Ten Acres

By C. Joseph Socha

Ten Acres is about a dream, a hope, of the main character, Joseph Novak. After over four years service in the Navy in World War II, and seeing people dying and starving he vows that after the War he would find some place of peace, to wash the horrors of war that continued to crowd his mind. This is about how his search for peace and life progressed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 8, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462829057

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Copyright © 2009 by C. Joseph Socha.

ILLUSTRATIONS (WHERE INDICATED) BY: Ron Porritt of Hudsonville, Michigan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

DEDICATION

First, there was Emilie and me, and Paul came first, then Glorianne, and Michelle, and Marie. Six of us, thank God, made accomplishments possible. Though Emilie and Paul no longer are with us, WE ARE SIX. Always. Thanks.

Also By C. Joseph Socha

Don’t Call Me Clarence

(An autobiography)

Promise

(A novel)

Dying Is No Big Deal

(Selected short stories)

Paul Krol

(A novel)

Parker’s Paradise

(A novel)

Come Live With Me On Mars

(A novel)

HOW WILL IT BE?

You have your chance at life

What will it be?

Don’t just exist,

Make it a good memory.

What really works?

Take it from me.

Be good to people

Help all you meet

Good will return to you.

Honest, you’ll see.

Look around you

The sky, the birds, the trees

All put on Earth

A purpose for each

They reach up to the heavens

Thanking for life

And why not you?

Reach up and say thanks

C. Joseph Socha

INTRODUCTION

My name is Joseph Novak. I served in the U.S. Navy for over four years in World War II. I’m big on the outside at six-feet four inches. But inside, I’m a softie, my mind is very sensitive to what I saw and that won’t go away because there was so much sadness and suffering.

There was my ship’s brief stay in Naples harbor, Italy. Mount Vesuvius was a commanding sight during peacetime but it was yet war. One sight that bothers me terribly was people in tiny boats gathering around our ship at anchor, begging for food. One man, apparently a grandfather with his grandchild reaching eagerly for the gallon-size containers filled with leftovers from our breakfast that we lowered to him. The old man desperately grabbed for the food and they gobbled it frantically.

There was a woman in another boat wearing a bright red dress to catch attention, begging for leftovers, and cigarettes, a scarce commodity on shore that would help her family survive. These were not combatants. They were desperately trying to survive. This was Naples, a historic, famous city, a beautiful place during peacetime where people flocked to vacation. Now it was war.

Later in the war, my ship was in Okinawa where the Pacific war continued to rage. We confiscated boats from the natives to prevent the Japanese from getting them. The main source of food for the natives was fish that they caught in the sea. Denied boats, they swam with their nets to almost a mile off shore, dropped their nets then swam back to land with the fish they caught to survive on.

And I saw native women clutching infants to themselves to protect them as the war continued around them. It was the sight of mothers desperately protecting their children that brought the full force of who suffered most from the war: mothers’ children. Every casualty in the war was some mother’s child!

I think about the mother’s children entombed in that ship, the Arizona, in Hawaii. I think of the war as it progressed from island to island that someone did not just wave a wand over an island and it became our conquest. Thousands of mother’s children, ours and the enemy’s, lost their lives. As the war progressed farther and farther toward its end, when atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there were hundreds of thousands more mother’s children destroyed. That bothered me deeply.

I am a mother’s son. I survived. And what also survived in me was my deep concern about deaths and suffering I saw that was buried in my mind so sleeping at night was not easy. I needed to find some place away from it all, some place where life was so evident that I could find peace.

At this point, I witnessed a miracle. There was a crack in a sidewalk and in it a small seedling was trying to live in that very limited soil in which its roots took hold. It could never survive. I had to do something to help it. That little tree showed me hope. I dug that tree delicately out of the sidewalk crack and planted it in some rich soil in a bucket. It was free now. And I would find a place for it to grow. That was most important to me.

Chapter 1

Well, the war was over. I was free. Nobody, any more, telling me when to get up, what to do with my time. No more Navy food, Navy orders, Navy anything. Free!

I bought a big Ford station wagon with plenty of space and a powerful eight-cylinder engine to travel wherever I wanted to go. Inside were all my possessions and thanks to Stella Wilson, my ex-girlfriend who couldn’t wait for me and married a Four F, I had substantial savings that were meant to buy a home to begin life with her. I also had my poker winnings and Navy paycheck savings. And to remind me to be positive about life, I had that tiny tree seedling in a bucket of rich soil. Somewhere I would plant it. Give it life.

Now, a bit about me. My name is Joe Novak. Father and mother died in a car accident when I was far out at sea and would never see them again. No girlfriend. No family. Old friends are scattered all over the USA. All gone. The Navy was my family. The only family I had, and now that was gone.

I had no idea where I would be going, or what to do. I had a couple years’ college from before