DR. SEUSS GOES TO WAR

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

My day began standing butt-naked before the medicine cabinet mirror pitching my own face as I shaved. A friend of a friend of a friend had wrangled me an interview at PM Newspaper in Manhattan at 10:00 this morning. The friend of a friend of a friend scribbled the name of the guy I was to see on a piece of paper that was folded up in the pocket of my suit pants. I was going in cold. I didn’t know the guy and not enough about the newspaper. All I knew was that it’s a left-leaning, daily publication that some say is a communist rag sheet. I don’t care about that. All I care about is that it’s chock full of photos and drawings about the war. That’s what I‘m gonna do. I mean, I want to draw war cartoons. I even have an idea for a comic strip about a sailor who escaped the Jap’s bombs at Pearl Harbor two months ago.

My bad stomach got me mustered out of Navy boot camp after four weeks of training, and I need a job bad. Ma and Pop are patient as Job with me, but I know they can’t afford to keep me much longer. Three weeks and I still haven’t landed a job. Maybe mine is a pipe dream, but I gotta give it one more try. If PM doesn’t put me on today, I promised Ma I’ll take whatever I can get. I’ll even take that job washing dishes at Cholly’s Diner if I have to. It wouldn’t be too bad. Cholly’s is just up the street from our apartment building in Flushing. I can walk it, and Cholly already told me he’d give me hours so I’d have good daylight to do my drawings on the side.

Yesterday, PM featured a clever cartoon by Dr. Seuss that I cut out and taped to the top of the medicine cabinet mirror. Everyone knows him as the children’s story author, and I admit it was a little shocking to see a war cartoon under his signature. ‘Waiting for the Signal From Home…’ it’s captioned above an endless procession of Japanese Americans on the west coast of the United States who are portrayed as loyalists to Imperial Japan. The cartoon leaves nothing to the imagination in terms of Dr. Seuss’ stance that Japanese Americans are a threat, ready and willing to commit sabotage against the United States in the name of their mother country. I don’t know how I feel about the Japanese American situation, but I guess the cartoon is in line with official government policy on World War II, as well as the thinking of lots of Americans, maybe most of them. Just hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan on December 7^th of last year, the scuttlebutt is that the FBI started rounding up Japanese Americans and shipping them to ‘relocation’ facilities in Montana, New Mexico, and North Dakota. Pop says those places are called ‘Internment Camps’. And it ain’t just the Japs. Germans and Italians are running for cover, too—and like rats are ducking into any hole they can find here in the five boroughs of New York City. And I guess it’s the same scene no matter where you go in America’s forty-eight.

Americans fear for their lives and have the jitters bad. We hear that the paranoia on the west coast runs especially high where attacks by the Japs are expected.  The perimeters of buildings are stacked deep with sandbags, and blackouts and drills are common. We ain’t got it any better here. German U-boats crawl along the shore of the east coast like sneaky sharks and take out a ship now and then.

A pretty secretary pointed me to a chair in the hallway outside the office of the guy I came to PM Newspaper to pitch. Propped up on the floor against my jiggling foot is my portfolio jammed full of my drawings. I got a lot to say about this war. I just hope that guy gives me the break I need. The door opens suddenly and a noxious plume of cigar smoke snakes into my nostrils. The secretary thrusts her hand over her nose, and I watch in amazement as green nausea pulsates up her throat and into her face. Poor girl! I think to myself. I turn my head back to the door of the office and a tall, patrician-looking guy, the guy named Ingersoll, I suppose, that I came here to see, reaches out his hand to a stooped, Jewish-looking guy. Ingersoll says, “Ted, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this new batch of war cartoons. I’ll look through them after lunch and give you a call.” My heart takes off like a fighter plane and thunders in my chest. Jeez! The Jewish-looking guy is Dr. Seuss—Theodore Seuss Geisel himself, in person, not six steps away from me. It’s gotta be a sign! This job is mine! I know it as well as I know my own name.©

The above is a work of fiction by multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene. It is inspired by a true facet of the life of Theodore Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss).

Image: Dr. Seuss’ cartoon: Waiting for the Signal From Home…

Paperbacks and eBooks by Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase through Amazon. An overview of her latest novel, A CHANCE AT THE MOON is below:

Amid the seductions of Las Vegas, Nevada and an idyllic coffee plantation on Hawai’i’s Big Island, a sextet of opposites converge within a shared fate: a glamorous movie-star courting distractions from her troubled past; her shell-shocked bodyguards clutching handholds out of their hardscrabble lives; a dropout Hawaiian nuclear physicist gambling his way back home; a Navajo rancher seeking cleansing for harming Mother Earth; and from its lofty perch, the Hawaiian’s guardian spirit conjured as his pet raven, conducting this symphony of soul odysseys.

Was it chance or destiny’s hand behind the movie-star and gambler’s curious encounter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas? The cards fold, their hearts open, and a match strikes, flames that sizzle their hearts and souls. Can they have the moon and the stars, too? Or is she too dangerous? Is he? Can their love withstand betrayal? Can it endure murder?

While the cards at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas fail to distract them from their troubled pasts, on the side, the actress and the gambler play a game of ‘will they won’t they’ romance. Meanwhile, an otherworldly hand also has a big stake in the game. Unexpected secrets unfold brimming with dangerous consequences, and finally, a strange brand of salvation.

Amazon Buy Links:

https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder-ebook/dp/B07Z44YN9X/  - EBOOK



https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder/dp/169984402X/ - PAPERBACK