Chris and his friends try to live a normal life but World War II has changed everything. They have to entertain themselves, staying at home without movies and even church, most of the time, trying to avoid Old Lady Rainey, the town Gossip and Busybody. Chris and his friends learn a great deal about cigarettes and Sex. And Polio does strike one of their friends. By the end of the war, Chris has learned much about the broken, imperfect and war mangled world around him and realizes that he must fix it.
Broken Star
By Ray von RosenbergAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Ray von Rosenberg
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4520-8005-5Contents
Chapter 1: The Service Flag..................................1Chapter 2: Rumors and Roomers................................15Chapter 3: Amputees..........................................29Chapter 4: Loraine's Story...................................43Chapter 5: Supper............................................53Chapter 6: Cemetery/Church Benches...........................69Chapter 7: Polio/Medicine Games..............................83Chapter 8: The Tent..........................................95Chapter 9: Bicycles/Country Roads............................105Chapter 10: Letters/Plans....................................115Chapter 11: Flag Up..........................................131Chapter 12: Flag Pole Down...................................143Chapter 13: The Parade.......................................159Chapter 14: Sheets...........................................177Chapter 15: Library/ Dynamite................................189Chapter 16: Swimming/Illness.................................201Chapter 17: Loraine's Party..................................219Chapter 18: Run-Away/Good-by.................................237Chapter 19: The Next Friday..................................253Chapter 20: The Prisoner of War..............................265Chapter 21: Saturday Morning Revelations.....................275Chapter 22: Revelations Continued............................287Chapter 23: Breakfast/Conclusion.............................295Chapter 24: Afterward........................................313
Chapter One
The Service Flag
The red, white, and blue World War II Service Flag, hanging in the window of the door to our grocery store was always crooked. It was there to honor my brother, Junior, who had been drafted to serve in the Army and was somewhere in England or North Africa or who knows. We didn't really know because of stupid Junior's failure to keep us posted and/ or, as I liked to think, of our Government's top secrecy. Mother was afraid he lay bleeding and wounded on some battlefield or, worse, tortured and starved in some Prisoner of War Camp.
Before he left for overseas, I, a mere twelve year old, figured out a keen code for Junior to tell us where he was in spite of everything being censored, I wrote it down for the dummy. He was supposed to write and ask about our pet dog if he was in England, our breeding bull if he was is Spain, our camel if he was in Egypt, our tiger if he was in India. I had figured out a dozen or so animals and places – pandas in China, penguins in Antarctica. Even though I was only twelve, I thought it was pretty clever. But did Junior bother to use it? No! In fact, he didn't write anything at all. Nothing! Daddy was sure he was off having the time of his life seeing the world for the first time and never giving us a second thought. I was sure he was on some great secret spy mission and would come home a hero. He had always been good at slipping around and keeping secrets from the rest of the family, except for me. I always knew everything like where he kept his cigarettes and stupid love notes.
Our grocery store was known as 'Flint's Food and Feed' and was just about the oldest store in Temple, Texas. It had actually been around since 1890. My Grandfather Flint had opened it way out on the south-east edge of town so country folks wouldn't have to travel all the way into town to get supplies. My mother and all her sisters had grown up here. My grandmother ended up having to support six kids when my grandfather died of the flu right after World War I. When they all got grown, my Mother was the only one who wanted to keep the store going. So here we are.
Daddy claims it's more trouble than it's worth and nothing but a 'white elephant' hung around our necks. It had once been painted white and was a lot larger than an elephant! Mother defended Grandpa by saying, "Papa liked living here with all his goods and customers as much as with his family. He wanted everything spread out before him so he could watch and take care of it."
People joked around town that Old Man Flint would sell the clothes off his wife and kid's backs or the food out of their mouths to oblige a customer because he once sold the Thanksgiving turkey Grandma had spent half the night preparing. Anyways, that's how Old Lady Rainey, our oldest and snoopiest customer, always told it.
Daddy tried to get Mother to close it just about every day of their married life. "I just can't," she always said. "Not after all these years!" So here we still are.
And then along came World War II and the Government suddenly built this massive McClosky Hospital on Highway 36 across from our store. Business picked up, let me tell you, except for the fact that there wasn't a whole lot to sell since rationing had come along and we were suddenly in the stamp counting business – red stamps for meat, blue stamps for canned goods, not to mention coffee stamps and sugar stamps. It was along about this time that Mother almost gave up, but finally decided it was her American duty to help win the War by keeping the store going. "After all, farmers shouldn't have to use up all their rationed gasoline having to drive all the way into Temple to discover there wasn't much to buy." She always justified her decisions.
I forgot to mention the dumb red and blue plastic tokens we had to use as change for ration stamps. They were a real nuisance – worse than pennies. You couldn't even stack them because of the way they were sort of convex. "Leave it up to the Government to make the simplest thing difficult," Daddy always says.
Yep, in the summer of 1943, everything went haywire and changed all our lives forever. 'Forever' was my one of my favorite words, then. It sort of puts an importance on things.
It wasn't really summer yet, just late May, but for us kids our summers began when school let out just before Memorial Day and ended just after Labor Day when school started again. Summer days didn't have to answer to the mathematics of time and bells. Instead, they just rambled along, a whole lot like singing '99 bottles of beer on the wall,' which really sent Daddy 'up the wall' every time I started to sing it. I think summer vacation had the same effect on all the adults in my world.
Anyway, one day, Old Lady Rainey, whom I am required to respect, and not call her that to her face, stopped and adjusted Junior's blue Service Star Flag hanging in the front door window, as she entered, as always, after she smiled at her 'lovely' self in the glass reflection and straightened her ugly hat. There was a bell on the door that always rang but we had heard it so much we had stopped hearing it. It might as well not been there.
"Well," she announced, "I see this star ain't turned gold yet. Praise the Lord! Junior Wagner is still alive," and she waved her hands around like a silly cheerleader.
"Yeah! Somewheres ... maybe." I answered her. I was sitting and reading my favorite comic book, 'The Submariner,' at our big oak dining table with claw feet, just like a dragon, which we kept there in the store because we were always in there.
"Chris, you can at least be optimistic." Mother, who was behind the counter, corrected me, as usual. "Of course, he's alive and coming back to us ... and all in one piece ... he has to! ... Can't you say, "Hello" to Mrs. Rainey? We haven't seen her in a month of Sundays."
I tried to shake hands with her, but she looked at my...
