Читать книгу The Poignant Years - Horace N. Robinson - Страница 6

There is a slice of life containing the WWII years that is chock-full of feeling. This poignant period finds unique expression in the neighborhoods in America that lie just across the railroad tracks. Such was my neighborhood.

War had cruelly ripped the young away but the neighborhood clamped down like a bulldog and held on tenaciously, awaiting their return. The neighborhood was now peopled by older laborers of various skills and by retired farmers who had worn out the land and themselves before moving to town. They were bound together emotionally and spiritually, and even geographically as they shared the cramped quarters of their existence. Green, neatly trimmed lawns spoke of life and hope, and small clapboard houses freshly covered with white paint spoke of purity. Here the neighbors shared life—the pleasure and pain of it. There were peaches to be peeled and poultices to be applied and polio to be avoided. Static-filled radios crackled out the greeting, “Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea,” followed by a frail president who prayed, “Let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail of war, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage to our sons and daughters—wheresoever they may be.” *

These writings are the honest voices of those hardy souls who could only “stand and wait.” Their commentary, rich in experience if not in education, exudes wisdom about war, life, fun, and purpose. I was nurtured by them as a child, mentored by them as an adolescent, and encouraged by them as an adult. I pray for fidelity, both to reality and to poetic imagination, as I share these literary sketches of fun and feeling with you, the open-hearted and perceptive reader.

Horace (Skip) Robinson

—January, 2016

*President Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day Prayer, Fireside Chat #29