The Poignant Years: Times of Fun and Feeling

By Horace N. Robinson

Here is Americana at its best--the WWII years. America is doggedly hanging on, awaiting the return of her heroes, knowing there will be parades for some and processions for others. The author, an accomplished rhetoric instructor, lived these poignant years and is in early sync with the reader through interesting insights into each poem. He takes the reader on a heartfelt, personal tour of small-town America, using real people coupled with poetic imagination.

The Poignant Years is historically accurate, but, more importantly, it reveals what lies beneath major historical events. This is where people live--where they laugh and cry, where they struggle and sympathize, where they huddle together for warmth when fear is rife.

For small town America, it was a slower time--a time of deep relationships where the ritual of life was sharing. It was a time of paucity--dealing with harsh winters in clapboard houses, but a time of morality when locks were not needed for security.

Hear the voices of the school children who fear Hitler's bomb; laugh at the awkward expressions of the newly pubescent boy, and empathize with the tender murmurings of the Gold Star Mother. These are the voices of the admirable Americans who could only "stand and wait."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: May 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781498289474

Horace N. Robinson

Horace (Skip) Robinson is the Director of the Center for Rhetoric and Professional Development at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma. He is the author of Bloomfield, An American Novel (1987).

Book preview

Table of Contents

To the Reader

Section 1: Through the Eyes of a Child

Insights into Why?—1943

Insights into Granddaddy Lamb

Insights into The Infidel

Insights into The Fall of Man

Insights into Puberty

Insights into Puberty and Poetics

Insights into Gold Star Mother

Insights into The Solitary Kiss

Section 2: Through the Eyes of a Young Man

Insights into Fishin’ Buddy

Insights into Sunrise Ode

Insights into The Sergeant’s Boy

Insights into The Jelly Lady

Section 3: Through the Eyes of a Mature Man

Insights into The Cap

Insights into Violet

Insights into Aloha

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The Poignant Years

Times of Fun and Feeling

Horace (Skip) Robinson

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The Poignant Years

Times of Fun and Feeling

Copyright ©

2016

Horace (Skip) Robinson. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Resource Publications

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paperback isbn 13: 978-1-4982-8946-7

hardcover isbn 13: 978-1-4982-8948-1

ebook isbn 13: 978-1-4982-8947-4

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Dedication

To my wife, Wilma, who has listened to these stories for many years and always with delight—or feigned delight

To the people of small town America who suffered through the poignant years of WWII and who, unwittingly, served as admirable subjects for these literary sketches of fun and feeling

To my administrators in higher education who championed the writing of such a volume

To my colleagues at Southeastern Oklahoma State University who brought this volume to its final form; Mrs. Betty Clay, Mr. John S. Williams, Mr. Michael Stout, Mrs. Joan Ackerson, Mr. Harold Harmon, Dr. C. Henry Gold, Mrs. Jackye Gold, Mr. Richard Hackett, and Dr. R. Stewart Mayers

Contents

To the Reader | ix

Section 1: Through the Eyes of a Child

Why?—1943 | 3

Granddaddy Lamb | 6

The Infidel | 11

The Fall of Man | 14

Puberty | 18

Puberty and Poetics | 21

Gold Star Mother | 23

The Solitary Kiss | 26

Section 2: Through the Eyes of a Young Man

Fishin’ Buddy | 31

Sunrise Ode | 36

The Sergeant’s Boy | 39

The Jelly Lady | 46

Section 3: Through the Eyes of a Mature Man

The Cap | 49

Violet | 53

Aloha | 58

To the Reader

There is a slice of life containing the WWII years that is chock-full of feeling. This poignant period finds unique expression in the neighborhoods in America that lie just across the railroad tracks. Such was my neighborhood.

War had cruelly ripped the young away but the neighborhood clamped down like a bulldog and held on tenaciously, awaiting their return. The neighborhood was now peopled by older laborers of various skills and by retired farmers who had worn out the land and themselves before moving to town. They were bound together emotionally and spiritually, and even geographically as they shared the cramped quarters of their existence. Green, neatly trimmed lawns spoke of life and hope, and small clapboard houses freshly covered with white paint spoke of purity. Here the neighbors shared life—the pleasure and pain of it. There were peaches to be peeled and poultices to be applied and polio to be avoided. Static-filled radios crackled out the greeting, Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea, followed by a frail president who prayed, Let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail of war, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage to our sons and daughters—wheresoever they may be. *

These writings are the honest voices of those hardy souls who could only stand and wait. Their commentary, rich in experience if not in education, exudes wisdom about war, life, fun, and purpose. I was nurtured by them as a child, mentored by them as an adolescent, and encouraged by them as an adult. I pray for fidelity, both to reality and to poetic imagination, as I share these literary sketches of fun and feeling with you, the open-hearted and perceptive reader.

Horace (Skip) Robinson

—January, 2016

*President Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day Prayer, Fireside Chat #29

Section 1

Through the Eyes of a Child

Insights into Why?—1943

Convoys of soldiers roared down the narrow highway in front of the elementary school. Tanks followed on massive trailers and well-secured bombs on flatbeds.

The soldiers were headed to battlefields unknown and the munitions to the supply line on the sea coast of south Texas.

An adult could understand the life and death struggle of the