A Fistful of Fig Newtons by Jean Shepherd

Author:Jean Shepherd [Shepherd, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Humor, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780307768704
Publisher: Broadway
Published: 1981-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

There are times when I awake at 3 A.M. from a fitful sleep hearing the clink-clink-clink of poor Ernie’s dog tags. Ernie, lost forever in Arkansas, wearing only his GI underwear, forever AWOL, a fugitive from a sealed troop train. Is he out there yet, a haggard wraith living on berries and dead frogs? A fearful outcast? Does he know the war is over? That all wars are past?

The clink-clink-clink of Ernie’s dog tags says nothing.

I stared unseeing through my bug-spotted windshield, lost in a labyrinthine reverie, seeing the faces of the soldiers I had known from that star-crossed company of military maladroit misfits, a true Company of Fools. Elkins. Gasser. Nye, of the steel-trap mind, doing humiliating push-ups in the scorching sun while the duty corporal … what was his name? Barney? Bernie? No, BENNY. Travers. Yes, that was the bastard’s name. And poor Nye passing out from the heat, and never talking much afterward. And Goldwater. Jesus Christ, Goldwater, the bullshitter, who got four-foot-long kosher salamis sent from home while all we got was busted cookies, and Warner, Pfc Warner, who never got promoted above that one measly little stripe in spite of his 165 IQ and his ability to play whole symphonies, including the horn parts, on the piano by ear. And the captain from The Citadel, who cried because somebody busted the mirror in the cigarette machine.

A roaring van pulled up alongside me in the right-hand lane. A bearded primitive, shirtless, hunched over the wheel. It hit me: I’ll bet Ernie never saw a van. All the other lost ones would never have suspected what a mad world we now live in.

I’ve always wondered why no real literature of The Road ever came out of America, a country that for at least three quarters of the twentieth century has lived on its turnpikes and toll roads. Maybe that’s why so much of Country music is valid poetry of our time: “The Interstate Is a’Comin’ Through My Outhouse,” “White Line Fever,” “The Carroll County Accident.” This stuff gets to the core of it.

I imagined a future sociologist lecturing on various aspects of The Car to future classes.

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