Rrrrrinnnnnnggg!
History class was over, the last class of the day, and the
students dived for their backpacks.
“Hold
it! Class, listen up.” The stuffing of backpacks came
to a sudden halt, and heads swiveled around. When Mr. Johnson
said it that way, he meant it. “For your major project–”
Groans erupted.
Mr. Johnson
held up his hands, and silence gradually fell. “For your
major project,” he repeated, “I want you to research
one of your grandparents, you choose which one, and write
a paper describing that person’s place in history.”
More groans.
“Don’t
make this harder than it is,” said Mr. Johnson. “I’m
not looking for famous people–although I wouldn’t
mind turning one up.” Grinning, he paused for the inevitable
laughter. “No, I’m just looking for ordinary people,
who may have done extraordinary things. A woman who attended
the Seneca Falls conference would be a good example, but that’d
be about your great-great-great-great-great grandmother.”
The tension
level in the room declined noticeably.
“Now,
I want at least two thousand words, and you will
be graded on spelling, grammar, and general composition. You
have until the end of the year, so you might start thinking
about it over the Christmas break.”
After that
round of groans, Mr. Johnson dismissed the students, and bare
seconds later the room was empty. Except for Jeremy Willson,
who was standing by the door, looking bewildered. “Something
wrong, Jeremy?” asked Mr. Johnson.
“Uh, no,
I don’t think so, thanks anyway,” said the boy.
He started to leave.
“You’re
sure?” Mr. Johnson’s tone made clear his skepticism.
Jeremy stopped. He paused. Finally, he turned back to the
teacher.
“Uh, well,”
he said, “I don’t have any family, see, just me
an’ my mom, an’ I don’t know what to do about
this project thing.”
“I see.”
Mr. Johnson thought a moment. “Well, let’s see here.
Your mom had a father and a mother, right?”
A shy smile
accompanied Jeremy’s nod.
“Okay,
look. You ask her if she can tell you anything about her father.
Anything at all. That’ll be a start, and you can go from
there. If you can’t get anything at all, come back, and
we’ll see what we can do.”
“Okay,
thanks, Mr. Johnson.” And Jeremy was off to join his
classmates in their after-school pursuits.
As he cleared
away his dinner dishes that evening, he asked his mother,
“Mom, how come you never talk about Grandpa?”
Celeste Willson
looked up. After a moment, she said, “Why do you want
to talk about Grandpa? Tell me about your day at school, now
that’s something to talk about.”
“But Mom,
I have to talk about Grandpa!” Jeremy’s words came
out in a rush; he was well acquainted with his mother’s
reticence about her father. “Mr. Johnson said we have
to write a paper about one of our grandparents, it’s
our major project, and we have to tell about their place in
history, and he’s even gonna grade on spelling!”
he almost wailed.
Celeste’s
countenance assumed an air of sadness. “Okay,” she
said. “There’s not a lot to say, really. Your grandfather
hasn’t kept in touch with us. He doesn’t phone or
send mail, not even to exchange cards at Christmas.”
She stopped, put down her dishtowel, and sat down at the kitchen
table. “Come sit here,” she said, indicating the
other chair.
Jeremy sat
down, expectation mingled in his eyes with puzzlement.
“You know
Grandma died a long time ago,” Celeste said. Jeremy nodded.
“We used to visit Grandma and Grandpa, your father and
I, before–” She paused, drew a deep breath, and
plunged on. “Before Grandma died. After that, Grandpa
kind of folded in on himself, he closed down and didn’t
want to be part of anything anymore. Then your father died,
and I just didn’t have the strength to deal with Grandpa.
I guess it’s as much my fault as it is his, that we don’t...”
She stopped again, seemingly having run down.
Jeremy wriggled
on the hard wooden chair. “Go on, Mom,” he pleaded.
“I can
tell you when he was born,” she continued, “and
where he grew up, and when he married Grandma, and all that
kind of stuff, I’ve got the dates written down, but you
really need to talk to him. He was in the Second World War,
you know, he enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, and they
put him in a bomber squadron and sent him to Europe. You should
write to him and ask him if he’ll help you with your
assignment.” She paused. “Yes, that’s it. You
write to him. I’ll get you his address.”
“Okay,
cool, I’ll send him email! What’s his address?”
said Jeremy, unaware as only the young can be of the obstacles
he was about to face. “Uh, what’s Pearl Harbor?”
“No, Honey,
you can’t,” Celeste replied. “Grandpa doesn’t
have a computer. You’ll have to write him a real letter.
And Pearl Harbor is in Hawaii. The Japanese bombed it in 1941,
and that’s what got us into the war.”
“Why doesn’t
he have a computer?” Jeremy pouted. “Everybody’s
got computers!” Pearl Harbor was forgotten in the midst
of this new technological crisis.
“Well,
not everybody,” Celeste said. “Wait here a minute.”
She rose and went into her bedroom. Jeremy could hear her
rummaging around in her dresser drawer.
When she returned,
she was holding a small case, which she opened to reveal a
fountain pen, and a bottle. “Here,” she said, holding
out the pen. “Write your letter with this. Grandpa might
like that. This was his pen when he was in the war. He wrote
home every week. I wish I still had his letters, but his mother,
my grandmother, didn’t keep them. Anyway, you write with
this. He’ll be able to tell it’s not a ballpoint.
He always hated ballpoints, and I’ll bet he wouldn’t
even read a letter if he knew you’d written
it with a gel pen.” At that, she couldn’t
help smiling. Her father’s irascibility in the face of
newfangled contraptions had always been a family joke, and
the thought stirred other happy memories for her.
Jeremy took
the pen and examined it. He found it an odd beast. It was
made of plastic, with funny narrow speckledy-looking bands
of alternating black and gold color running all around it
like a big stack of rings glued together. The cap had an arrow-shaped
clip, with feathers even! Engraved faintly on the barrel was
the name WALTER A. FRIESSE. He tried to pull
the cap off, but it wouldn’t budge. “Mom, I can’t
use this pen, I can’t even get the cap off,” he
complained. He pushed the pen back at his mother.
“The cap
screws off,” she said. “Try it.” And to Jeremy’s
surprise, it did. It screwed off easily, revealing a point
that looked like gold with dirty spots of dried ink all over
it. “Ick!” said Jeremy, holding it up to view.
“Wash
it under the faucet,” Celeste replied.
When Jeremy
washed the pen, the spots came off the point. He dried it
with the dishtowel, giving the point a little polish as he
did so. It gleamed.
He brought
the pen back to the table, grabbed a page of the newspaper,
still there from the morning, and applied the pen to it. Nothing
happened. “You have to hold it right, and it’s not
filled,” his mother said. “Here, let me show you.
The point is called a nib, and you write with the pen turned
this way.” She gently turned the pen in Jeremy’s
hand until the nib was facing upward. “But we have to
fill it first,” she added. “Here’s the ink.”
Celeste took
the cap off the bottle she’d brought, and made a face.
“Oh, D–” She stopped without completing the
word. “It’s all dried up, there’s nothing here.”
“It’s
okay, Mom,” Jeremy ventured, “I’ll just use
a ballpoint. Grandpa’ll never know.”
“He’ll
know,” Celeste replied. “I’ll get some ink
tomorrow.”
When Jeremy
got home the next day, a shiny new bottle of ink was sitting
on the kitchen table. The label on the bottle read “Parker
Quink.” Celeste had also found some stationery, and several
sheets lay near the ink.
“Quink,”
said Jeremy. “That’s a funny name.”
“The man
at the store said it’s very good,” said Celeste.
“Let’s fill the pen.” She uncapped the new
inkbottle and then screwed a small cap off the back end of
the pen, revealing a plunger. Inserting the nib into the ink,
she pressed and released the plunger. Nothing happened. She
tried again. Still no results.
“Oh, no!”
she said in a pained voice. “Now the pen’s broken.
I’ll have to get it fixed.”
“Mom,
it’s okay,” Jeremy said, “Really. I’ll
just use a–” He stopped. The determined look in
his mother’s eyes made clear her unalterable intention
that he would use this pen, and no other, to write to his
grandfather.
So she took
the pen to the store where she’d bought the ink. The
proprietor was an older gentleman with charming salt-and-pepper
hair and an equally charming manner. “I’m really
sorry, Mrs. Willson,” he said, spreading his hands helplessly.
“I used to repair pens, but that was over forty years
ago. These days, I sell a few fountain pens, but most people
just buy cheap throwaway ballpoints at one of the big office
supply stores.”
“But couldn’t
you–?” pleaded Celeste. “This is for my son.”
“I can’t.
I don’t even have the tools anymore,” was the response.
“See, this pen needs a special tool to take it apart,
and I don’t even think they make that kind of tool anymore.”
“But what
can I do?”
“This
is for your son? Put him on the case. Get him to do a Web
search. I’ll bet there are people out there who still
do that kind of work, I’m just not one of them.”
A Web
search, eh? That, thought Celeste, is Jeremy’s
job! She thanked the man and returned home, not crestfallen
but concerned. Was this opportunity to reestablish communication with her father going to be lost just because she’d been too ambitious?
Jeremy being
Jeremy, it took him almost no time at all to track down half
a dozen fountain pen sites on the Web and, by following links,
to locate several places where they might get the pen repaired.
After some further searching and comparison shopping, he turned
to a newsgroup for pen collectors “to get the real dirt,”
as he expressed it. Before bedtime that evening, he gave his
mother the name of an individual several states away. “Try
this guy,” he said confidently. “He looks good.”
Celeste telephoned the man Jeremy had chosen, and the outcome
of their conversation was that she bundled the pen up and
sent it away to be fixed.
When the pen
came back a few weeks later, Jeremy was on pins and needles.
“Does it work, Mom?” he asked, bouncing all around
as Celeste unpacked it. “Does it work?”
“Calm
down,” she said. “We’ll have to try it and
see.” She found a paring knife and carefully slit the
white corrugated box open. The pen, in its case, rested inside.
Opening the case, she took out the pen. It had been polished,
and it looked brand new. The barrel was transparent, a fact
that had escaped her notice before.
There was a
slip of paper in the shipping box, on which the repairman
had used the newly repaired pen to write a note that included
filling instructions. This time, when she filled the pen,
Celeste could see the ink flooding in. “Here,” she
smiled, handing Jeremy the pen, “Now try it!”
This time,
Jeremy’s first attempt produced a vivid blue line on
his paper. “Cool!” he enthused as he continued writing.
Three or four signatures later, he discovered one of the dangers
of using a fountain pen, as his hand slid through wet ink
and left behind a huge smear. “Hey!” he yelled.
“It’s
all right,” Celeste said. “Be patient, it takes
practice. You can’t write as fast with a fountain pen.
Wash your hand off and try some more.”
Three days
later, Jeremy mailed his first real handwritten letter (not
counting thank-you notes for gifts). It read,
February 7,
20–
Dear Grandpa,
Mom
told me you have been kind of lonely since Grandma died.
I was sorry to hear that. I have a cool school project,
can you help me with it? My history teacher wants us to
write a paper about one of our grandparents, and Mom said
you were in the Second World War and you would be great
to write about. Please write back soon and tell me what
it was like in the war.
Your grandson,
Jeremy
Every day,
Jeremy pestered Celeste, asking whether his letter from Grandpa
had come yet. Finally, the day after Washington’s birthday,
it came.
February 19,
20–
Jeremy,
Do
you have my old Parker fountain pen? I told your mother
to throw that pen away after your grandmother died. Get
rid of it.
The letter
wasn’t even signed. Poor Jeremy was crushed. The bitterness
in his grandfather’s words stung. He showed the letter
to Celeste. She wasn’t surprised. “That’s about
what I expected,” she soothed. “Let’s try again.
Tell him you have his pen, and tell him that we got it fixed
just you could write to him. Did you notice that he used a
fountain pen, too?” Jeremy hadn’t noticed, but he
wasn’t about to admit it.
Jeremy sat
down and began composing a second letter.
February 24,
20–
Dear Grandpa,
Yes,
I am using your old Parker pen. I had to look at the name
on the clip to know it was a Parker, I never saw a pen like
it before. Mom got it fixed for me just so I could write
a letter to you. It’s really a cool pen, you have to
fill it with ink out of a bottle instead of a refill. I
like it a lot and I’m glad Mom kept it. Especially
because it was yours. I can’t take it to school, Mom
says she’s afraid it might get lost.
Please,
Grandpa, I really need your help with this project, I’ll
flunk if I don’t do it. And please don’t make
me get rid of this pen. I see you used a fountain pen, too.
Your grandson,
Jeremy
The second
reply came back much more quickly than had the first one.
February 28,
20–
Jeremy,
I
will look around and see if I still have anything I can
send you. Don’t get your hopes up. You won’t really
find it very interesting, I think. The war happened a very
long time ago.
Grandpa
A few days
after that, a small box arrived for Jeremy. It contained a
few papers and a note:
March 2, 20–
Jeremy,
Here
are some papers about the war. I was in the 95th Bombardment
Group, in the Army Air Force. That was before there was
a separate Air Force.
Grandpa
Jeremy’s
grandfather’s enlistment and discharge papers were in
the box, along with a photograph of a two-engined airplane
with its crew standing in front of it. The airplane had a
rather risqué pinup girl painted on its nose, with
the name “My Little Chickadee” underneath. Celeste
looked at the picture with Jeremy, and she recognized her
father. “This one is Grandpa,” she said, pointing
at the second man from the left. The man was wearing a leather
jacket and sunglasses. He had a big grin on his face, and
he was holding a little American flag.
“Aw, Mom,
this isn’t enough,” cried Jeremy, downcast. “I
need lots more stuff before I can write a report.”
“Maybe
you can find out more on the Web,” suggested Celeste.
“If you send him some information you’ve found out
by yourself, maybe he’ll be more willing to write about
himself.” But she was much less hopeful than she sounded
to Jeremy.
“Mom,
what are all these little bombs for?” asked Jeremy, pointing
to three rows of bombs painted neatly next to the pinup girl.
“Well,
now, there you are, you have something to research!”
Jeremy grimaced.
But he transferred his attention to his computer, and in short
order he had learned that each of the little bombs signified
a mission the airplane had flown. “My Little Chickadee”
had flown twenty-seven missions when Jeremy’s picture
was taken. Jeremy also learned that the 95th Bombardment Group
had flown A-26 airplanes and had served in North Africa, Sicily,
and Italy. He decided he had enough information to pique his
grandfather’s interest in the school project, so he wrote
a third letter.
March 11, 20–
Dear Grandpa,
Thank
you for sending me some of your old papers. I hope you can
find more. I’ve been reading about the war, and I really
want to know all about what you did. I learned that you
flew in A-26 bombers. They were called Invaders, and they
went close to the ground where it was very dangerous. I
learned that your plane went on 27 missions, at least before
the picture you sent me. Did you go on more missions after
that? Were you famous in the war? Mr. Johnson says we don’t
have to write about somebody famous but it would be OK if
you were famous. Did you get shot down? Were you wounded?
I
started to read Catch-22 because it’s about
bombers and stuff, but Mom took it away and said I’m
not old enough. The bombers in Catch-22 are B-25s,
what were they like?
Besides
writing to you, I’ve been using your pen to do my homework.
It’s really great. I told my teachers about it and
they all wanted to know where I got it. Mrs. Edwards says
that when she was in school, they had to write with a fountain
pen. That was probably pretty hard. And she says I write
pretty nicely, too. I think I write better with your pen
because it makes me write slower so I won’t make a
mess. Did they make you use a fountain pen in school? Nowadays
we just use crummy old ballpoints or computers. But I’m
going to write my whole report with this pen instead of
a word processor, and I bet Mr. Johnson will think it’s
cool, too.
Your grandson,
Jeremy
Grandpa’s
next reply came back very quickly.
March 14, 20–
Dear Jeremy,
You
know, my boy, you’ve surprised me. It looks as if you
really are interested in your old Grandpa’s
ancient history. I’d be honored to help you with your
school project. You’re right on the money; my unit
flew A-26s over North Africa and Italy. I was young then,
not quite as young as you are, but it was exciting and,
as you say, dangerous. We were all very proud to be serving
our country. I hope you won’t be too disappointed,
but I didn’t get shot down, and I wasn’t famous.
You’ll just have to do with an ordinary old boring
Grandpa.
B-25s
were called Mitchells, after General Billy Mitchell. He
changed the way naval wars were fought by proving that airplanes
could sink a ship by bombing it.
I’m
sending you another box of my papers. This one is much bigger;
I’ve gone up into the attic and gotten all covered
with dust. My enlistment papers and my discharge you already
have, but there is lots of other material, and you’ll
find a whole pile of photographs, too. There might even
be one or two more of me. After you’ve looked through
the box, write me again with any questions you may have
about things you didn’t find in there.
We’ll
make this a great project.
One
last thing. I told you to get rid of that old pen, but I
think now that that was a mistake. Your enthusiasm for that
old piece of “junk” and for your project has reminded
me of something I tried to forget. It’s reminded me
that I have a family. You keep that pen; I hope you’ll
enjoy using it for a long time. You’re probably too
young to understand this now, but maybe you’ll accept
an apology anyway, from a grumpy old man who ought to know
better.
Your grandfather,
Walter A. Friesse, 1Lt, USAAF Ret.
P. S. Your
mother is right. You should save Catch-22 for when
you’re older.
Jeremy was
ecstatic. This was going to be great! Now if only that box
would come! He didn’t know how he could possibly keep
from going crazy waiting for it.
It finally
did come. It was a big box, just as Grandpa had said, and
it contained a veritable treasure trove. There were piles
of papers and photographs, and a few other things, items Grandpa
hadn’t mentioned. Among the last group was a garrison
cap bearing a single silver bar. Pinned to the cap, apparently
as an afterthought, was a ribbon. “Mom, what’s this
ribbon for?” asked Jeremy, holding the cap up for her
to see.
“I don’t
know, but we can probably find out,” replied Celeste.
“Why don’t you search the Web?”
It was a Distinguished
Flying Cross.
With that piece
of information in hand, Jeremy dug even deeper into the information
Grandpa had sent. He found what he was looking for. Down at
the bottom of the box was a small case in which he found the
medal itself, together with the citation. First Lieutenant
Walter Friesse was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross
for conspicuous bravery under fire. His flight had encountered
heavy resistance over a target in southern Italy. Most of
the bombers were shot down, and the fighters were scattered.
Friesse’s plane was shot almost to pieces, the pilot
killed, and copilot Friesse severely wounded. Bleeding badly,
blinded in one eye, and partially crippled, Friesse had flown
the plane, without fighter cover, almost down the barrels
of an antiaircraft battery so that the bombardier could deliver
their payload to the munitions dump that was their target.
That mission was his last; in addition to his citation, it
earned him a medical retirement.
It also earned
him another letter from Jeremy, in which the word “Wow!”
featured prominently.
Over the next
three months, an astonishing number of letters flew back and
forth between Jeremy and his grandfather. The old man was
a gold mine of stories and facts about the war, and the boy
dug out every nugget of information he could get. The two
developed a real camaraderie, a tie bound by something much
stronger than blood. Neither ever wrote a letter with anything
except a fountain pen. Jeremy wondered from time to time whether
his mother had been right. Would Grandpa have refused to respond
to a letter written with a ballpoint? He never worked up the
courage to ask, but it really didn’t matter anymore.
He had found his milieu, and his family as well.
Having decided
to use his grandfather’s pen to write his report, Jeremy
went one step further. Taking his cue from the few remaining
letters in his grandfather’s box, he did some more research
and wrote the report as if it were a series of letters from
his grandfather, written at the times and from the places
he’d learned about in his grandfather’s papers.
The report earned an A+. Mr. Johnson wrote at the top of the
first page that it was one of the best reports he’d seen
in all his years of teaching. He also wrote that his own father
had served in the Marines and been killed on the island of
Bougainville, in the Pacific.
Jeremy sat
down and wrote a long letter telling Grandpa the good news.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he finished.
“Thanks, Grandpa. You’re the greatest.” He
enclosed a copy of his report.
A couple of
weeks later, another box came for Jeremy. This one was smaller
than either of its predecessors. Inside, Jeremy found a letter:
June 19, 20–
Dear Jeremy,
You
have done well. I’ll bet your mother is pleased as
Punch, and well she should be. Your grandfather is proud
of you, too, and very grateful. Thank you for waking me
up, and thank you for putting up with me. And thank you,
most of all, for taking me back to the best years of my
life.
You
said back in February that your mother wouldn’t let
you take my old pen to school for fear it might be lost.
Well, she’s an old wet blanket, but you have to do
what she says because she is, after all, your mother–and
because that old pen is a family heirloom of sorts. (It’s
called a Vacumatic, by the way, and it was my high-school
graduation present from my parents.) But the pen in this
box isn’t a family heirloom, not yet anyway. It’s
just from me to you. And you are to use it as you see fit.
Think of me when you write with it, and maybe even write
to me once in a while.
Do
you think it would be all right if I sent your mother a
Christmas card this year?
Grandpa
Under the letter,
the box contained a pen case in whose depths glistened a brand
new Pearl and Black Parker Duofold fountain pen. Engraved
on the barrel was the name JEREMY K. WILLSON.
© 2001 Richard
F. Binder
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