The War

Friday, January 1

An early memory is living in Fort Lauderdale.

My dad drove a truck for Orange State Oil Company

at Port Everglades. It kept him out of the war,

being an essential civilian occupation. Plus he had

two kids, me and Bill. He got a direct commission

in the Navy and went off to the South Pacific.

He ran the motor pool at Munda, New Georgia.

In the Solomon Islands. Melanesia. Headhunters

with bones in their noses. Cannibals. I don’t know.

One thinks of the aborigines at Port Moresby,

New Guinea, in Mondo Cane, with their cargo cult.

Praying that a C-47 will bring them cases of

Franco-American spaghetti and Timex watches.

Bronislaw Malinowski interned in the Trobriand Islands.

Bill’s dead now and I am old.