I didn't want to go to school with five sisters, so I talked my mother into letting me work as a half-turn with Tom Kabonic in a little independent coal mine. Worked four days and stopped. It was killing my mother. So I became a mechanic. Drafted when I was 38 (everybody called me Pop.), I landed at Omaha Beach five days after the Normandy invasion. When we liberated Paris, my buddies and I got a jeep, slipped in and spent a whole night there. Met a couple who took us to all the dance halls. Oh God! If it wasn't for that, I woulda' hated the army! I liked to dance … at least long enough to pick up a girl. I must of not picked up the right one though ... been a bachelor all my life. It's like goin' to the store to buy a new pair of shoes, you know. Kinda' hard to pick one pair out. Being a bachelor is a good life sometimes. … sometimes it's not too good.
|
J. T. Knoll, a native of the Republic of Frontenac, Kansas, is a counselor, prize-winning newspaper columnist, poet and speaker. “Ghost Sign,” his recent collaboration with three other Southeast Kansas poets, was selected as a 2017 Kansas Notable Book. He lives in Pittsburg on Euclid’s Curve, with his wife, Linda, and dog, Arlo the Labradorian.
|
| |
