Archive for December, 2025
UNWELCOMED GUESTS: A HORROR STORY
On one side of my property, some eight to ten feet deep, is a gully. I was told some time ago that this gully belonged to a railroad. I have seen an arial photo, taken perhaps in the 50’s, showing tracks at the bottom of the gully. I’ve also been told that they were either train or trolley tracks. I began thinking, What if there was ever an accident down there?
Unwelcomed Guests was accepted for publication by Necrology Shorts in February 2010
UNWELCOMED GUESTS
Will Trizma was a writer of ghost stories and mined the local countryside for legends and their settings. The area abounded in both. His wife, Joan, acted as his editor and sounding board for his ideas. At times, the only comment she would make is, “You’re sick.”
Not only did he write ghost stories, but he also dreamt of them. One night he conjured a most vivid story; a story from the future. But unlike most of his dreams, he could not remember this tale. The only recollection he had was that it was horrifying.
* * *
It was the evening of August 15, 1949. The time was slightly before ten as a train made its way toward West Chester. There were fifteen souls aboard, counting the crew and passengers on this quiet summer night. The steam locomotive was pushing a caboose and two passenger cars. The weather had been stormy for days and up ahead the foundation of the bridge spanning Ship Road had been undermined by runoff. Jim Purvis, making his last run in a fully loaded fuel truck, slowly crossed the bridge. As he reached the span’s center, it collapsed leaving the truck astraddle the tracks. Jim could not believe he was still alive considering the load he was carrying. Although injured, he managed to climb out of the ravine and go seek help.
As the train slowly made its way into a depressed section of track, the conductor, Ben Elliot, sat on the caboose’s platform and began filling his pipe thinking about sharing a late dinner with his wife. He looked down to light the pipe, and once achieving a satisfactory burn, he puffed contently, and then looked up. The sight before him made his scream, “Holy sh…! He never finished the expletive.
The caboose rammed the truck, followed by the cars. The locomotive cut through the wreck until it reached the truck exploding the gas tank and turning the wreck into a funeral pyre.
* * *
Writing is a lonely profession, and years ago Will sought out a local writer’s group for support and editorial advice. During a Christmas dinner attended by all the writers, Will and Joan suggested a summer party and volunteered to hold it at their house. As the day of the party approached, one spouse or two became sick and others were called away unexpectedly on business.
Will and his wife greeted their guests, their thirteen guests.
Their dog, Millie, a lab mix was her usual excited self with the arrival of every new visitor. Once everyone was there, she settled down and dozed in the sun.
The conversation was lively with all the creative minds present, and as dusk approached, Will was called upon to tell a ghost story. “Not dark enough yet,” he answered.
Dessert was served, and when there was no longer a hint of sunlight, and with the patio bathed in twilight, Will deemed the time right for his tale and went into the house. He returned with candles, one for each table, after extinguished all the inside lights. “Now we have the right atmosphere,” he said. Will began his story and even Millie appeared interested, her eyes reflecting the candlelight.
The weather had been rainy the last few days, and at ten as he began to read, Will noticed a mist begin coming out of the gull bordering one side of his property. A few guests had asked him earlier about the gully and he answered that it had once harbored a railroad track.
The mist became denser and soon overtook the yard along with the guests. One by one they all fell asleep, including Millie. As the wall of fog enveloped all present, fifteen human shapes began to form. The specters slowly made their way to the dozing, and one by one, entered their bodies.
The next morning, they awoke from their deep sleep and knowingly smiled at one another. Ben Elliot looked around, and Will’s eyes filled with tears. “We’ve waited sixty years for this moment.”
Millie awoke and growled. She knew there was something terribly wrong with her master.
THE END
CHRISTMAS HORROR STORY
W** was known for his stories of murder and mayhem. Tales of ghosts and monsters were his claim to meager fame. A member of a writers’ group, he enjoyed sharing his twisted plots with the group and the support they provided. But how could they know, imagine, they were not all stories. W** carried demons of his own. Even his wife did not know the visions, the “truths” that journeyed through his muddled brain.
It was during the November writers’ meeting that the group leader, S**, announced, “In place of our December meeting, I suggest we meet for a holiday dinner. It will be a chance to relax and prepare for the year’s writing ahead.” The approval of the group was unanimous.
Reservations were made and the day of the dinner arrived. It was a rainy evening when W** set out for the restaurant. The back-and-forth motion of the windshield wipers gave him a slight headache. He was one of the last to arrive, greeted his fellow writers and took his seat next to S**.
The room was large with a single circular table at its center. A curious aspect was the room’s ceiling. It was domed with a most unsettling feature. From one side of the room conversations, even in the softest whisper, were conveyed to the opposite side of this domed affair.
As the meal was served, W** looked across the table to C** and G**, deep in conversation, discussing light matters. Suddenly, the conversation changed. To his disbelief, W** heard them plotting his murder. He clearly heard their voices discussing every detail. W** sat in disbelief while those about him laughed and shared stories. His friends asked if there was anything wrong, because he was visibly shaken. “I’m fine,” he replied and left the restaurant to make plans of his own.
January arrived and it was time for another meeting. S** was the last to arrive. “I have terrible news. C** and G** have met with horrible accidents. They are both dead.”
The group sat there in shock. Disbelief was soon followed by sounds of sorrow and grief.
The year swiftly went by. It was a good year with many of the members being published. Once again, at the November meeting, S** announced the plans for a Christmas dinner. The site would be the same as last year.
W** once again made his way to the restaurant, this time during a light and peaceful snow. He greeted his friends and took his place. Once again, he could hear the whispered conversations from across the room. And once again he heard his murder being plotted, this time it was T** and B** who made the fiendish plot. Once again two members of the group were visited with horrible and fatal accidents.
January found the group deep in sorrow once more. That was five years ago. And for each of those years, a Christmas dinner was held and shortly after, two more members met their demise.
Christmas neared once again, but there would be no Christmas dinner, for the only member remaining was W**. A creature of tradition, W** reserved the domed room for his private dinner. There he sat, alone with no whispering conversations to fill his head.
He gazed around at the empty seats, and his ears perked up. There were voices plotting his murder. Looking out at the overflowing restaurant, he saw a young family that he was sure was plotting his end. A fiendish smile crossed his lips. His work was not yet done.
The End
SNOW: A TIMELY POEM
As a resident of Pennsylvania, I’m gazing at a winter wonder land. We have just had our first snow storm and I post this poem to express what some residents will soon be experiencing with their shovels.
This poem was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s, The Bells.
THE SNOW
See the delicate snowflakes fall,
Falling, falling, falling.
Whitening the earth, awaiting below,
Falling, falling, falling.
See the mounds of glittering white,
Building, building, building.
As they hide the ground from our sight,
Building, building, building.
See the ceaseless falling snow,
Falling, falling, falling.
Will it stop, no one quite knows,
Falling, falling, falling.
See the drifts accumulate,
Building, building, building.
My longing for spring will no longer wait,
Building, building, building.
SEE THE DAMNED WHITE BLANKET GROW,
HIDING, HIDING, HIDING.
MY CAR, MY LAWN, ALL I KNOW,
HIDING, HIDING, HIDING.
SEE MY MADNESS, MY URGE TO KILL,
GROWING, GROWING, GROWING,
CROSS MY PATH, AND I’LL DO YOU ILL,
SMILING, SMILING, SMILING.
NEWARK RIOTS
A scar on my memory
It was a summer morning in 1967. The buses were running late, and I soon found out why. I think it was the lack of knowledge I had that morning that, helped in part, to make me the news junkie I am today.
I was in college now, and had two summer jobs, I still had my job at the newsstand working my usual Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights, and I had started a new job. With a strong interest in science, I am studying biochemistry in college and wanted to find a job where I could gain some kind of practical laboratory training. I wrote to all the hospitals I could think of in the Newark area and asked if there was a lab job available. To my great surprise I got a positive reply from Presbyterian Hospital and an offer to work in their hospital laboratory. I found out after I had started the job that most of the summer positions went to doctor’s children and at the last moment someone decided that the job was not for them, and I guess my letter must have shown up at just the right time.
When I reported for work at Presbyterian Hospital to begin my summer job, I was shown into one of many small rooms that made up the hospital laboratory and was giver the job of dipping urinalysis sticks into urine samples and told that someday I might be able to spin down the urine and look at it under the microscope. This was not the exciting summer job that would bring me the lab experience that I had hoped to gain. But beggars can’t be choosers, so I decided to stick it out for the summer. After a few days of dipping into urine, someone came around the lab and asked for volunteers to go across the street and work in the Children’s Hospital that was affiliated with Presbyterian. I figured that the job could not get more boring than what I was doing now so off I went.
After I had volunteered, people around me told me that I had made a major mistake and that soon I would see the error of my ways. So, the next day I showed up for work at Children’s Hospital and asked for directions to the lab. When I found it, I was greeted not by a huge anonymous operation, but a rather small room with just a bench for each area such as urinalysis, hematology and blood chemistry. The hospital was fairly small so I should have anticipated this but, of course, I didn’t. But I did find out why I had been discouraged from coming to this lab. For there was no place to hide and you really had to work.
With a little training, I went from dipping urinalysis sticks to doing all the complete urinalysis for the hospital every day, making out the reports and initialing them. If the doctors only knew who W.T. was would they have been surprised. After I was done with the urine, I would drift over to blood chemistry and with some training was soon reporting results from that bench. I was having a ball. And as the summer progressed and some of the technicians went on vacation, I was covering all the urinalysis and blood chemistry. This was also before the days of strict laboratory practices when dealing with human samples. I was mouth pipetting human serum and plasma with what are now old-fashioned glass pipettes and of course wore no gloves but I had a great time and felt I really contributed something because they were so short-staffed.
I began my workday at the hospital laboratory at 8 o’clock in the morning, worked till about four then went home, had something to eat and worked at the newsstand from 6 to 11 P.M. I awoke one morning when I knew I would be working both jobs and got ready to go to work at the hospital. My main task was to have some breakfast and get to the bus stop on time; I seldom had time for the news. The buses usually ran fairly regularly, but for some reason today the bus was late – very late. Finally, when I did see the bus coming, my bus was part of a convoy of about four buses. So I got on, found a seat and was ready for the usual thirty-to-forty-minute ride to work, but this ride would be different than any ride to work that I had had before.
As I rode past the intersection of Broad & Market Streets, and past the newsstand where I was to work that night, I could see flames rolling out of the storefronts of some of the nearby businesses. The streets were crowded with fire engines and police cars. There also seemed to be more activity than normal on the streets.
Once I made it to the hospital, I found out what was going on, riots had broken out in Newark, starting the night before in the downtown area. All that day I could look down on the street from the lab window and see convoys of state police cars and jeeps with mounted and manned machine guns, a truly eerie sight to witness in your hometown. During the workday, I called my boss at the newsstand and asked if he was going to stay open that night. At first he said he would but later changed his mind, much to my relief. I think that in all the years I worked there, this was the first time the newsstand had been closed without there being a major snowstorm.
That afternoon, instead of catching the bus home, my cousins called and asked if I would want to be picked up after work and that sounded pretty good to me. While riding home, you saw sandbag emplacements with machine guns in the middle of the downtown area. The city had changed – scarred forever. Anger that had long been buried rose into full view. I also found out the next day that a man had been shot and killed at my bus stop.
The nights in the Down Neck section were quiet for the next few days due to the curfew in effect for all of Newark. Our area of the city, being far from the riots, was like a ghost town. There was no activity on the streets at all.
I have not revisited the area of the riots for years, so I have no idea what the area looks like now. I do remember that for years after the riots, once the burned-out homes and stores were torn down, the lots remained vacant, whole city blocks where nothing existed, only the rubble of human folly, anger and injustice. One can only imagine how lives were changed forever on that day when the buses ran late.
NEWARK: SUNDAY DRIVES
A long gone tradition.
There existed a tradition back years ago that has not survived to the present, at least not to the extent that it existed back then – the Sunday drive. With today’s complex society and fast-paced lifestyles, to say nothing of gas prices, no one just drives for the sake of driving, unless you’re a teenager with a brand-new car. Every time you get in the car there is a definite destination at the end of the trip. But when I was a kid, many times the trip would start at home and finish at home with nothing in between except burning gas.
On Sunday afternoons my family would pile into the old Chevy and off we would go, unencumbered by seat belts, piled high with blankets if the drive was during the winter – which was rare. The blankets were necessary because, back then, heaters were an option and our Chevy was a bare-bones model. The route we took was more or less the same every week. It got to where I would know when my father would turn, when we would change lanes, never straying from the usual Sunday afternoon course.
We would leave our house in the city and venture out into the ‘country’. For me, the country was anywhere where the houses did not sit one beside the other, places with lawns and an occasional open field and a total lack of any kind of industry. On our journey we would go, past housing developments and until finally sighting an open field or pasture. We would journey down roads bordered by store after store, but being Sunday, many of the stores were closed. The only stores open for business were grocery and drug stores.
You see, these were the days of the ‘blue laws’ in New Jersey. On Sunday, there were certain items you could buy and certain items you couldn’t. For example, you could buy food but not any type of clothing. We had these huge Wal Mart type stores that sold everything, the section that sold food was open but there were ropes across the aisles that sold clothes. This could be the reason for Sunday drives! You see malls did not yet exist – and if they had most of the stores would be closed or at least partially roped off. We all know, especially those of us lucky enough to have teenagers, that the mall is The Destination. There were also small shore communities that would, on Sundays, put sawhorses across the streets leading into town. No cars are allowed on the streets on Sunday.
Our journey would last long, hours, but they were never far. My father was the opposite of a lead-footed driver. He was more of a feather foot. It was before the interstate highway system came into existence, so speedy travel did not exist as it does today and my father was not a fast driver. There were times we would take a ride ‘down the shore’ towards Asbury Park. My mother would pack lunch and halfway there we would pull over onto the shoulder and eat, then continue on our trip. When I was older, and started to drive, I would retrace this journey, and it would take me less than an hour.
There was, however, one detour that we kids loved. On our Sunday drives, we would occasionally make a stop at the doughnut man’s bus. This was before there were any doughnut store chains. This made the outing a great joy for everyone. The man had bought a school bus and converted it into a mobile doughnut shop – complete with cooking facilities. He parked his brown and white school bus on the shoulder of a four-lane highway – always the same place of course – and sell doughnuts, either plain or powdered sugar. How we kids loved those doughnuts, most of the time it was still warm. One of the kids would get out with mom to go up to the window to make the doughnut purchase. If he saw a kid, he would present the buyer with a bag of doughnut pieces – mistakes that occurred during the doughnut making. And of course, the bag of doughnut pieces was free. I know people like that still exist. Businesspeople whose bottom line is to see a child’s eyes light up, but they are few and far between.
The other destination that might be visited was the driving range. This stop I could never figure out – not to this day. Here was my father, a toggler in a tannery, who to the best of my knowledge, had never even been on a golf course, stopping to hit some golf balls. I never even saw my father play miniature golf, but there were the Triznas at the driving range hitting buckets of balls. I of course would aim for the jeep driving around with its protective cage gathering the golf balls, later on I actually would hit for distance. I can’t remember how long our driving range phase lasted, a few months, maybe a year, but it soon slipped into the past. As we got older we kids played miniature golf. But after our driving range phase was over, my father did not pick up a golf club again.
NIGHTS WITH JEAN SHEPERD AND CRIPPLED JOE
NIGHTS WITH JEAN SHEPERD
AND CRIPPLED JOE
It was a time before cell phones, before computers and instant messages. It was a time before people felt obligated to be at the beck and call of anyone who has anything to communicate no matter how insignificant the information might be. To many today, the ability to communicate – to use technology – is more important then the content of what they have to say.
The past was a time of relative freedom, when you hen people did not feel uncomfortable to be out of the loop, for to a great extent the loop did not yet exist. We were individuals, not part of a grid. It was a time when people were allowed to live their lives without the constant intrusions that today we consider to be normal – no telemarketers, no SPAM. You could answer the phone at dinnertime and be fairly sure it was someone you wanted to talk to instead of someone trying to sell you something.
Growing up, my family did not have a phone. We lived in a four-family house and only one family had a phone, a family on the second floor of our two-story house, and you only asked to use it if there was a real emergency. I’m talking seizure or some other life-threatening event. About the time I entered my teenage years we did get a phone, but in those days it was on a party line, and, with our plan, you were limited to thirty calls a month, then you paid extra for every call over thirty. Imagine those limitations today in a family of six that included two girls.
But don’t get me wrong, when I was young the exchange of information was important – there was just so much less of it. Or maybe it is that today, what we call information is not information at all, only considered information by those who generate it.
I watched my share of TV while growing up, maybe more than my kids do now, but I would never admit that to them. I listened to the radio, there always seemed to be a radio on in the house. That is why now, when I hear just the first few bars of a song from the late 50’s or 60’s I can usually share the song’s title and the artist singing with my children although they could care less about this information. I would listen to talk shows. Back in the 60’s, radio seemed to be more genuine, didn’t seem so full of itself, or maybe I was too young to be observant of what I was hearing. These days I still listen to quite a bit of radio, usually National Public Radio when I’m not listening to an oldies station.
I listened to Jean Sheperd broadcasting on WOR weekday nights from 10:45 to 11. What a fantastic storyteller. When he died at the age of seventy-eight, his obituary read, “A Twain of the radio.” He would start each show and off he would go on a forty-five-minute monologue about what it was like when he was growing up in Indiana or his observations of what life was like around him, and you never knew where he would end up by the end of his show. He was genuine, one of life’s observers, and listening to him relate his memories and thoughts was a true treasure. He would conjure up stories of his childhood, remembering things that happened to us all but taking a slightly different slant in his observations and in doing this create those wonderful views of his youth. Jean Sheperd wrote A Christmas Story which is now a Christmas tradition.
I would listen to Jean Sheperd during the final hour of my shift working in a newsstand at the corner of Broad and Market streets, the heart of Newark. I would be counting the papers and magazines and getting the place ready for my relief. I worked at this newsstand for most of my high school and college years and came to know quite a collection of characters. Some were old men haunting the nights on Newark’s streets. Talking to one another, carrying newspapers days old and talking to me because I was a regular of Newark’s night too. One individual, who could have been a character in a novel, was the man who would relieve me, a man with the most impolitically correct name I have ever had the honor to hear – his name was Crippled Joe.
Now Crippled Joe must have been in his 50’s and walked with the use of a cane. His deformity was one leg that had an almost ninety-degree bend in the top before it entered the hip. Crippled Joe had worked for my boss, the owner of the newsstand, for years and years, working the 11 PM to 6 AM shift and he was my relief of the Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays that I worked. And every night all papers and magazines would have to be counted, and the money counted and locked up for Crippled Joe would try to steal whatever wasn’t accounted for, and my boss knew this and that was the relationship they had, Crippled Joe could be trusted as long as he was not given an opportunity not to be trusted.
Joe also had a little side business going. He used to run a numbers racket at the newsstand. Everyone knew about it, my boss, the other workers – everyone, yet every night Joe would complete these secret transactions, and I suppose he really thought they were secret. Men would come up while I was changing over with Joe, whisper something in his ear and handed him some bills but would never take a newspaper or magazine. Being just fifteen or sixteen when I started to work, and quite naive, I soon figured out what was going on and used to think it funny that, after all the years I worked there, every night he would still try to hide these transactions.
I worked year-round while in high school and summers while in college. The newsstand was a good-sized booth with the front open to about waist level. We sold all the Newark and New York City papers. Back then Newark had two daily papers and New York at least five. We sold comics and magazines and some kind of dream cards that told you which numbers you should play according to the dreams you were having. Working at the newsstand during the winter was a real challenge. The wind would whip around into the booth, and all the papers had to be held down with heavy metal weights. The change was kept in a metal change holder, a series of metal cups nailed in front of where you stood in the booth. When it was cold, I mean really cold, the change would freeze to your bare fingertips. You kept gloves on when no one was buying anything, but when the time to make a sale came, off came the gloves and those warm fingers would freeze right to the coins. Snowstorms were a challenge also. I had what some might determine to be a twisted sense of duty. During one particular storm, the snow was drifting against the door inside the booth. We had electric heaters but unless you were right on top of them you froze. I kept the stand open even though no one in his or her right mind was out on a night like this. Finally, I got the word to close down. It was the first time I ever saw the newsstand closed.
During the summers of my high school and early college years I worked days and ran the newsstand for my boss who would drop by once a week to pick up the deposit slips and see how things were going. It was about this time that my well-established hormones began to really kick in and along with fantasies about some of my customers. I can recall one short-haired blond girl, who must have been a secretary, and every day would pick up a paper – perhaps for her boss. I was in college at this time and she was about my age, probably working right out of high school. By the time I would sell her a paper I was dirty with newsprint from the early morning rush hour. I would see her every day, and she would never say a word. Thinking back, it was probably good that she hadn’t for I probably would have answered with some garbled message. So, I would have my fantasies of meeting for a soda after work, maybe a movie but all I did was keep folding her papers and taking her money.
There was another girl I remember but she haunted the nights. I first noticed her while I was still in high school. She was about my age, maybe seventeen, not pretty but not unattractive either. She was very slim with long red hair and would hang out on the corner where I worked. She usually had other kids with her, but she was the oldest. I never knew if the other kids were siblings or just friends. She was not well dressed and just looking at her, you could tell she had very little money. I just wondered what she was doing night after night on that corner. Even now, when I think of her, I can hear Frankie Vallie singing ‘Rag Doll’. I wonder what became of the ‘rag doll’ as I wonder about other people that crossed my path during those nighst and days I spent selling papers.
On Mondays and Wednesdays my shifts were from 6-11PM, but on Fridays I went to work straight from school starting at 3PM and working until 11. I got quite a few stares and have to do some explaining after gym as I was putting on my long johns in preparation for a winter’s night work.
Fridays, I would get home about 11:30 have some dinner and go to bed. My bed by now was a single pull-out bed in the parlor next to the kerosene stove which, during the winter, you could almost sit on and have no fear of injury. The stove was useless. But my radio listening for the day was not yet over, or just beginning, depending on which way you wanted to approach the time of day, for another of my favorite radio shows was about to begin – Long John Nebal whose talk show on WOR radio ran from midnight to about five in the morning. The topics would vary but the subject that stirred my interest was flying saucers. He would sometimes have on his show the editor of Saucer News. Saucer News was a local magazine type publication although calling it a magazine was quite a stretch, and of course I immediately sent away for a subscription. It was just a few pages long and would be filled with pictures of flying saucers along with local sightings and editorial comments. The funny thing was that most of the editorial comments were about the editor’s ongoing divorce. For some reason I’ve always been drawn to slightly wacko subjects, here’s where my kids could provide an editorial.
Anyway, I would listen to these shows as late into the night as I could. Now I wouldn’t use my newsstand radio for that would be a waste of batteries, I used my crystal radio. Let me explain what this is, although my theoretical knowledge may be a little rough. The radio contained a crystal and onto it pressed a thin piece of wire called a cat’s whisker. The pressure generated electricity and it was also the way you tuned in a station, by moving the cat’s whisker around the crystal. My radio was in the shape of a rocket and about six inches long, a black and red beauty. Coming out the rocket were three wires. One wire ended in and alligator clip for the ground, one wire was an earpiece, and the last wire was the antenna. The antenna was rather long, somewhere between twenty and thirty feet and I would stretch it through the whole house before climbing into bed. I tend to toss and turn in my sleep so I would always wake up all wrapped up in the earphone and antenna wire, but no electricity was wasted although every night I listened to my crystal radio I risked death by strangulation.
Looking back, they were rough days, hard days but good days. I was easily entertained. I worked hard, and ever so slowly I matured.
HISTORY DESTROYED: THE U.S.S. ENTERPRISE
HISTORY DESTROYED: THE U.S.S. ENTERPRISE
Time accomplished what the Japanese could not.
At the northern end of Newark Bay there were a series of bridges leading to Jersey City and on to New York. It was from the first of these bridges that you could look down on a complex devoted to scrapping ships for their iron and other metals of value. During the 70’s, I remember this area looking like a floating World War II naval museum. There would be row upon row of Liberty Ships awaiting the scrappers’ torches, destroyers and the occasional heavy cruiser. Ships bathed in history waiting for oblivion. I know they could not all be saved, but it saddened me to see history reduced to a dollar value. It had been some thirty years since the war had ended; time enough for the whole-scale destruction of military equipment that routinely occurs after the conclusion of a war. Yet there before my eyes floated a living history soon to be no more, it would be gone forever.
I witnessed the destruction of one ship in particular, which touched me deeply. This ship was perhaps the most famous American ship of World War II and for years the Japanese sought its destruction. If ever a ship was worth preserving, to serve as a floating monument to the struggles of the United States Navy during World War II, this was the ship.
During my youth, I devoured books about airplanes; I read everything I could about aviation during World War I and World War II. I rarely read books about ships, but my love for aviation led me to read one book that I have longed to read again. To this day, when I get circulars in the mail advertising military books I always look for that title that impressed me in my youth. The title of the book was THE BIG E, the story of the U.S.S. Enterprise, without a doubt the most famous aircraft carrier to participate in World War II. Now this historic vessel awaited the scraper’s torch. There this magnificent vessel sat, amongst her comrades in the great struggle of the war. I cannot imagine why a movement could not save this ship from destruction. With all the battles, all the victories and sorrows that formed the ship’s past, the Enterprise would have provided a floating history lesson for generations to come.
Having known its history, I could not believe that I was witnessing its destruction. I would think back to the drama, the life and death struggles that occurred on that ship, but soon it would be no more. After the deck was removed, you could look down on the complex of compartments, areas where brave men worked to defeat the Japanese navy and were some of them died. More than once the Enterprise was reported sunk by the Japanese navy, but having been severely damaged in battle this great ship lived on to fight another day. I know there were many ships during World War II, whose stories echoed with bravery and glory, but I knew the story of the Enterprise and this to me gave it a closeness I could not feel for the other ships torn apart. There were many ships scrapped at this yard, but the only one I saw mentioned by name in the newspaper was the Enterprise. I was sorry to witness the loss to history of this great ship, but I was glad I had the opportunity to see such an important piece of our naval and aviation heritage.
AGE MAKES THIS A GROWING REALITY
I had a friend who said about life, “This is not a rehearsal.”
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