pacific time

leo at bug-halo.com leo at bug-halo.com
Mon Aug 7 00:41:27 CDT 2000


I've been reading the messages all day, 8.6.00 ~ so I went out to get some 
sunshine, and met the kindest, most interesting man, Dan, in his seventies, 
a lover of film, World War II veteran, born in Boston, but a longtime 
resident of Seattle. He told me some of his memories: how he remembers FDR, 
what he thought of "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Thin Red Line", how he 
made his living, funny jokes about the Bostonian elite, how amazed he was 
by the night sky when he was stationed in New Mexico, before he went overseas.

He told me about the Nazis who spoke such fluent English that even American 
troops couldn't detect that they were German. The way they got around that 
was to ask guys questions about baseball. That worked for most everybody, 
but Dan didn't care for baseball, so he had to stay where the other fellas 
knew him.

And he listened, too, a good listener. He reminded me a little of my ma, 
who was 12 yrs 1 day old on this fifty-five years ago today.

We both knew what the date was. And after he had to leave, I came home, and 
read the messages coming in from afar....

Thanks.

gray, gray town
known for its sound

seattle~wa, c. '00
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20000806/7d35d27b/attachment.html>


More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list