They were still in their late forties
and early fifties in the Spring of 1942.
Strong Western men in town from the
ranches and mines.
Their bib overalls caked with sweat, dust
and grease hung as another part of their bodies.
The battered straw hats, band covered with
dried salt white sweat
sat on the rear of their heads
as if not really wanting to be a part of
the Gothic painting.
I greased their cars and filled their gas
tanks as they visited each other
and Jess Strong at the filling station.
They quietly swapped stories about the war
in the trenches of France and how they
wished they
were young enough to fight
in this one.
Grim news from the Pacific was met
with reassurance that Doug MacArthur
would stop them soon, sooner if only
they could be there.
They remembered with pride military careers
filled with death and drama when
they were young and brave.
The feelings of pride simmered gently
with Memorial Day Parades in their maturity.
Some had been on the Bonus March to Washington, D.C.
and all remembered being in the
Color Guard for the last Confederate
veterans encampment in Trinidad in 1936.
Several of them barked and spit the mustard gas
and Camels cough that still is to me
the sound and smell of the Great Depression.
They watched their language and they sounded
like gruff Sunday School teachers because they
were the generation of men who guarded the ears
of the very young.
What discipline it must have taken to keep the
language of the trenches out of my grease pit.
These were men I greatly admired and I have been lifted
across an ocean,listened to the bands play
Sousa Marches, seen Paris and cleaned lice
and mud off my body as I listened to their tales.
Then one day they took me fishing up on the
old Cusimino ranch and I knew
the feel of being a man.
I can't remember fish,stream or lunch,
but the Vets and I fished together
that day in May 1942.