IF ONLY IT HAD RAINED…

 

From Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist

 

Today, Wednesday, November 22, 2023, is a day fit only for the intrepid here in Central Ohio. Blustery and gray and hung over from yesterday’s rain—the day mirrors my mood. “If only it had been such a day in Dallas sixty years ago!” the nagging voice whirls like dirvishes unchecked in my brain. “If only it had rained or at least threatened to rain and President John F. Kennedy had been in a closed car rather than the open one…his beautiful head would have been shielded from Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer bullet.”

          In my long life I have lived through my wedding day; the birth of my son; the birth of my daughter; my divorce; the death of both of my parents and of my brother and of my sister; the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr and of Bobby Kennedy; the Vietnam War; 9/11; Covid 19, January 6^th; and more surgeries than I can count on both hands; but no hours loom as starkly in my memory as those that opened at mid-day of Friday, November 22, 1963, the day my fellow Americans and I were struck dumb by the news that John F. Kennedy, our president, had been assassinated.   

          Basking in the unseasonably bright and warm day in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, my co-worker and I strolled leisurely from our lunch at a nearby café to our workplace in the credit department located on an upper floor of the towering Uni-Card building. We approached the crowd of our loitering co-workers on the broad sidewalk fronting the building and joined in the pitter-patter and joking so typical of New Yorkers at their leisure. The lively drumbeat of chatter stopped abruptly when a man rushed out of the broad entrance of the building, his hand clutching a long white ribbon of tickertape that trailed in his wake, and his voice shouting, “THE PRESIDENT WAS SHOT! THE PRESIDENT WAS SHOT!” In the blink of an eye, a second man ran from the building. It was his duty to tell us that the president was dead, that the city was shutting down as was the case across the country, and that we were dismissed and advised to get to our homes as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

The one detail missing from my memory is the means by which I made it to the one-bedroom apartment in Flushing, Queens, New York, in which my bridegroom and I had taken up residence only three months before. Perched on the floor of our living room, our noses only inches from our small black and white television, my husband and I watched nearly motionless, other than bathroom and kitchen breaks, the unfolding drama of the several days comprising JFK’s assassination: the tragic motorcade, the chaotic manhunt, Oswald’s frenzied apprehension, and then, the man in the scruffy fedora crashing through the mad crowd, raising his gun-wielding hand and shooting Oswald dead…right there on the TV screen…right before our stunned eyes. And then there was Jackie’s blood-stained pink suit, the new president’s swearing in, the flag-draped coffin, the funeral procession with the riderless horse, the little son stepping forward and saluting his fallen father.

          To my mind, that condensed national event was unmatched in modern history—until now…until this now when Americans are more mixed up and at odds in mind and heart than at any other time since the country’s Civil War. As we gather at our Thanksgiving tables tomorrow, let us clasp one another’s hands and send out fervent entreaties for healing of the wounded USA.©

                                                                        

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©A STEP AT A TIME…COMING OF AGE IN WORLD WAR II

By Linda Lee Greene, Author and Artist



Born in 1920, farmboy Bob Gaffin’s formative years had been Great Depression years. At the age of sixteen, he had conned his way into the Civilian Conversation Corps (CCC), passing himself off as the required age of eighteen to get in. The extra few CCC bucks every month had contributed mightily to his family’s coffers: they had helped to pay for his brother Bussy’s medical bills, repaired farm equipment, and purchased lumber for the larger house his father had been building, a necessary project to accommodate the ten members of his family. Living in the deep country of Southern Ohio, USA with their large garden, orchard, as well as forest and farm animals as sources of food, the Gaffins had kept their bellies full at least, and as such had fared better than most city folks who had relied on soup kitchens and the Salvation Army for sustenance during those bleak economic times. Still, Bob had suffered in his heart over the awful poverty so many of his family’s neighbors and friends, and even some relatives, had borne with such dignity.

Bob’s two CCC stints had widened his world far outside of the 586 square miles of his Adams County, Ohio home. He had been sure that the natural wonders and colorful ethnic cultures of the Northeastern United States in which he had been immersed had acquainted him with all the remaining planet had had to offer. But then, Confederate country had loomed on his horizon and he had breathed in the DNA of the Civil War battlefields on which he had imagined his grandfather might have fought. Many more new things had been revealed to him there—not just the ways and means of war he had learned in military boot camps, but also how white people had lived so very differently than had black people, and how a flag other than Old Glory had so often whipped in the hot and humid subtropical air of that Rebel lair.

Who would have thought that Bob would have sailed the Atlantic Ocean in an enormous ship stuffed shoulder to shoulder and knees to knees with his fellow G. I.s and come to ground in North Africa just two months before his twenty-second birthday? How had it been that in a combined British-American invasion in World War II’s “Operation Torch,” Bob had entered his baptism of fire among the American troops at Casablanca in French Morocco? As explained by Winston S. Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, the invasion had not been the “…beginning of the end,” but the “end of the beginning.” And so it had been for Bob, whose innocence had been shattered by the explosions and gunshots of that confrontation; as he and his Allied counterparts had rolled forward into a long and dirty war with their German and Italian enemies, and as during the muddy winter lull in the fighting, he had observed in that place overt slavery still practiced, Jews bullied and persecuted with impunity, and in their flight from the Nazis, terrified and desperate and tattered European refugees bulging the streets and sleeping on floors of public buildings.

It hadn’t stopped with North Africa. It couldn’t have ended there. In Southern Sicily a few weeks later, which was a barren and arid geographical extension of North Africa, the wheels and serpentine tracks of Bob’s half-track pulverized the bodies of dead Germans and Italians lying in the way of vehicular progress, each humped carcass pitching the half-track up and down like a bucking horse. Tears flooded Bob’s eyes, and the contents of his stomach gorged his throat. But then he saw the hollow eyes and bloated stomachs and protruding bones of the children, gorgeous, innocent, raven-haired Sicilian children lining the roadways of that stingy Fascist state, their little filthy hands reaching out, their noses running in anxious beseeching: “Acqua! (Water) Pane! (Bread)”

Never had he seen such destitution. As he and his compatriots of the 2^nd Armored Division captured and assembled thousands of Italian Prisoners of war (POWs) nose to shoulder, Bob thought about the soup lines he had seen back home in Cincinnati and Louisville. Returning to that part of the world was far, far in the future. Wiping the world clean of these Nazi bastards would be a long and difficult job, but Bob was up for it. Every step of his journey to that hour had prepared him for it.   

Books by Linda Lee Greene are available at Amazon.com. Her novel of historical fiction titled GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS features a far-reaching look at Bob Gaffin’s childhood and young life.



Image: Bob Gaffin in casual military attire

THE STAMP OF HEAVEN, JULIA ROBB'S LATEST NOVEL

Columbus, Ohio, USA, April 12, 2019...It is my great pleasure to join in on announcing author Julia Robb's new novel, THE STAMP OF HEAVEN. Robb writes historical fiction comprising the flavor and size of her beloved Texas. If you are looking for a great weekend read, this is one I highly recommend. ~ Linda Lee Greene

 
https://www.amazon.com/Stamp-Heaven-Julia-Robb-ebook/dp/B07NRHJGC6/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Stamp+of+Heaven&qid=1554831780&s=gateway&sr=8-1

The Union Army wants former Confederate Army general Beau Kerry for alleged war crimes, but he’s hiding out where the Yankees least expect to find him: in the United States Cavalry. Beau is fighting Apaches out West and praying nobody recognizes his famous face. 

But Lieutenant Kerry's luck changes when he runs into Sergeant Ike Jefferson and says, "The last time I saw you, I had you bent over a barrel and I was whipping you.” Ike is not only Beau's best friend (or worst enemy, depending on the day), he's Beau's former slave -- and Ike knows there’s a $5000 price on Beau’s head.

Caroline Dietrich has vengeance on her mind. Married to Colonel Wesley Dietrich, the Union fort commander, Caroline believes the best path to getting revenge against the Yankees, her husband included, is seducing her husband’s officers. Especially Beau.

From the killing fields of the Civil War, to the savagery of the Indian wars, the characters are also battling each other and searching for what it means to be human.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julia Robb was a reporter for twenty years and now sits home and writes novels. She lives in Marshall, Texas.