Spitball Army

I. “What a dream I had / Pressed in organdy / Clothed in crinoline / Of smoky burgundy / Softer than the rain.”

– from “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her” (1966) by Paul Simon

[Written to Alice in Acton, Indiana.  Return addressed: Richard, Ward 11, U.S.N.H., St. Albans, L.I., N.Y.  Postmarked at Jamaica, N.Y., on 11 Feb 1946 at 6:30 P.M.]

Feb. 11, 1946

Hello Sweetheart,

     It sure was nice to hear your voice last night.  It wasn’t for very long, but that was better than a couple letters.  I think I’ll make that a weekly occassion.  Let me know when will be the best time.

     I’ve accomplished 3 things already this morning.  I got up and had breakfast, took 2 shirts and a pair of pants to the laundry, and bought 4 white undershirts.  You know, if they won’t let me in the mess hall wearing that little jacket, I might have to have another shirt.  The laundry takes 5 days.  I’ll find out about the jacket and let you know the outcome.

     Guess what —— I got a letter this morning from my Sweetheart.  It was written Friday night and she still loves me.  She better — because I love her.

     Don’t worry about Dr. Anderson, Sweetheart.  I would rather Dr. Hoen did the operation but I think Anderson can fix me up O.K.  I’m not worrying so don’t you worry.  Let’s not say anything definite about your coming up the first of March until we see what and when about the operation.

     I washed my hair last night.  What a mess now!  It’s all over the place.  I think I’ll get it all cut off.  Then I won’t have to mess with it.  What do you think?  Should I get a “Butch?”  I’m going to have to get a hair-cut soon.  It’s tickling my ears.

     Jeri and I played some ping-pong yesterday afternoon.  I played 2 games with my left hand and the rest with my right hand.  He could beat me when I played left-handed but it wasn’t too easy.  He couldn’t just walk away with the game.

     We all slept late yesterday morning and missed breakfast.  Then we played some cards and went to dinner.  After dinner — more card.  When the telephone girl came in the ward, we quit and placed the call.  Then we happened to notice what time it was.  I had my choice of either talking to you or eating supper.  So, none of us went to chow.  Then we messed around until show time and saw “Tars and Spars.”  NO GOOD as far as a show is concerned.  There was a good comedian in it and the music was pretty good but that was all.  There is a good show on to-night — “Spellbound.”  We’ll probably go.  I want to see it; from what I have heard, it’s pretty good.

     You had better write Bolks and tell them about your mother and let them know I got their card.  Did you hear from the bank yet?  I’ll send this copy of the letter back and you can keep it till you get an answer.

     Good-night Sweetheart
          I love you with all my heart
               Pleasant dreams
                    Goodnight Sweetheart
                              x x
                                   ‘Nite

Interested? E-mail me at spitballarmy (at) aol (dot) com with a fair, reasonable offer on any combination of titles, or any questions you may have about a particular item’s specific condition. I use the online Laserdisc Database as a reliable community resource for assessing the value of most LD titles. All of these laserdiscs have been lovingly cared for, stored vertically (that is, standing up and not stacked) and kept in a moisture-free environment.

[Read more →]

The flyspeck story celebrating her diminutive childhood friend couldn’t contain the resulting wave of memory. So she wrote three.

– Inspired by CNFtweets of @amalchik.

Card is titled: “LA-15  Fountain, Pershing Square, Los Angeles, California.  6A-H2610.”

Publishing information: Western Publishing & Novelty Co., Los Angeles, Calif.  “C.T. Art-Colortone”  Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.

Today’s playlist was actually posted about one year ago on this website, before the Fred FM playlists had become a regular feature.  At that time, Autumn had already given way to Winter, and that most freeing of seasons was only a memory.  This year, Autumn once again hit me like a big therapeutic whack in the head and heart, jolting me from the physical and emotional coma that I enter once the Alabama humidity – that unwelcome guest – settles in for its exagerratedly long visit.  What I wrote in December of 2009 is true again this year:

I’ve lived in three vastly different geographic areas in my life, each of their shortcomings almost completely redeemed by meteorologic characteristics.  In Boston, though I loved the snowy, frigid winters, the coming of Spring was like a physical awakening each year, as I traded my subway passcard for a bicycle that would take me to work along the blooming Charles River, or just into the Squares of Cambridge for a coffee or a movie.  Southern California has few shortcomings, really, but my rare grievances with the place – such as the seemingly endless sprawl – are erased by the year-round spectacular mildness of the weather.  In the American South, I’ve become sadly accustomed to three months of indoor, air-conditioned living.  And, like the emergence of the Bostonian from the stranglehold of Winter into the freedom of Spring, I emerge from my cool Alabama refuge (read: house) to a crisp, outdoor wonderland of dying leaves, mulch piles, harvest holidays and, again, bike riding.

In this state, and of all the seasons it’s shown me, I truly love Autumn the most.  Despite all the dying leaves and musty piles of mulch.

If I were to make playlists for the seasons of California, each would likely sound like the others: sunny, bouncy, relatively happy.  A playlist for Spring in the Boston/Cambridge area would be peppered with references to new life, greenery, and things that glide (sculls on the river, bikes along the shore).  A playlist themed around Autumn in Alabama – much like a similar playlist for Autumn in Massachusetts – would be about serenity, changes (in the sports seasons, the weather and colors in nature), a new academic year, my favorite holiday (Thanksgiving), contemplation, and an awareness of the temporal state in which we exist.

The Autumn playlist I put together this year has a purposeful musical shimmer to it, a nod to the delicacy of the natural world here which, to me, is the constant thread through all of these songs – more important than any specific lyrics, melodies or artists.  You can hear that “shimmeriness” most strongly in Calexico’s “Two Silver Trees,” Daniel Lanois’ instrumental “In Crystal,” and in the otherworldly organ and background vocals in Bamboo’s “Girl of the Seasons,” but if you listen for it in any of these songs, you’ll surely hear it.  And there is a loose narrative thread in this playlist, as well, if you’re looking for it.

It is now December, we’ve already had snowfall in Birmingham, and the winter solstice is but two weeks away.  I’m hanging on to my shimmering, jangly favorite Southern season by spinning this playlist on a CD in my truck every day.

So, before Autumn escapes us once more…

1. American Football  “The Summer Ends”  (1999)
2. Volebeats  “September Spell”  (2005)
3. Whiskeytown  “Empty Baseball Park”  (1995)
4. Neil Young  “Dreamin’ Man”  (1992)
5. Nick Drake  “Cello Song”  (1969)
6. Bamboo  “Girl of the Seasons”  (1968)
7. My Morning Jacket  “Golden”  (2003)
8. Ryan Adams  “Halloween”  (2000)
9. Norah Jones  “Carnival Town”  (2004)
10. Ana Egge  “Apple Tree”  (2004)
11. Cat Power  “Wild is the Wind”  (2000)
12. The Handsome Family  “The Winding Corn Maze”  (2009)
13. Billie Holiday  “Gone with the Wind”  (1955)
14. Calexico  “Two Silver Trees”  (2008)
15. Great Lake Swimmers  “I Am Part of a Large Family”  (2007)
16. Ray Davies  “Thanksgiving Day”  (2005)
17. Josh Ritter  “You’ve Got the Moon” [acoustic]  (2008)
18. The Bees (aka The Silver Seas)  “Sea of Stars”  (2004)
19. Graham Nash  “Sleep Song”  (1971)
20. Daniel Lanois  “In Crystal”  (2008)

Approximate playing time: 80 minutes.

[Written to Alice in Acton, Indiana.  Return addressed: Richard, Ward 11, U.S.N.H., St. Albans, L.I., N.Y.  Postmarked at Jamaica, N.Y., on 8 Feb 1946 at 1 P.M.]

Feb. 8, 1946

Hello Sweetheart,

     I almost forgot to tell about a little incident on the train.  I found something when I opened up my lunch.  Right in the middle of the box was a twenty dollar bill and a quarter.  I wonder how they got there.

     I took Pete down to the show Wednesday night.  It was a new picture just now showing on Broadway.  It was “Miss Susie Slagle.”  Pretty good show about medical school students in the nineteenth century.

     Today is field day in the ward but I don’t think it will bother me any.  I did my work yesterday.  Four of us washed all the windows in the ward on the outside.  It wasn’t so bad except that your hands got quite cold if they were wet.

     The nurse asked me if I wanted week-end liberty this morning.  That’s a good question.  If you say “yes,” she gives you a detail.  And if you say “no,” no liberty card.  I said “no.”  Oh yes, I hadn’t been in the ward an hour Wednesday morning when a nurse asked me if I had a detail.  I’m not going to have any detail though if I can help it.  I don’t see any sense in it if I’m not going on liberty.  I don’t like to work anyway unless I have to.

     Malcomb is finally leaving today.  They surveyed him over a month ago and now he is going to Brooklyn today.  Turner was supposed to be operated on yesterday morning.  They woke him at 3 A.M. and 8 A.M. yesterday morning and gave him a sleeping pill.  Then at noon they gave him a shot of morphine and took him to the operating room.  They put him on the table, stuck the needle in his arm so they could give him sodium pentathol, and took the bandage off his leg.  Then the doctors looked at him, talked it over, and decided that he didn’t need a skin graft.  Now he’s trying to get back in the ward.  The doctor in 104 won’t talk to him and now he’s seeing the doctor here.

     Did we ever have the entertainment yesterday!  We had 2 short films in the afternoon then from 5:30 to 7:00 there was a 5 piece high school orchestra in here.  As soon as they left, an accordionist came in.  They were all pretty good but that was just too much for one day.

     Field day is in full swing and what an uproar!  I give up ——

     Good-night Sweetheart
          I love you with all my heart
               Pleasant dreams
                    Goodnight Sweetheart
                              x x
                                   ‘Nite

I feel lately that my attention is in too many directions at once: this blog, Facebook, Twitter…and that doesn’t include places in real life.  In an attempt to pare the information down, I started deleting entries from my Facebook page, and here are a few of the choice items that I found posted there:

Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge sing “Help Me Make It Through The Night” for the UK variety program The Old Grey Whistle Test sometime in the early 1970s (I am guessing).  This is about as intimate as it can get.

Charlie Chaplin gets locked in the lion’s cage in this clip from The Circus (1928).

Jenni Pulos, from Bravo’s Flipping Out, hits the Apollo stage to offer her rendition of Black Sheep’s “The Choice Is Yours,” while wearing a Brownie uniform.

His desk, pressed against the glass: tree view, steady heat. A snow scene hangs beside it, drifts dabbed with a bottle of Wite-Out.

[Written to Alice in Acton, Indiana.  Return addressed: Richard, Ward 11, U.S.N.H., St. Albans, L.I., N.Y.  Postmarked at Jamaica, N.Y., on 7 Feb 1946 at 6 P.M.]

Feb. 7, 1946

Hello Sweetheart,

     Do you remember what that “Hello” is supposed to mean?  Well, thank goodness there weren’t many letters that I had to use it and now it doesn’t mean the same thing.  It just means that here I go writing my second letter to you in 24 hrs.  Amazing, isn’t it?  I got to the PX in time last night and this is the stationery I got.  You know, this is a U.S. NAVAL hospital and as far as they are concerned, there isn’t anything but NAVY here.  Anyway, all their stationery says so.  Maybe I’m not supposed to be here ——

     I doubt if you would remember or if you even noticed at the time, but when you got on the train, did you notice that most of the passengers were men?  Well, the reason for that was that there was a hockey team in my car.  I have been watching the papers up here but I can’t find out anything about them.  I thing it was the Ind’p’l’s. Caps.  Two of them sat right behind me and I could hear parts of their conversation.  Anyway, they had 2 games of rum and a cribbage game going all the way to Buffalo.  That’s where they were supposed to play last night.

     You know, Hyde Park and West Point are really beautiful, I hear.  I never did know when I passed either one of them.  West Point is on the west side and the train was on the east side of the Hudson River.  Don’t ask me what the west side of the river looks like, I didn’t even see it.  It was so foggy that you couldn’t see half-way across the river.  It finally quit drizzling and raining sometime after I went to bed last night.  From the looks of things, if it isn’t real careful, the sun is going to come out and this is going to be a fairly nice day.

     Do you remember I told you about my coming back to the hosp. in my dream and finding that Jerry had finally been transfered to California and he had taken his bed with him.  Well, he didn’t get transferred.  When I came in yesterday, he, Malcomb, and another guy (John) were playing Anagrams.  No, in stead of Jerry leaving, Turner did.  He was transfered to Ward 104 for some plastic surgery.  I saw him yesterday afternoon and he said they were going to operate this morning.  So he’ll be back before very long.  They think that the infection is finally all gone and he is now running all over the place on his crutches.

     Well, we have one new nurse and a new doctor.  The doctor is a pretty good guy.  He slept in the ward last night.  Gambling isn’t allowed in the hospital; but the navy got payed this week and so they had a poker game.  It’s all right to play as long as there isn’t any money showing.  Well, the new nurse (a full Lt.) saw the corner of a dollar bill and she almost put all the players on report.  The boys didn’t stop and a little latter, the new doctor came along. (He is a Lt. j.g.)  Welllll – – it wasn’t long before he had to go back to the office. – –  (He lost all his money)  He’s a pretty good guy and does he like to play cards!!  He’s a funny looking guy.  He’s in his twenties I would guess.  he’s big and heavy set – looks like he would make an excellent football player; and he has a black, handle-bar mostachio.

     Oh yes – O.B. is still here.

     I love you Sweetheart.  Now I’d better leave something to say the next time I write.

     Good-night Sweetheart
          I love you with all my heart
               Pleasant dreams
                    Good-night Sweetheart
                              x x
                                   ‘Nite