Sunday morning. Sitting at this old oak library table and having just finished my regular scan of internet offerings, I think of how many people write. The internet is filled with fresh offerings by countless numbers of folks, some intellectually inspiring, some pure drivel which if we didn’t have that something called “freedom of speech” would be banned for its smuttiness.
Because I’m trying to write some myself, I found many sites on the internet that publish short stories where I can read and study hundreds, maybe thousands of them, with a couple computer clicks. The same goes for novels, poetry, religious tracts, science, porn, etc. Having just made my first humble attempt at writing a short story I can count myself in that total.
I sent the story around to five different people for them to read and criticize and received comments back from four of them, helpful comments which will be incorporated into the final draft. That story is quite unique to our region and I want to get it told well. Further stories will probably not appear here but instead will be collected into a volume and distributed. I finished a story regarding the prairie fire that killed so many people just outside of Fort Ransom and have sent it out to my readers. In the meantime the story of the freighter who traveled with Custer’s command who in his final years lived and died in Sheldon has been started. Who needs crossword puzzles or mental games to keep the brain stimulated from receding into dementia? Dreaming up a story line to support the historical facts is enough for me.
- - - - - -
The other day I picked up Bob Greene’s book Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War in the library and enjoy reading in it for some diversion. The man who won the war in this story is Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima. Greene writes respectfully of his father and Tibbets who both served in WW II. He reports of how blunt and clear-spoken Tibbets was in relating his experience. The bomb weighed 9,700 pounds and when it was released over its target the B-29 bucked and “The seat slapped me on the ass.” He then put the plane into a severe diving right turn to get as far away as possible by the time the bomb exploded. Tibbets’ said he sleeps well at night and never felt badly about the lives lost in that explosion, he always thought about the lives that were not lost because the war then ended abruptly. The author spoke several times of how he would interview Tibbets in cafes or bars and nobody knew who the man was.
