Boone's Big Adventure

•   My name is Boone Callaway. I'm 9. My family and I live in Sarasota, FL. I have a mom, dad, and brother named Rowan. But, Hurricane Irma is going to get a direct hit on most of Florida.We evacuated to Montgomery, Alabama, with our friends, the Harringtons. The oldest kid is James, the middle child is Charlotte, and the baby is Andrew.

  Today, I got a new fidget spinner since my old one rusted. We met another family with three boys and walked around the giant lake outside. The middle child noticed that there was a Pittbull with two different colored eyes. He was really mad at us, and was barking loudly. He almost jumped over the low fence! We walked around a few times then James noticed the owner hiding in a bush. He must have thought that we were stalking, because we went around one more time, and we noticed the Pitbull was gone! We went to tell the parents but the Pitbull was with them! We quickly walked to the parents and Mom said, "Let's go back to the hotel, that Pitbull scares me.''

  A few seconds later, the oldest boy of the family we met ran over to us and said, "Do you want to go to the pool with us later?'' "Sure!'' said Mom "See you later!'' We walked to the hotel and sat on the couch for about an hour.

   Mom took me up to Moma Keen's room. Moma Keen is my grandma, but we call her Moma Keen because she likes it. She got the name from our cousins when they were babies. They couldn't pronounce Karen, (Moma Keen's real name.) so they said "Keen''. When I was born, I said "Moma'' for some reason. So, now she's Moma Keen.

  We went to dinner last night with our friends. When we woke up, we were ready to go to North Carolina where our cousins, Greer, Lane, and Beau live. The car wouldn't turn on so we had to call someone. When Dad was talking to a really nice guy who eventually solved the problem, Mom was dealing with a mean guy who said he didn't want to help. Mom ended up scolding him. His boss fired him. When Mom went to the car to tell Dad the whole "Mean guy who got scolded thing," Dad had already called someone who solved the problem.


  The car worked, but the guy said we couldn't turn it off or it would break again. So, the whole twelve hours we were in the car, we didn't  turn the car off. We had to take shifts into restaurants and Target. When we got to Uncle John, Aunt Kristin, Greer, Lane, and Beau's house, we had to turn it off , so, we obviously did. Dad then figured out that the car still turned on! So we technically took shifts and added two extra hours for nothing!

  This morning, Greer said, "YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO SHCOOL! NO FAIR!'' Well, believe me, I want to be at school! Why would she say something like that? I told her about hurricane Irma. Lane on the other hand is the exact opposite of Greer. Greer mostly says "LANE!'' and "Sttttooopppp!'' Lane always says "GREER!'' and "I GET THE LIGHTSABER!'' Yeah. Lane loves Star Wars. He also likes dinosaurs, LEGOs, Ninjago, and Power Rangers.

  We had to leave Greer, Lane, and Beau's house for school. On the way back, Rowan and I watched movies almost the whole time. We also played on our tablets a lot. I played with my new fidget spinner a little, but the little time I did, I lost it underneath my seat. I didn't get it back until about a month later.

  It has been a while since I’ve blogged. But I SURVIDED HURRICANE IRMA! When we got back, we had to go back to school. But, I got in soccer with my friend from 2nd grade who moved to Pineview Elementary School. My last soccer game is on Saturday though. See! THAT'S HOW LONG I HAVEN'T BLOGGED. I will have to wrap up this blog though. But make sure to check out my other blogs that I will make soon. BYE!

Gold Stars, War Memorials, and Memories

                                       


My father's plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan on a cold December day in 1951.  Later, Mom received a letter of condolence from President Truman. Daddy was dead; Mom was a Gold Star Wife. I don't remember much after that except that my heroic mother gave us a Christmas that was a happy one.


But years later, the Vietnam War that divided the country also divided our family, Mom usually stayed out of out our arguments.....until she didn't. "Tom was killed for line on a map," she said with a quiet ferocity that slammed a silence over us all. And she then slung her apron at a chair and left the kitchen.


I am reminded of these things as we again face the cost of undeclared wars. October 2017. Four Marine Green Berets are killed in Niger.

Since WW II, Congress has not made a declaration of war. The now-called Korean War started as a police action, became a conflict, and only after we stopped combat by declaring a stalemate was it labeled WAR.

My adult children and I visited the Mall in D. C. one Thanksgiving Day in the mid 1990s as I'd especially wanted to see the new memorial dedicated to those who died in my father's war. The Korean War Memorial is heart-achingly beautiful. Tall stainless steel helmeted solders, metal rain capes seemingly moving in a wind, steel boots slogging through juniper bushes. Even though I knew that the Korean War was primarily a ground war—if for no other reason than I'd seen every episode of M*A*S*H—my first impression was unsettling.  Knowledge is one thing. A child's impression is another. This did not represent my dad's war. I still saw it through my 1951 eyes, a scene with enemy soldiers firing machine guns at my daddy's plane. "How silly of me," I thought and moved on. I then went to show my family their grandfather's name on the computer listing KIAs.

But there was no mention of Lt. Commander  Benjamin Thomas Pugh. When I did find his name, I saw that he is listed as a "non battle related injury." I was stunned.  Injury? What!

"His plane was shot down in a bombing raid!" I said. Even now, that label affixed to my dad's name makes me angry.  So what if no North Korean soldier shot his body? They shot his plane, and it crashed down a frigid sea. He froze to death before he could be rescued. So......just as killed as anyone else. Just not KIA. Officially.

Wars hurt the families of those who die during these undeclared wars, KIA or due to "non battle related injury."   They suffer, and a small part of that family dies as well. Their absence leaves a ragged tear in the fabric of life that is not easily  mended.

Historians discuss the cost of wars (or conflicts, storms, operations, whatever) in terms of "blood and treasure." My dad and many others today die in not-wars. I loved that Navy pilot I'd known until I was almost eight. I love him still. He may have been a Lt. Commander in the U. S. Navy officially, but he was a dad with an all-over-the-face smile who read the Sunday funnies with me, who savored The Katzenjammer Kids strip and laughed aloud,  who ate ice cream in a vegetable bowl and let me share, who helped me plant snapdragons in the back yard.....of the Amameda house.


That Alameda house where officers in dress uniforms walked up to the front door and knocked.


That memory comes in slow motion. Mom walks toward the door. We three kids--Tomi (5), Ben (2), and I are in the living room. The Christmas tree is in one corner. Mom opens the door, then grabs the door frame as if she's falling, and she sobs. The officers proceed into our living room. Mom collapses into a chair and pulls her apron over her face. We kids don't know what is happening,  only that it's something terrible. One of the officers stoops down by Mom. He is talking, but I cannot hear him. My mother is crying.  The other officer guides us three kids into one of our bedrooms. It is he who tells us that Daddy has been killed. "Did it hurt him?" I ask.  He tells me that he froze to death. "It didn't hurt," he says, kindly. "He froze to death. It's like falling asleep." But even a child knows that freezing cold hurts.


My brother now has all of my father's ribbons and medals in a frame. The gold star is there, too. It's such a tiny thing to represent an entire life, to represent the blood and treasure of a man: a son, a brother, a husband, a father. He's buried on Cemetery Hill, now called Woodland Cemetery. His simple headstone overlooks the Ohio River and the small Kentucky town where he grew up, where I grew up. The river moves on, and I, as the child of a man who died of a non battle related injury, in an undeclared war with North Korea--a war not really over-- thinks of the wives and children of these recent victims of not-wars.

When You Wake

There comes a time in everyone's life when a previously unseen truth smacks you in the face.  For me, it was after I'd been to Ole Miss for a college visit and saw shortly thereafter news coverage about James Merideth's experiences there. Ours were not the same experience. Until I saw what was happening to James Merridith on the nightly news, I'd walked through life in utter oblivion. I'd led a privileged white life, and like far too many of us, I'd skipped along, completely unconcerned about what had been happening just beyond the tip of my nose.

Kentucky was just as segregated as the rest of the South, but there was no signage in my hometown saying who could and could not go where. And so, at age seven, when the family car trip saw us at a Georgia service lesson for a rest stop, there was a scene. Caused by me. As Mom herded my sister and me to the restroom, I saw two signs: Colored. Whites Only. Spoiled, ignorant little white girl that I was, I pitched a hissy fit to go to the one marked Colored. I thought it would be prettier. Mom jerked me into the Whites Only, and gave me a quick swat on the bottom. After we returned to the car with me still complaining, Mom said something like, "Karen, the other one is an outhouse." The reason given. "Those are the rules." I never ever heard my mother say a racist thing, nor did I ever see her treat anyone badly. But, the rules were the rules. We didn't question them.

After that trip, I returned to life in a small Kentucky town that had one black couple of which I was aware. I didn't know that they had children as I'd never seen them. (They did, I learned as an adult, have children who went to the neighboring county's black schools.) Everyone just went along and got along in our very white world. I was reminded of this while reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Harry is surprised that none of the Muggles notice as he and Hagrid slide through barriers or enter shops that only the Magic see. Hagrid explains that Muggles don't even know magic when they see it.  For too long, I didn't notice institutional racism when I saw it. The TV and movie world verified my world.

Time passed. My freshman year in college, I was thrilled to be asked to the Ole South Ball where males wore Confederate uniforms and we women wore gowns and carried parasols. I sat proudly on the back of a convertible with other faux belles, waving our white-gloved hands to crowds as we paraded down Lexington's Main Street. The police watched the crowd and kept the street open. I was so blind. Shortly thereafter, James Merridith tried to enter University of Mississippi and it took the National Guard. I've tried to atone ever since. But I cannot change what I did and didn't do then. Nor can any other man nor woman. But we can change what we do after we become less ignorant. We have to do everything we can to address a great problem that the Founding Fathers had to give up on. What the Reformation couldn't do after the Hayes-Tilden compromise. What the Civil and Voting Rights Act attempted and has been losing ground on lately. This country will never ever be what it is meant to be until we look at the evils of slavery and racism straight in the eye.

What has been winked and blinked at or even ignored must be faced. Slavery was a legal institution. Slaves helped build this great nation. We cannot pretty that up or gloss over it. We cannot pretend that it did not happen. There comes a great reckoning for us all, as people and a as nation. If it did not happen with a Civil War, after people of color fought for this country in every single war, after the Civil Rights movement, and after events and words in and after Charlottesville, you have to take a stand now. There are not two sides on some issues. You are either for or against white supremacy in this country. You are either for neo-Nazism and fascism or you're not. Being anti-KKK or anti- neo-Nazi is easy. But our President saw two sides, after which the heads of every single branch of the military responded that there were not two sides. You cannot be ho-him on this. Pick a side. The children of the future will be watching. And judging.