Hollywood Marine

John Basilone on his War Bond Tour 1943

He was a Hollywood Matine,

At the USO Canteen.

Hung out with movie stars,

With big old fancy cars.

Smoked his Lucky Strikes,

On bivouacs and hikes.

He proudly wore dress blues,

And made the hometown news.

Had some medals on his chest,

One proved he was the best.

Hollywood was not for him,

And the War was lookin’ grim.

He knew he could not stay,

He went back into the fray.

On Iwo he would die,

But he saw Old Glory fly.

Basilone was mean and green,

More than a Hollywood Marine.

LDT Marine Corps Birthday November 10, ‘24

Dedicated to Sergeant John Basilone (1916-1945)

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Wendigo

The little Cree camp in the quiet valley hunkered down in fear. Somewhere out there it was watching them. Eyes that glowed red in the snowy moonlight. A gaunt apparition with limp skin sagging over its emaciated body. It was the worst of all fears. And the Wendigo was hungry.

It was the middle of the starving time. The caribou were gone. The People were consuming the last of the pemmican. The dogs looked warily at their masters. A baby died from lack of mother’s milk. The winds howled through the tundra. Snow was piled deep. The People huddled in their lodges. Spring was far away.

Inside the lodges children played their warrior games. More often than not, the Wendigo was their foe. You can cut off his leg but he will still come for you. If he eats the flesh of a human child, he will be hungry for more. Only great warriors working together can kill one. Many have perished in the attempt.

It is always watching, its eyes piercing the darkness looking for a careless victim. It springs on the unwary, ripping pieces of flesh off even before they are dead. A whole corpse is devoured in one sitting. It is ravenous. The more prey it consumes, the hungrier it gets.

Someone saw a Wendigo trail once. It left no recognizable foot or hoofprints. The beast simply glided through the snow leaving nothing but a wake. After a mile or so the trail suddenly disappeared. Could it fly? Perhaps. Brave men looked up.

The children tired of their games and drifted off to sleep, their dreams filled with images of valiant little boys guarding the camp with their bows and arrows. Oh, the feats they could perform! The councils of the elders stretched far int the night. Finally the teepee fires lay low, their red coals glowing like glaring eyes. Only their hunger reminded the elders of the voracious ogre outside.

A hunter was missing. Lost in the vastness of their frozen world. No one knew what had happened to him. Perhaps his body would wash up to the shore when the ice melted. Maybe his bones would appear at some lonely campsite scattered by the wolves. Few dared to mention what else might have happened to him.

The hunter’s name was Baptiste. He was a Metis, a mixture of Cree and French blood, who spoke the language of the People. He had brought them traps and taught them how to catch the beaver, the ermine and the other furry creatures coveted by the Whites. Each summer he led a trading party to the fort of the Hudson’s Bay Company. There they traded for the goods of the White Man; the smoking guns, the steel arrow points, the knives, the blankets and the strange drink that made men crazy. Baptiste was a friend of the Black Robes, but he never brought them to the camp of the People. That was good because they only brought bad medicine like the disease with the spots that kills. Baptiste was a follower of their religion. He spoke of a spirit called Jesus. Jesus was like Manitou, but more powerful. Baptiste sometimes prayed quietly in the dark edge of the teepee circle, crossing his hand over his chest to show when he was done. Missing for three days, his medicine had clearly failed him.

An expedition was formed to search for Baptiste. The Shamen had cautioned the warriors. “It is out there. Do not go alone. It takes many men to kill one. It will eat the lone hunter and go looking for more. It is never satiated. It is watching as we speak.”

The warriors grunted. They were brave men. One had killed a bear with his knife.  Three scalps hung in the lodge of another. They only feared one thing; the Wendigo.

The next day search began. The hunters tramped in the direction Baptiste had taken. They felt like they were being watched as they trudged through the snow. The winter’s day was bright, refreshing, and short. They made a huge fire when they camped for the night. Men took turns watching for the things they feared while the others slept fretfully. Wolves howled in the distance but the Wendigo only stared silently from the darkness.

The next morning, they found Baptiste. His frozen body lay on a limb where he had climbed to get away from something. It was undisturbed. Ice crystals hung from his beard. His steel gray eyes were frozen open and his mouth gaped in horror. What had driven him to his frozen perch?

The Shaman, his face grizzled from too many hard winters said, “Only Manitou knows. His ways are a mystery.”

They pulled Baptiste down from the tree and loaded him onto a sledge. His limbs protruded at grotesque angles as though he was still clinging to the limb. The men hoped they could get home before darkness fell. They knew they were being watched.

If all went well, they would bury Baptiste during the Spring thaw. No one spoke of what they might have to do with him if the Winter starving season lasted too long. It was their darkest fear. No one wanted to be a Wendigo.

LDT Halloween, October 31, ‘24

Music Box Magic

Music box, music box, take me away,

Let me hear magic each time that you play.

The cylinder turns with gears and with springs,

Tickling the forks as the box sings.

This little box is more than a toy,

This little box brings out the joy.

A tune we all love tinkles from it,

Whatever the mood, it’s always a fit.

It sits on a shelf wound with a key,

Waiting to play for you and for me.

Just open the top to get it to play,

It’ll turn your mood from dark into gay.

Let your heart listen to the tune,

It’ll bring a smile or maybe a swoon.

When your soul is happy just close the top,

Or wind it some more so it won’t stop.

LDT October 19, ’24.

The Magic Music Box

            Anne looked at the little box for the last time. She remembered the day her father had given it to her on her 6th birthday. Oh, what a joy it had been. He had found it in Berlin after the War. It was beautifully crafted from dark-grained wood. The outside was hand-painted with a floral design. The key was gold-plated as were the springs, tines, and cylinder inside. Its beauty was only surpassed by the magical tune that burst forth each time she opened the lid.

            “Make sure you don’t overwind it,” her father cautioned as he showed her how it worked. “You might break the spring.”

            Anne nodded as she swayed gently to the music. It had just become her most treasured possession. She kept it on top of her dresser and played it every day.

            She was 9 years old on that awful day in 1957 when the spring broke. She cried for hours. Then she remembered her father’s admonition, “Don’t overwind it!”  Was it her fault? Had she wound it too tightly? What would her father say? She tearfully placed the magical music box in her drawer, never to hear it play again.

            The years passed and the box remained in countless other dresser drawers. The plain one at he college dorm; the used one she bought for her first apartment; the nice Maple bedroom set she and Rob bought shortly after their marriage. She thought about having the box fixed when she told Rob they were about to be parents. What little girl wouldn’t want a magic music box? Alas, Baby Mark probably wouldn’t get much enjoyment from a little girl’s toy. Neither would Tom who came later. Life went on as the little box remained silently in the drawer.

            Finally, her boys grew up and had kids of their own. Anne loved spoiling little Molly, her first granddaughter. Someday the box would be hers. As Molly’s 6th birthday approached, Anne began to make a plan. She found an old watchmaker who still repaired music boxes.

            “Can you fix it?” she asked anxiously.

            “”Not a problem. It’s just a broken spring. A little cleaning and it will play like new.”

            “Oh ,that’s great. While you are at it, could you check its value? We may need to insure it.”

            “It’s valuable all right. The company that made it was one of the best. I’ll talk to an appraiser friend of mine about it.”

            A week later, Anne got a call from the Watchmaker.

            “I found something interesting inside the box. It’s a picture with some writing on the back. I think you should look at it before I put it back into the box.”

            Anne was intrigued. Perhaps the photograph would offer a clue as to the box’s provenance. It would be a neat little element to add to the mystique of the amazing little artifact.

            At the shop the craftsman sat the box on the counter. Then he carefully laid the tiny picture next to it. Anne couldn’t believe her eyes. It was a little girl about 6 years old with large dark eyes and a thin enigmatic smile. The little girl looked just like Anne did when she was six. Even the school uniform resembled what Anne had worn when she stated First Grade at St Rafael’s Catholic School. Carefully, she turned the picture over.

            Anne gasped. The caption read “Anne Cohen, Mozart Schule, Wein, 1938”

            “Anne? What a coincidence.”” she wondered out loud. Cohen. She must have been Jewish. Schule means school. Wein is Vienna. 1938? Was that the year of the Anschluss, the year Nazi Germany annexed Austria?

            Anne shuddered at the thought of what might have become of little Anne Cohen after the Nazis took over Austria. The Nuremburg Laws, the yellow stars, the roundups, the boxcars, the camps. Oh God, what had happened to this sweet-faced little girl?

            How did the music box in the picture find its way to a second-hand store in Berlin? Confiscation? Maybe some petty Gestapo official stole it from little Anne. Hobnail boots on the cobblestones, a loud knock on the door. “You have 5 minutes.” Poor Anne.

            The grown-up Anne from Des Moines took the box home and pondered what to do next. It wasn’t hers. It never had been. But what to do with it?

            She did her research. Sadly, Cohen was a very common name. The Goethe School was a big help as were various Holocaust survivor groups. She found more records on the Internet. The family had been interned at Sobibor in 1942. None had survived.

            In desperation, Anne posted the picture and what she knew about the Cohen family on Facebook. All her friends reposted it. Their friends did the same. It went viral.

            Three days later, Anne got a direct message. “Anne Cohen was my Great Aunt.”

            Grammy would have to find another gift for little Molly. She carefully rolled the music box in bubble wrap and placed it gently in the box. It was going home.

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Homecoming

9th Marines regimental CP at ther Old French Fort near Danang.

The Ribbons on his chest

The thousand-yard stare

A DD-214

They told him DiDi Mau!*

            *Get the @#%$ out of here!

An airplane, a ship, a bus, and a thumb

Crossing 8 time zones

The World.

No men in black pajamas

with AK’s

No thuds walking closer

No C-Rations with bad cheese

Resuming his cheap civilian ways

Among men with bone spurs

Mothers with answered prayers

Mothers with Gold Stars in the window

Pretty young round-eyed girls

Just like before

Waiting to write their Dear Johns

Riots in the streets

Protests at the gates

Of dead Camelot

Bad habits

Lucky Strikes, beer, a little dope

Fitting in

Job applications

Skills?

Rifleman, KW-7* repairman, potato peeler

            *Sorry, it’s classified.

Desired position?

Something without mud, blood, or the creeping crud

GI Bill, college, home loans

Old men at the Legion

Talking glory, duty, country

Not his war

A bed

With clean sheets and a pillow

Then the demons come….

LDT October,12, ‘24

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May i Take Your Hand?

May I take your hand and open every door?

May I lift you up and tell you that there’s more?

Can I hold a candle to alight our way?

Can we stop a while and our thoughts convey?

Could I be the comfort that you sometimes need?

Could I find a way to help your dreams succeed?

Is there anything that I can do for you?

Is there any way to drive away the blue?

May I take your hand, each and every day?

May I win your heart so you want to stay?

LDT October 5, ‘24

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Laura

Sometimes a song is just too raw to listen to. Laura from 1967 is such a song,

“Laura hold these hands and count my fingers,

               Laura, touch these lips you once desired

               Lay your head upon my chest and hear my heartbeat

               Gently run your fingers through my hair….”

               It was the best breakup song ever. A little harsh at the end, but the tune kept pulsing through my brain. I knew a bit about breakups. Sadness, anger, jealousy, even revenge. Every time the song came on the radio, I sang along. It came from the bottom of a shattered soul and It was gut-wrenching. It crushed me as it hit home. God, I loved that song.

               I first heard it in the winter of 1967. I lived alone in a widow lady’s basement near the college. I spent my days studying History, Economics, and British Lit. Nights were spent in the honky-tonks of Havre. For money, I got by on $100 a month from the VA. It wasn’t much of a life.

            “Laura touch these ears that listened to your wishes

               Most of them, fulfilled and that’s a lot

               Let your soft, gentle hands caress my body….”

            By that time I knew a thing or two about love. Casual infatuation, fleeting ecstasy, eyes that melted anxious hearts. It always ended badly for me. That’s why I loved breakup songs. I cranked the volume up every time Leon Ashley sang, 
“ Laura, see these walls that I built for you

               Laura, see this carpet that I laid

               Laura, count the dresses in your closet

               Note the name upon the checkbook in your bag….”

               Well maybe I hadn’t been that far into any of my failed romances, but they still hurt a bit. There are lots of ways to breakup and there’s a good breakup song to cover every one of them. “Breaking up is hard to do,” but “I hope that the train from Caribou, Maine runs over your new love affair.” You get the picture.

               That winter I had an acquaintance living in the room next to mine. We shared a refrigerator and a bathroom. The rent was cheap. Jim was just out of the Navy. I had a hell of a lot more in common with him than the fresh-faced kids in my Econ 102 class. We had been places. We had done stuff. We told stories. Some of his were true.

               There was one thing different about us. Jim was in love. No, not that casual fling stuff I knew about. He was hopelessly devoted to a young lady named Sarah. I knew who Sarah was. Unlike the women from my side of the tracks, she was an angel from a good family. A damn good looker too.

               Jim had asked Sarah to marry him. After consulting her family, she put him off. He was a lowly meatcutter at the local slaughter house. He had working man hands. Worse yet, they were covered with mercurochrome from all the cuts he got at work. He’d have to show a bit more promise before he won this fancy lady’s hand. Jim doubled down. He worked long hours and saved every penny. He rarely joined me at the local gin joints. He was a serious young man. I had to respect that.

               The one pleasure Jim allowed himself was playing his guitar. Through the thin wall I could hear him well into the night as he crooned the latest country songs. His strumming soothed me as I studied economic curves. His singing wasn’t bad either.

               One night I met Jim coming down the stairs. He looked shaken, stunned, sad.

               “What’s up man?”

               “Sarah broke up with me. Took up with some rancher from down in the Breaks.”

               “It happens,” I consoled him, not having a clue as to how bad he was hurting. His eyes looked a little red. “Maybe sailors do cry,” I thought.

               “It’ll be all right, there’s lots of fish in the sea,” I said still not understanding the depths of his despair. How could I know his pain, never having lost someone whose soul had mingled with mine.

               Jim just shook his head glumly. I hadn’t been much help. We parted and went to our rooms.

               A few minutes later, I heard him strumming his guitar. Then he began to sing.

             “Tell me what he's got that I can't give you

               Must be something I was born without

               You took an awful chance to be with another man….”

               “O.K. He’s working it out,” I thought. “It can’t be any worse than my last breakup. He’ll get over it. Damn fine song though.”

               He strummed along without singing for a while. Then his plaintive voice came through the wall.

            “So tell me what he's got that I ain't got

               Tell me what he’s got that I ain’t got

               Laura, what’s he got that I ain’t got?….”

               “That’s it!” I thought. “The guy is jealous. That’s why he’s singing such a whiny breakup tune.” Then the chorus hit me.

“Laura, see those fancy curtains on the windows

               Touch those satin pillows on your bed

               And if there’s time before I pull this trigger

               Then tell me what he’s got that I ain’t got…”

               “Crap!” I knew he had a gun. Would he use it? Nah. He’s just a dumb-ass country boy like me. No way.  Then he began again, his voice quaking.

            “Sarah, hold these hands and count my fingers

               Sarah, touch these lips you once desired

               Lay your head upon my chest and hear my heartbeat

               Gently run your fingers through my hair….”

               Sarah? That was different. I closed my Econ text and listened.

               “Let your soft gentle hands caress my body

               And then tell me what he’s got that I ain’t got….

            I jumped to my feet and barged through his door before he got to the part about 
“And if there's time before I pull this trigger…”
He was sitting forlornly on his bed with his guitar on his lap. The gun was beside him; cold, heavy, unloved.

               “Get your sorry ass off that rack!” I commanded. “We’re gonna go get drunk!”

               The juke box played a lot of sad old country songs that night. I used every quarter I had to make sure none of them were called Laura.

               EPILOGUE:  Jim and Sarah are real people whose actual names I have long since forgotten. I remember that night every time I hear the song. “Jim” healed faster than I expected. A few weeks after the breakup, he bought a brand-new ’67 Pontiac Firebird. A red one.

LDT October 9, ‘24

               Leon Ashley topped the Billboard Country Chart with Laura in 1967. The song has been covered by many other artists, including Tom Jones, Marty Robbins, and Kenny Rogers. I prefer Ashley’s version. My breakup song was “Thank God and Greyhound You’re Gone.” What song got you through your breakup?

Laura- Leon Ashley- https://youtu.be/DnGQ_2JA1LQ

Empty Campsite

Somewhere in the Dragoons there lies an empty camp,

Up on Soren Pass, it’s a long, long tramp.

Where a miner found some glitter in a vein of quartz,

Digging through the rock, he had a mine of sorts.

We don’t know what he found, nor why he’s not around,

The wind’s the only sound, on this lonesome ground.

The mystery is but how, his camp sits empty now,

He weren’t no big highbrow, is all we can avow.

Did he wander down below, with only candle glow,

A poor lost sourdough, who met his final woe?

Is he buried in a stope, or somewhere down the slope?

There ain’t no use to mope, for him there is no hope.

The ashes have gone cold, lost in days of old,

The story must be told, for those who lust for gold.

So maybe shed a tear, ‘cuz he isn’t here,

The cost of gold was dear. back in yesteryear.

LDT September 25, ‘24