December 20: Smashin' Thing, Overtired, New Christmas Poem

And on the other side of the field were thousands of Russians and Poles and Yugoslavians and so on guarded by American soldiers.  An exchange was made there in the rain--one for one.  O'Hare and I climbed into the back of an American truck with a lot of others.  O'Hare didn't have any souvenirs.  Almost everybody did.  I had a ceremonial Luftwaffe saber, still do.  The rabid little American I call Paul Lazzaro in this book had about a quart of diamonds and emeralds and rubies and so on.  He had take these from dead people in the cellars of Dresden.  So it goes.

And idiotic Englishman, who had lost all his teeth somewhere, had his souvenir in a canvas bag.  The bag was resting on my insteps.  He would peek into the bag every now and then, and he would roll his eyes and swivel his scrawny neck, trying to catch people looking covetously at his bag.  And he would bounce the bag on my insteps.  

I thought this bouncing was accidental.  But I was mistaken.  He had to show somebody what was in the bag, and he had decided he could trust me.  He caught my eye, winked, opened the bag.  There was a plaster model of the Eiffel Tower in there.  It was painted gold.  It had a clock in it.

"There's a smashin' thing," he said.

And we were flown to a rest camp in France, where we were fed chocolate malted milkshakes and other rich foods until we were all covered with baby fat.  Then we were sent home, and I married a pretty girl who was covered in baby fat, too.

And we had babies.

Such a strange passage, with strange people and strange situations.  Of course, I suppose it's pretty difficult going back to what was once considered "normal" after surviving a World War.  That's why the idiotic Englishman thinks a plaster Eiffel Tower is "smashin'."  He has no concept of value after, probably, years of captivity and battle.  It's the first nice thing he's owned for a very long time.

I'm still recovering from many sleepless nights of grading.  I was planning on going to bed early last night.  Didn't happen.  When I got home, I was too wound up.  Maybe overtired.  I had a piece of chicken pot pie, which was smashing.  Then I watched some PBS news about the Republican tax bill, which is not smashing, unless by "smashing" you mean legislation that will smash the backs of hardworking Americans while adding smashing piles of cash to the bank accounts of millionaires and billionaires.  Then I found some smashing Christmas specials on some other TV channels.  Finally got to bed around 11:30 p.m.

Right now, I'm sitting in my office at the university, eating some smashing cold pizza, waiting for my daughter to be done with her dance class.  After I pick her up, I will drive home, put on my pajamas, make a dish for a potluck at work, and then try to write a smashing new Christmas poem.

Tomorrow night, I will be blogging from the city of Calumet in the Copper Country.  It's a little pre-Christmas family trip.  I'm performing in a smashing old-time radio show at the Calumet Theatre on Friday night.  I'm excited and a little anxious about it.  I'm sure it will be smashing, though.

So, what Saint Marty has learned tonight is that, when you're really tired or a former prisoner of war, everything is smashing.