. When that happened, the general store went under, and our town was absorbed into a bigger town nearby. Most, but not all, folks at the time voted for the consolidation and while it passed, it was not without a struggle. And the tale of that struggle involves a now deceased relative of Carl's, his uncle Barney.
Barney had fought WWII in the navy, and had gotten into UDT (Under Water Demolition). He'd been part of a team clearing obstacles on various Pacific island beaches prior to the Marines going ashore. When he came back, he bought himself a parcel of land out in the woods, set up a cabin, got hitched, and raised a packet of kids. But when talk of consolidation started, Barney would have none of it. So on the night of the big vote, Barney didn't bother to go. He decided, instead, to strike a blow for Liberty and Independence.
Our town was separated from the larger one by a small bridge crossing a small rocky creek. The middle of the bridge was the dividing line between us and them. About a mile or so upstream exists a dam owned by a local sawmill owner whose mill was, at that time, on the other side of the bridge in that other town. Now, the dam had been built a few years after Barney had built his place, and the resulting 150-plus acre pond came close to Barney's land, but was not actually on it. Barney didn't mind the dam and pond - its pickerel, bass, and other fish were a good addition to his family's diet.
But Barney was a stubborn cuss and no way, no how, was he going to allow the place where he was born, grew up, lived, and was going to die, to just up and disappear. Plus he was not about to let some "big city types" tell him what size to make and where to put his outhouse. And if he had to make another sacrifice for his independence, so be it. Being a former UDT man, he figured half a stick of 40% would be about right. So while everyone else was at the meeting, Barney was out by the dam reliving his youth.
Barney figured that by blowing the dam, a resulting wash of water would take out the bridge downstream, cutting us off, and as a by product, giving the owner of the mill (and one of the biggest supporters of the consolidation movement) an extra kick in the pants. Things didn't quite work out that way. The pond was lower than normal that year - dry summer - and the frothing churning mass of rushing angry water he envisioned smashing into the bridge was a single wave just barely able to wet the upper supports.
None the less, he was proud that his mission was accomplished, and rather than hightail it back to his cabin, he stood by until the Sheriff arrived, accompanied by the local Game Warden (who thought someone was night fishing), and thus managed to parlay his deed into a county-paid vacation trip. But, in spite of Barney's valiant attempt to defend his independence and his way of life, the outcome of the vote was never really in doubt. Our small place with the weird name disappeared; we lost our autonomy, our independence, and our "dot" on the map of Maine.
Fighting for independence is strong up here. Maybe it has to do with the fact that many of the families in this area have direct ties to veterans of the War of 1812, who, as pay for their service during that war, were given land grants up here. And as each generation passed, folks in this area contributed sons to all the different fights that followed. Back in the woods, there are old graveyards, some tended and some forgotten, with members of entire families listed on the headstones. In just about every case, you'll find a name or two of someone in the family that died during the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Indian Wars or some such. In a lot of cases, it's just the names; the remains are buried somewhere else.
A lot of veterans live in these parts. And if you travel the back roads a bit, sooner or later you'll come across a VFW or American Legion hall. It's usually a larger than normal building, either a remodeled farmhouse or a spec steel frame structure of some sort. There'll be a parking area, tarred or dirt, and flag poles that proudly fly both the American and State of Maine flags. Sometimes there'll even be a cannon or two out front between those poles. And pretty much at most times of the day there'll be a couple of cars or a truck or two in the parking lot.
One such hall I would pass by occasionally when I was working for a nearby paper mill. My commute to and from work was about 45 minutes each way, and there were a number of slightly different routes I could take depending on the weather, time of day, or season of the year. A couple of years back, my choice of travel that day took me by this particular VFW. As I drove past, I noticed the 37mm anti-tank cannon between the poles had been replaced by a US Army surplus M48 Main Battle Tank. And because such a tool of war seemed so incongruous on a peaceful back woods road, I pulled in and stopped.
After getting out and walking around to the tank, I stood there trying to figure out its pedigree, when out from the VFW hall stepped an older gent. He saw me standing there and came over. He was dressed typical backwoods Mainer style: green work pants, red and blue checked flannel shirt, open so that the frayed upper front rim of his whitish undershirt peeked out. His shirt was covered by a blue windbreaker with a faded Red Sox emblem on one side and a shoulder seam that was torn open, a tuft of white insulation exposed, on the other side. His shoes were brown work boots, badly scuffed, the right shoe's tip showing a bit of steel cap through the worn leather. In his right hand was a polished wooden cane (I had noticed a limp as he walked over).
He was a little shorter than my 5' 11" height. The white hair on his head was topped with a grease and oil stained, faded, well worn green John Deere baseball cap. Brown eyes, set in a wrinkled, weathered face, complete with grayish stubble and silver wire frame glasses, looked me over.
"Nice tank," he said.
"Sure is, just trying to figure out what version it is, A1 or A3"
"A1." He paused, "You know who the tank is named after?"
At first I thought he was talking about the personal name combat crews sometimes put on their vehicle, and then I realized he was talking about the official name.
"George S. Patton, too bad he never had a chance to take these babies up against some Mark V's or T-34's," I said.
He laughed, "Yeah, George would have enjoyed that rumble." Then tilting his head and cracking a smile, he asked, "You a tanker?"
"Nope, never had the honor, got 4F'd by the draft board on account of my legs."
That was true. As a young lad, my legs tried to occupy a point in space-time that was also occupied by a moving car. The result of this experiment in quantum mechanics was a fast trip to several medical establishments and a long period of recovery. So when my turn came for a draft physical back in the days of LBJ, old Doc Bessin, who had been treating my colds, sniffles, and other assorted childhood illnesses and was well aware of my leg's reassembled condition, didn't bother with a thermometer, a tongue depressor or any such, he simply looked at me, looked at my legs, wrote "4F" on my form, and told me to go home and have a long and healthy life.
"So how come you know tanks?" he asked.
"Been a World War II buff ever since I was a kid," I said. "Grew up on tales from my relatives that fought in that war."
"Yeah, what part?" he asked.
"My uncle Bobby was a bombardier on 17s over Europe. Got shot down during the Schwienfort raid and spent 2 years as a POW. My other uncle Frank served in the Marines and fought in just about every Pacific battle from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima, where he got wounded and shipped home. I got a second cousin that fought in France, but never made it back."
His smile widened, "Well it sounds as if your folks did ok, then." He shifted the cane to his left hand and stuck out his right, "George Akers is the name."
I grabbed the offered hand and shook it while saying, "Dave Joyce, pleased to meet you George."
"Likewise," he said. Then, dropping the handshake, he switched hands on the cane once again and turned towards the tank.
"Yup, ol' Blood and Guts would have loved this one. Did I mention I served under General Patton during WWII?"
"No. Really?"
"Yup, came ashore with the Third Army, chased the Krauts across France, Belgium, and clean into Germany. That's where I got this." His hand struck his right leg with a soft dull thwack.
"You saw a lot of history then," I replied.
"And a lot of good men die too," he said sadly, then brightening up he added, "You being a history buff and all, you might want to take a look at my collection of photos and stuff from the war up to the house," and pointed towards a trailer with an attached shed, a type of homestead common in these parts, perched on the hillside just above and a short distance from where we stood.
Since I had left work a few hours early that Friday fall afternoon, I was in no real rush to get home. It had been a long week of late nights as we computer geeks finished updating the mill's inventory system. The job was finally done, the programs doing their thing seemingly without a hitch, and the boss was in a good mood, so a slightly longer than normal weekend awaited me. And the offer did intrigue me.
"Sure," I said and pointed at my truck parked nearby. "Hop in."
We drove across the parking lot, around the right side of the hall, and crossed over on to George's driveway. His trailer sat in a small clearing on the hillside, overlooking the VFW hall and the nearby tarred road. The trailer was a single wide that had a fairly new wooden roof supported by posts at each corner. What had appeared to be an adjoining shed from the parking lot was in fact a large addition that was cleanly affixed to the trailer's side wall. An insulated chimney pipe with cap jutted above the roofline, lazily discharged a thin stream of wood smoke. A couple of rusting lawn chairs sat outside, placed around a small circle of stones, the inside of which contained the cold charred embers of a past campfire.
As we pulled into the yard and he was directing me where to park, the door to the trailer opened and a short, white haired woman stepped out and walked towards the truck.
"Well, George," she said, "how many this time?"
"Just one like I promised," George said as he swung himself out of the truck and on to the ground. It took him a few seconds to get his land legs and steady himself with his cane before turning and pointing at me. "This young fella was admiring Bessie down there and I invited him up to take a look at my collection."
She looked me over. She stood there wearing a faded blue and white house dress, its floral print long ago washed into obscurity. Around her waist was a lime green apron whose tint hinted of a brighter past. Covering her shoulder and arm was a dark blue sweater, unbuttoned, but held together at the top with a gold chain clipped onto the sweater collar. The face was wrinkled and well worn with a hint of youthful beauty and grace. What was most remarkable were the two bright blue eyes that shown out from behind a pair of slightly tinted frameless glasses. Those eyes had the same look as a Mother Bear with cubs spotting a potential threat for the first time: situational awareness. And standing there, with her short stocky frame and hands on hips, the resemblance to such a critter at such a time was uncanny.
"And you being?" she said, in a tone that was both defiant and friendly.
"His name's Dave and he works up to the mill, Martha. Just stopped by to look at my collection," George said and headed off towards the trailer.
I introduced myself a little more proper, shook hands, and turned to follow George, all the while answering her questions of where I lived, what I did at the mill, as we strolled up the short walkway and into the trailer. I could sense an ease in her attitude towards me and my intrusion into her life as we talked. But there was still something about her voice that bothered me, something that still did not quite click.
Inside was the typical single wide layout. A kitchen to the right of the front door with a half bar wall dividing it from the living room. Off to the left, a narrow hallway ended with the door to the master bedroom. Two doorways along the hallway's right side showed where a spare room and the single bathroom lay.
The living room and kitchen were clean, neat, and dust free. A three person sofa sat against one wall with a recliner on the right hand side. A coffee table sat on an oval, green and yellow braided rug in front of the sofa. Upon the table's shining surface sat framed photos, both new and old, of young children. In one corner of the living room was a small television. The other corner, the one closest to the front door, contained a small table with a vase of colorful but artificial flowers. The trailer had that comfortable, lived in look.
Where a normal single wide rear entrance would be - the upper left corner of that living room - a darkly stained, highly polished six panel wooden door with a gleaming brass doorknob now stood.
I stood inside their home, feeling a little awkward, when George walked over to the wooden back door. Flicking a light switch on the wall and opening door, he turned his head over his shoulders and said, "Here it is."
As the flickering light from a couple of four foot florescent strips took hold, I could see another room, this one slightly larger than the living room, through the doorway. As I came across the living room and into this new space, I could see it was filled with shelves of books, framed photos, newspaper clippings, flags, pennants, and other memorabilia. A leather recliner, a smaller sofa and a couple of small tables filled the rest of the room. In one corner sat a small TV with an attached VCR, a rack of tapes perched on the wall above.
One wall, however, was nearly unadorned - five framed photos, one centered, with four others aligned to its corners surrounding it. Below, a small table stood against the wall. A miniature flagpole with a granite base and American flag lay on top towards the back of the table. Just in front of that was a highly detailed scale model M4 Sherman tank and in front of that, a small rectangular velvet box displaying a Purple Heart.
George motioned me to have a seat on the sofa. As I sat down, he asked, "So what d'ya think?"
I smiled and said, "Impressed."
Just then Martha put her head in the doorway and asked, "Would you care for a cuppa tea or coffee?" It was the way she said it that caused me to realize what it was that had bothered me about Martha: she wasn't from Maine, she was British.
George and I talked for several hours that day. He told me of growing up on a farm up in potato country and his handiness with farm machinery. When Pearl Harbor happened, he wanted to join up right away, but his mother made him promise to finish high school. So the day after graduation, he hitch-hiked down to Bangor and joined the Army. After Basic, the Army, in a rare fit of sanity, assigned him to tank school because of his mechanical abilities. He trained in Texas and California before being shipped to England, and ended up as the assistant driver/hull gunner in a Sherman tank assigned to Patton's Third Army.
"There were five of us in that tank. Sergeant Bill Puller was the commander. We just called him Sarge," he said with a smile. "And there was Corporal John Nast. Nasty was his nickname. He was our gunner. Bob Swan, the loader, was called Swami, 'cause Bob always seemed to know which kind of shell to grab before Sarge or Nasty could tell him. Dan Black was the driver; "Shifty" we called him because he could never get comfortable in his seat, always moving around trying to get set whenever we were on the road."
Pointing towards the wall with the five pictures, he said, "That's them over there, the lower left hand one."
I got up and looked at the pictures. They were old, faded from black and white into a brownish white. The picture George directed me to displayed 5 uniformed individuals standing along side a Sherman tank festooned with sleeping bags, knapsacks, shovels, and spare treads. Across the turret were the words "Squirrel Huntin' II." The three other photos surrounding the center one showed pretty much the same, but in those photos, the tank and the items strapped to its sides, as well as the men in the photos, were caked with mud or covered with snow, unlike the pristine condition that had existed in the first photo.
As I looked at the photos, George said, "See the one in the middle?"
I looked. Two GIs were standing side by side by a large river. The far bank could be seen in the distance. Both men had their backs to the camera and were looking back over their shoulders. "Yes," I responded.
"That's me and Shifty pissin' in the Rhine just after we crossed in March of '45."
As I stared at the photo, he added, "That was taken about a week before I got hit and Shifty bought it."
I asked him if he minded telling me how it happened.
"No, don't mind at all. We had crossed into Germany and at that time a lot of Germans were just plain giving up. We had fought our way across Europe and them Nazis (he pronounced it like Churchill did, "Nazzis") had put up a hellva fight. About 3 or 4 days earlier, our tank platoon commander had been killed and we got a freshly caught shavetail (2nd Lieutenant) as a replacement."
He paused to take a sip of tea. "We got word from some German civilians that there was a group of SS up the road wanting to give up. Sarge tried to talk this new LT into not going right in, with bands playing and all, to accept their surrender. But the young kid wouldn't listen to any of the more experienced guys, and besides, he was in command and orders are orders. So we headed up the road, the Lieutenant in the lead tank, us second, with a couple of half-tracks carrying a platoon or so of GIs in each behind us. No sooner did we round the corner on this narrow road, when an 88 anti-tank gun opened up, nailing the lead tank with his first shot. The crew of that tank got out before she blew and we fired at where we thought the gun was, but missed. The Germans fired a second shot, hitting us. It was a dud, went right through our armor like a hot knife through butter, in one side and out the other, clean as a whistle. But rather than argue the point with the other fellows, Sarge, because knew we were out-gunned, ordered us to bail out. I went out the hatch above my head, fell to the ground and scrambled behind a nearby tree. The third shot the Krauts fired wasn't a dud; it blew our tank to hell and back. That's when a piece of shrapnel just about took my leg off. I lay there on the ground screaming like the dickens, bullets and what all flying around me, when I realized I wasn't the only one screaming. That first 88 round to hit us had done some damage after all, it had jammed Shifty in his seat; he couldn't get out and was screaming as he burned in the remains of our tank."
He paused, wiping a tear from his eye. "Sorry, even after all these years...." He took a deep breath and a sip of what was now cold tea.
"I got hauled out of there, back to an aid station, and then back to England. They took what remained of my leg off, and taught me how to walk with a new one. That's where I met Martha. When came time for me to go back stateside, I didn't want to leave her, so I upped an' married her. She's been taking care of me ever since."
After a couple of minutes, he said; "Dave, you know why we won?"
I wasn't quite sure what George was getting at, but before I could answer, he pointed to the video tapes in the rack. "Ever see Frank Capra's 'Why We Fight' movies?"
I said I did and owned a copy of the series myself. He smiled. "Kinda figured you had seen it. Actually Capra didn't quite get it right. Look over there," he said, and pointed to a spot on the wall between two bookshelves. Three framed documents hung on the wall.
"Those are why. The one on the right, that's my enlistment papers, the one on the left is my discharge papers. In the middle is a copy of the United States Constitution. You see when you swear into service, you're swearing to defend that document, the Constitution, against all enemies foreign or domestic. Them Nazis, they swore an oath to a man, Adolf Hitler; we swore an oath to an idea. That's why we won."
At this point Martha stuck her head in the room and said that dinner was almost ready and I was welcome to stay if I wanted. I begged off and said I had to be going. We exchanged pleasantries and I promised to come back.
I did too. Over the past years I've visited George and Martha, spending hours with George listening to him relive his youth, his tales of the good fight and the men who fought it with him. But when I stopped working at the mill, my times over there were fewer than they should have been. I'd come on by after a fishing trip and drop off some of my catch, or just drop by when I was in the area and usually end up visiting for a couple of hours or so.
As the years have gone by George and Martha have endured. George's leg started to give him some pain and in the past few months he started to have some trouble with his heart. About a month ago, I stopped by and was greeted with an offer I couldn't refuse, a chance to join him in his one and only, if Martha had anything to say about it, daily beer down at the VFW hall.
We sat at the bar sipping our brew, with a television softly playing in the background, and it was then that I heard George make the only "political" comment I ever heard in the short years since I first met him. A commercial for the ACLU was on; you know the one, the one that talks about the Patriot Act. It has a line in it that goes something like "The government can search your home without ever telling you."
George heard that, shook his head slowly and said, "That's plain just not right."
My wife and I returned from George's funeral a few days ago. He died before the VA could get him booked into Boston for a bypass. The service was at a church down the road from his trailer, and his resting place is up the road from it, in one of those small cemeteries that will someday be hidden back in the woods. The small procession from the church to the cemetery passed by the VFW hall, and they stopped the hearse carrying his flag-draped coffin directly in front of the hall and its tank for a moment. While we waited there for the procession to continue on to the burying ground, I made a decision. I'm voting for George.
When I make my mark for John Kerry, it won't be so much for his positions or plans for America. It won't even be to get Bush out of office. It will be for George ... and Shifty. For Uncle Bobby, and Uncle Frank and even stubborn ol' Barney and all the others that left homes and farms, gave blood, sweat, tears, limbs, and lives in order to protect our Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. They did their duty; on November 2nd, I'll do mine.
Dave Joyce is a retired systems analyst living in the Great North Woods of Maine where he enjoys all of nature's bounty except the black flies. He can be reached via his moose and squirrel powered backwoods dialup connection here: drjoyce_301@hotmail.com.