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Show Twisters . . . 9 page from a newspaper hit my front spokes and immediately got itself shredded. I squeezed my hand brakes and stopped. I couldn't believe what I was seeing-a whole ton of newsprint was scattered up and down my street. It looked as if the Grand Island Daily Independent had set out to toilet-paper the entire neighborhood. I rested a minute, waiting for Arthur to catch up so we could laugh about it together. As I waited, I wiped my face on my damp T-shirt and read "Snoopy" . . . Isn't it funny, how you remember all the crummy little details on one of those black-letter days? My folks say it was that way with them the day President Kennedy was shot way back in 1963. And Belle Smiley, the oldest person in our neighborhood, said she knew exactly where she was and what she was thinking on Pearl Harbor Day at the beginning of World War II. "I was standing right there inside that screen door," she told me once, after inviting me in for cookies. "I was watching a fly crawl across outside. I was just standing there, daring that fly to stick his head through a hole we had in the screen. That's when the paperboy came by hollering 'Extra! Extra! Attack on Pearl Harbor!' "I didn't move. I just stood there, tears running down my cheeks. I knew my boys would be going off to war . . . and I knew they mightn't come back." Belle Smiley went on telling me about Pearl Harbor through four more cookies and a second glass of milk. I swear, I learned more about history from her than I did in school. Anyway, I can remember everything about that Tuesday, too. Every little detail. |
