***On Memorial Day- The Road Less Traveled- With A Tip Of The Hat To Poet
Robert Frost
From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin :
From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin :
I am not a big fan of Robert Frost's
poetry (although his public readings were very interesting) but this one every
once in a while "speaks" to me when there are two (or more) choices
to make in life.
Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain
Interval. 1920.
1. The Road Not Taken
1. The Road Not Taken
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I
could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
5
Then took the other, as just as
fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted
wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come
back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
20
*********
Sergeant John Prescott, “Johnny P.”
to his pals gathered around a small table, drinking sodas and coffee, in the
next room was a quiet, unassuming guy, a guy with just that barebones
patriotism that animated many working class kids to “do their duty” and join up
when America was in danger, no questions asked. Not quite “my country, right or
wrong” but pretty close when all was said and done. And as the early 1960s, the
time of high school fun and frolic and for ace football star Johnny P, fun and
frolic with one fetching Chrissie O’Shea and their flaming romance that was the
talk of the Class of 1964 at old North Adamsville High, turned to mid-1960s and
clarion calls that the country was in danger in some place called red-infested
Vietnam.. Johnny, and not just Johnny, answered the call. And here, gathered
around a small table, in early May 1968 his old corner boys from in front of
Salducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the downs” were chatting away like mad.
Suddenly, Frank Riley, fabled
Frankie, the king of the be-bop Salducci’s night in those fresher days, yelled
to no one in particular but they all knew what he meant, “Remember that night
after graduation when Tonio threw us that party at the pizza parlor.” And all
the other five gathered at the table became silence with their own memories of
that night. See, Tonio was the king hell owner and zen master pizza maker at
Salducci’s and a guy who treated Frankie (and therefore most of Frankie’s
friends) like a son. So Tonio put out a big deal party right on the premises,
closed to all but Frankie, his friends and hangers-on (and girls of course).
Tonio, at least this is what he said at the time, appreciated that Frankie
brought so much business his way what with his corner boys, their corner boys,
and the, ah, girls that gathered round them and who endlessly fed the juke box
that he had to show his appreciation in such a way. And everybody had a great
time that night, with the closed door wine, Tonio-provided wine, flowing like
crazy and nobody, no authorities or parents the wiser for it.
Part of that great time, the part
the guys around the 1968 table were remembering just then, the part of that
great gun-ho 1964 time occurred late that night when, plenty of wine under
their belts, Frankie and the corner boys, talked “heroic” talk. Talked about
their military service obligations that was coming up right on them. And this
was no abstract talk, no this night, for not only was this a party put on by
Tonio to show his gratitude but a kind of going away party for ace football
player and part-time corner boy (the other part, the more and more part, with
one fetching Chrissie O’Shea), Johnny Prescott, who signed up right after
graduation and was getting ready to leave for “boot camp” at Fort Dix, New
Jersey in a few days. So everybody was piling on the bravery talk to Johnny
about “killing commies” somewhere, maybe Vietnam, maybe Germany, hell, maybe
Russia or China. And Johnny, not any rum-brave kind Johnny, not any blah
blah-ing about bravery, football or war, Johnny just kind of sat there and let
the noise go by him. His thoughts then were of Chrissie and doing everything he
could to get back to her in one piece.
Of course heaping up pile after pile
on the bravery formula was one Frankie Riley, ever the politician and well as
keenly acknowledgement corner boy king, who had so just happened to have
landed, through a very curious connection with the Kennedy clan, a coveted slot
in a National Guard unit. So, Frankie, ever Frankie, could be formally brave
that night in the knowledge that he would be far away from any real fighting.
His rejoinder was that his unit “might” be called up. The others kidded him
about it, about his “week-end warrior” status, but just a little because after
all he would be serving one way or another. Also kind of silent that night was
Fritz Taylor just then ready to “do his duty” after having had a heavy-duty
fight with his mother about his future, or lack of a future, and her “hadn’t he
better go in the service and learn a trade” talk.
Most vociferous that night was Timmy
Kiley. Yes, Timmy, the younger brother of the legendary North Adamsville and
later State U. football player “Thunder Tommy” Kiley. He was ready to catch
every red under every bed and do what, when and where to any he caught. Timmy
later joined the Navy to “see the world” and saw much of some dreary scow in
some dry-dock down in Charleston, South Carolina. Even Peter Paul Markin,
Frankie’s right-hand man, self-described scribe, and publicly kind of the
pacifist of the group, who usually got mercilessly “fag”-baited for his pale
peace comments was up in arms about the need to keep the “free world” free. But
that was just the way he talked, kind of a studied hysterical two-thousand
facts diatribe. Markin, student deferred, at that 1968 table had just gotten
notice from his friendly neighbors at the North Adamsville Draft Board that
upon graduation he was to be drafted. And he was ready, kicking and screaming
about some graduate school project that the world really needed to know about,
to go. That was the way it was in the neighborhood. Go or be out. Frank Ricco,
the so-called token Eye-talian, of the Irish-laden Salducci’s corner boy night
(and a kid that Tonio actually hated, some kind of Mafioso, omerta thing with
his father) also displayed super-human brave talk that night but he was
credited , not so many months later of not only going in the Marines but of
seeing some heavy-duty action in jungle-infested Kontum, and some other exotic
and mainly unpronounceable place farther south in the water-logged rice paddles
of the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.
Quiet, quieter than Johnny Prescott
thinking of Chrissie, or Fritz, sullenly furious at his mother or at his
hard-scrabble fate, or both, was Johnny Callahan. Johnny no stranger to corner
boy controversy, no stranger to patriotic sentiments, at least publicly to keep
in step with his boys, secretly hated war, the idea of this war coming up and
was seriously hung up on the Catholic “just war” theory that had been around
since at least Saint Augustine, maybe earlier. See Johnny had a grandmother
(and also a mother, but less so) who was an ardent Catholic Worker reader and adherent to their social philosophy. You
know, Dorothy Day and that crowd of rebel Catholics wanting to go back to the old,
old days, the Roman persecution days, of the social gospel and the like. And
grandmother had the “just war” theory down pat. She was the greatest knitter of
socks for “the boys” during World War II that the world may have ever known.
But on Vietnam she was strictly “no-go, no-go, no way” and she was drilling
that in Johnny’s head every chance she got (which was a lot since Johnny,
having, well let’s call it “friction” with his mother sought refuge over at
grandma’s). Now grandma was pressing Johnny to apply for conscientious objector
status (CO) but Johnny knew that as a Catholic, a lapsing Catholic but still a
Catholic, the formal “just war” theory of that church would not qualify him for
CO status. He wanted to, expected to, just refuse induction. So that rounded
out that party that night. Hell, maybe in retrospect it wasn’t such a great
party, although blame the times not Tonio for that.
Just then, as each member at the
table thought his thoughts, started by Frankie’s remembrance someone from the
other room called out, “pall-bearers, get ready.”
Postscript: Sergeant, E-5, John Phillip Prescott made the
national news that 1968 year, that 1968 year of Tet, made the Life magazine
photo montage of those killed in service in Vietnam on any given week. Johnny
P.’s week was heavy with casualties so there were many photos, many looks of
mainly working-class enlisted youth that kind of blurred together despite the
efforts to recognize each individually. And, of course, Johnny P.’s name is
etched in black marble down in Washington, D.C. John Patrick Callahan served
his two year “tour of duty” as federal prisoner 122204, at the Federal
Correctional Institution, Allentown, Pennsylvania. The road less traveled,
indeed.
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