LUNCH BY TIM GLASBY
I sit and watch the IBM clock move slowly past the 11:25 mark knowing, in only thirty minutes, it will be lunchtime. The clock seems to moves so slow that I am sure that it has gone back in time instead of forward.
I can smell the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that is wrapped in wax paper in the brown paper bag beneath the lift top of my desk. I know that Ma has written TIMMY on the outside of the bag even though I have asked her, a million times, “Ma, please put TIM on the bag. The other kids tease me when they see it spelled like that.” She still spells it like that.
“Don’t worry about them,” answers Ma. “They’ll always find something to tease you about.”
But I’m not worried about the teasing right now. I’m only concerned with the way my stomach feels. When Dad gets really hungry, like I am now, he tells Ma, “Eleanor, get some dinner on the table. My stomach thinks my throats been cut.”
I slouch down into my seat, watching Mrs. Baumgarten, my third grade teacher, to be sure she doesn’t catch what I’m going to do. I figure if I can get low enough and raise my desk just a little I can pull the bag close enough to pull off a bite of the sandwich.
Just thinking of the thick peanut butter and strawberry jam on the doughy white bread makes my mouth water. I know I’ll have to get past the banana on top of the sandwich to get a little bite but that shouldn’t be too hard.
“How many of you know what the capital of Michigan is?” asks Mrs. B. “How about you, Tim?”
Caught in the act, or nearly anyway. I sit up straight and ask, “Will you repeat the question, please?” I know this will give my stomach a chance to calm down and quit growling and also give me time to guess the answer to the question.
The rest of the class laughs at my inattention and Mrs. B. warns them, “Now class, it’s getting close to lunch. Let’s all pay attention so I don’t have to make you wait to go eat.”
“No!” I almost scream aloud. “We can’t wait a moment longer for lunch. If we do I know I’ll die of starvation.”
Mrs. B again asks, “Tim, if you can tell me the capital of Michigan, we can put our books away and get our lunches out and get in line to go to the cafeteria.”
Now it’s all on my head. If I don’t get this right everyone will hate me and I’ll get called Timmy for the rest of my life. I think to myself, “It’s not Detroit cause I guessed that before and it was wrong. It then hits me like the baseball I tried to catch and got lost in the clouds and gave me a goose egg as big as a goose egg. “It’s Lansing,” I shout.
“That’s right, Tim. Okay, class, get your lunches out and get in line at the door. And no pushing or running.”
I quickly remove my paper bag and can smell the peanut butter and jelly sandwich like I was a hound dog looking for a prisoner. I hold the side of the bag that has TIMMY written on it close to my chest and walk quickly to the line.
I feel in my pocket to make sure I have the two pennies that Dad gave me this morning for milk money. I would choke to death on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the milk. I am pleased to feel the pennies and know that I have been forgiven this death by peanut butter.
In line, we all walk to the cafeteria. We are really lucky today because we are the first kids to get here and Mrs. Campbell is standing in line with the little cartons of milk and collecting the two cents like it was five dollar bills. I go to one of the long tables and sit with my friend Jack Ferman. He has a cool Popeye lunch box with a thermos that matches but Ma won’t let us have one. She says that every time she buys us one we leave leftovers in it and they grow mold all over the inside and she can never get the smell out. I know this is true because there are several old lunch boxes in the garage that have rusted and the thermos’ glass liners are broken.
Dad always carries a lunch box, but it is a big black box with a rounded top and a thermos full of coffee with lots of cream and sugar. He brings it home everyday and the first thing he does is to clean it out and rinse out the thermos. Ma says when we can remember to do that we can have one too.
I start to eat my sandwich but remember to have a little taste of milk so the sandwich doesn’t get wedged to the top of my mouth. It takes very careful calculations to figure how much milk you can drink with each bite and still have enough left to eat your cookies. Jack always tries to make me laugh so the milk will squirt out my nose, but I have this figured out so I only drink when his mouth is full so he can’t pull this old trick on me.
When we finish lunch, Mrs. B. tells us, “Get into line to go to the play ground.” Once there Jack and I play a couple games of tetherball and swing and then it’s time to go back to class. Mrs. B. instructs, “Class get in line so we can go back to the class room and finish the afternoon lessons.”
In less than an hour, I’m setting at my desk watching the hands on the IBM clock barely moving. I know that at 3:30 we’ll get let out and I can get in line to go outside to the bus line and wait in that line to get on the bus. I know that when I get home, Dad will make us a snack and if I’m really lucky it will be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread with a glass of milk.

Some have expressed interest in what I did during the occupation of Japan. Not necessarily as part of the class assignment, here is part one of about six parts (One a week?). Would appreciate some questions about it, which will help me in the telling. Unlike the kind feedback in class assignments, all constructive feedback will be appreciated. With no questions or no remarks, I will stop this writing. Thanks—Jim Y.

On October 16, 1945,Holabird Signal Depot, Baltimore, Maryland, became my new home for my training with the Counter Intelligence Corp. (C.I.C.). The schedule was eight lectures per day. In the evenings time was spent studying Japanese. There was to be a final exam at the end of the course. We were worried that we would not be sent to Japan if we did not do well. There was a need for agents in other Asian countries as well. …When the course ended my name was on the list to go to Japan, not as an interpreter but as a CIC agent. My Japanese was not even marginal.
In January 1946 full of expectation and awe we arrived in Japan. The war had been terminated just five months before, and we found that the devastation of Yokohama and Tokyo was immense. We rode the train from Yokohama, where we disembarked from the troop ship, to the Fourth Replacement Depot in Zama. As the train stopped along the way, people--kids, teenagers, young adults, and the elderly--were running with the train as it came to a stop. Was there an accident ahead of us? To our surprise when we came to a stop the people had also stopped and came begging at our train windows. The U.S. army soldiers and the civilians on the train, having seen the devastation of the area, unloaded what we had. We gave away all our candy and cigarettes. We learned that they in turn sold these goods for food. This was our first encounter with the Japanese civilians and we came to the first realization of the poverty that was around us.
After an overnight stay at the replacement depot, Lt. Croft, my traveling companion, said: “Let’s go, Jim”. “Where are we going?” Lt. Croft’s attitude was why stay in Zama when we could get to an officers’ club in Tokyo and sleep under sheets and in beds. He had served in Europe and his experience there taught him what could be done for one’s own comfort. He hadn’t the slightest idea what we would find in war-torn Tokyo. But compared to battle conditions in Europe, his attitude was that there would be no problem. My feeling was: Is it safe to just go on our own in this war-torn country? We hitched a ride on an army truck that took us to the Tokyo bound railroad line. From there we rode the train into Tokyo. He had the address of the Officers’ Club and we were soon there. Lt. Croft was right; improvise for your own comfort.
We called Zama every morning to find out whether our orders had been cut. After four days we were informed that we were to report to the CIC Training School in Tokyo at a place called Norton Hall. It was just a block away from our temporary quarters of the Officers Club. Thanks to Lt. Croft, we had spent the free days looking over the devastation of Tokyo and getting acclimated.
We started the 20th class at the Tokyo CIC training center. We had two weeks of intensive training and we all studied hard for the rumor had it that the best would remain in Japan and the others would be sent to Korea or the Philippines. The powers to be got the rumor mill going once again to get us to study. After getting to Japan, no Nisei, for that matter none of us, wanted to be shipped to another country.
“Where were your parents born?” “In Fukuoka, Kyushu, in Southern Japan.” They then told me my assignment would be with a detachment in Northern Japan. Nisei were sent to a unit in the opposite end of the country. They did not want the Nisei to have any problems with their distant relatives.

The assignment was with the CIC detachment in Maebashi, the capital city of Gunma Prefecture, about 75 miles northwest of Tokyo. Our area was all of Gunma Prefecture about the size of a California county. I was to be the third ranking officer. The others were all enlisted men. There were about fifteen in this detachment, mostly Nisei.
My first investigative assignment was the area of Kiryu City. An interpreter was assigned to me, Ben Tsutsumi, an enlisted man. Ben was a few years older than me and a very even-tempered individual. He and I became good friends. Later we were additionally assigned the city of Takasaki, which was on the main train route from Tokyo to the West Coast; that is, Nagano Prefecture, where the winter Olympics were held in 1998. We traveled our area in a jeep almost every weekday covering about 150 miles a week. The roads were mostly dirt roads, which were not maintained very well. Japan had used up all their resources in the armament for World War II and not in the country’s infrastructure.
In the second week in April, our Commanding Officer (C.O.) told me he was being moved out of the CIC, he thinks, because his father had traveled to Russia at some period in his life. Without any explanation investigators in the C.I.C. were being removed and replaced. Ours was a sensitive job such that anything of a suspicious nature in one’s past would result in being removed. He was transferred to a non-sensitive unit outside of the CIC. The replacement C.O. was Lt. Eino N. Sainio.

End: Section one

Except for the summers working on the farms as a laborer, my life was almost wall-to-wall high school—an all American influence with only a few other Nisei around.
After learning how to drive socialization with the Nisei in other communities began. As a drummer in the band and orchestra the love of music and rhythm led me to the desire to learn to dance. My sisters became my teachers. Prancing around the living room by myself, listening to music on the radio, and practicing the dance steps resulted in becoming a fairly good dancer. Proficiency in jitterbugging came soon thereafter.
Dad's model A Ford was used to attend Nisei dances in Stockton and Modesto, where we had developed some Nisei friends. Dancing became one of our major interests in life. Stockton was the closest place where there was a large concentration of Japanese. Modesto was our birthplace. Our family would occasionally travel there where our parents would visit with old friends. Their children became our friends.
Because of the imagined discomfort of dancing with the white girls, high school dances were never attended. Besides shyness with girls was a problem. There was a high school celebration one night of the whole school where many students attended, including my sister Mari and me. The occasion was Halloween. This was not a dance but as part of the activities there was a dance competition to select the best dancers. The music made me feel like prancing, as did Mari. We were completely oblivious to the dance competition. It was a jitterbug tune. The judges (teachers) were so surprised to see me (a bookworm type) dancing so well that, following the applause of the students, we were awarded the first prize. Then Red (Norma Del Prete), the flashiest red head with her beautiful, sexy smile came up to me and congratulated me. The music was starting and she grabbed me in her arms to dance. We were dancing a fox trot, another dance that suited my love of rhythm. Unbelievably when we finished that dance, Willie (Wilmina Palmiter), another class beauty, happened to appear next to me and we were dancing together.
And so the evening went, one beauty after another. It just goes to show that the feeling of discomfort on my part was unwarranted. With my dancing skills, my fellow white students would have accepted me at their dances. Was tolerance a factor in their choice? Would there have been an amorous encounter with reciprocation? That was never given a chance. Leaving the dance on cloud nine, a memorable evening, was not repeated for fear of coming down to earth.
Rumor had it that this was a status symbol for them to have danced with me. The next day's top topic among the girls was: "Did you dance with Yamo last night?"

Footnote: In 1966, in another era, at our 25th reunion I "danced up a storm" with all the ladies exchanging flirtatious remarks like a pro. Some came as singles, which made the evening interesting.
_______________________________________________________________________
Note: This is such a good example of removing the “I” that my feeling is that a repeat of it as first written is worthwhile. What a great learning experience for me. 30 I’s were removed. Awkward in places but mainly better—Jim Y.

"Did you dance with Yamo last night?" (Story repeated with 30 I’s left in)
Except for the summers when I worked on the farms as a laborer, my life was almost wall-to-wall high school—an all American influence with only a few other Nisei.
There was some Japanese influence with the Nisei, however, as I began to socialize after learning how to drive. During my junior and senior years I wanted to learn to dance for I had the rhythm (drummer) and I loved music (band). So I had my sisters teach me how. I would prance around the living room by myself listening to music on the radio and practice the dance steps. Later my sisters taught me to jitterbug and I became proficient at it.
In my senior year my sister Jean and I would drive my dad's model A and attend dances in Stockton and Modesto, where we had developed some Nisei friends. I was getting to be quite a dancer. Stockton was the closest place where there was a large concentration of Japanese. Modesto was where I was born. Our family would occasionally travel there where our parents would visit with old friends. I became acquainted with their children.
I would never go to dances at the high school for I felt uncomfortable dancing with the white girls. I was shy with girls anyway. There was a high school celebration one night of the whole school where many students attended, including my sister Mari and me. I believe it was Halloween. This was not a dance but as part of the activity there was a dance competition to select the best dancers. I felt like prancing to the music so my sister and I paired up. It was a jitterbug tune. I believe the judges (teachers) were so surprised to see me (a bookworm type) dancing so well that, following the applause of the students, we were awarded the first prize. The next thing I knew Red (Norma Del Prete), the flashiest red head came up to me and congratulated me with her beautiful, sexy smile. The music was starting and I don't remember whether I asked her for the dance or she grabbed me. In any event we were dancing a fox trot, another dance that I excelled in. Unbelievably when we finished that dance, Willie (Wilmina Palmiter), another class beauty, happened to appear next to me and we were dancing together.
And so the evening went, one beauty after another. It just goes to show that the feeling of discomfort on my part was unwarranted. As long as I could dance well, my fellow white students would have accepted me at their dances. Yet I still had the feeling that I was being tolerated. Would there have been an amorous encounter with reciprocation? I never gave that a chance. I left that evening on cloud nine, a memorable evening, which I was reluctant to repeat for fear of coming down to earth.
In hindsight, I believe it was a status symbol for them to have danced with me. Among the girls, I learned that the next day's top topic was: "Did you dance with Yamo last night?"

( 30 I’s eliminated.)

By,
Reiss

The back seat of the little black roadster was mine alone. I pulled my legs toward my stomach, wrapped my arms around my chest and turned my face and shoulders toward the back of the seat. The seat embraced and held me close. I seemed to generate and hold my own warmth... much more warmth than when I sat up facing forward.

The three adults sat together in the front seat discussing things that were not of interest to me. The sound of their softly spoken words accompanied by the rhythmic hum of the tires on the ridged surface of the bridge was my lullaby. Mama turned around, asked if I was warm enough and before I could answer, threw her big fur coat over me. I drifted into the world of dreams. I could smell Mama’s perfume or her powder or whatever it was that made her always smell so good. The coat was heavy and it covered me from my neck to my ankles. I inhaled the Mama smell and pulled it around me until I was completely covered. Every now and again, I had to peek out from my fur blanket and breathe a bit of air and see where we were.

The sky darkened as we crossed the bridge over lake Pontchartrain. Slightly awake but more asleep, I could see dark clouds through the rear window of my moving cocoon. The clouds were black against the purple sky. A star and the moon peeked and followed us for a while and then were gone. I hoped to find the big dipper Roy had pointed out to me last week but it was not there. Maybe it was only in the sky at home. The few stars that blinked down at me in the car were so small and far away but they followed us for a long time until Lawrence turned the car.

A long sleep later, I was awakened by the car bouncing up and down on the bumpy road to the Bouchard’s house. My eyes would not stay open and I was not sure which of my thoughts were real and which were dreams. I only knew I was content, my world was good and we were almost there...in Slidell. I liked going there as it was so different than our neighborhood. It was “the country” and home was “the city.” There were no paved streets, at least not near the Bouchard’s house. And their house... it was not like ours. There were no carpets on the floor, there was no bathroom. I had to go to the “outhouse” if I had to go. I didn’t like that and decided to wait until I got home. The outhouse was small, had cracks between the slats that were its walls and the hole they used didn’t flush! I was sure I could wait!

The house was strangely warm in some spots and cold in others. It had a yellow glow from the bare light-bulb hanging on a wire from the open wood ceiling and the fire that roared in the fireplace. It was the biggest fireplace I had ever seen. It took up the whole wall in the biggest room of the house. The fire smelled like the trees that were all around the house. Mama said those were pine trees and that’s what I smelled when I was in Slidell...pine trees. They were all around us. There were more trees than houses. In fact, there were more trees than people. There were trees everywhere...pine trees...trees so tall, I could not see their tops and they did not have leaves or flowers like the big Magnolia trees at home. The pine trees did smell good, though.

When it was dark outside, the trees were big shadows and covered the whole area. I could only see a little bit of sky. When I could get away from the trees, and see the sky it was filled with stars... a lot more than it had at home. Fantastic!

After dinner, I wandered outside and found a spot where there were not too many trees. I sat down on the cold ground and looked up toward the sky. It would be better if I would get down on my back and look straight up. Hey, there’s the Big Dipper! “Mama, Mama, come out here and see the Big Dipper!”

“ Hey, little boy, where are you? It’s dark out there. Maybe you should come in. Are you sitting on the ground in the dark? Do you know there are snakes out there and the man of the pine trees will get you?” I was not sure if Danielle, the oldest of the Bouchard girls was kidding or not.

“What? Snakes? Who is the man of the pine trees?”

“The snakes all over the place. You may be sitting next to some and the man of the pine trees comes quietly down from the trees and takes little curly red-haired boys away and they are never seen again!”

“I don’t believe that! You’re not telling me the truth! It’s a sin to lie!”

“Mama, Danielle says there is a man in the pine trees who will take me away! That’s not true, is it?”

“Come inside. It’s late and you need to go to bed.”

“Are we staying here tonight? I think I want to go home.”

“Ha ha ha, you’re afraid of the man of the pine trees!”

“Danielle, I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t believe you!”

“OK, just don’t sleep too much. Keep your eyes open.”

“Danielle! That’s enough! Get ready for bed and leave the child alone.”

“Oui, Mama.”

I didn’t like Slidell any more and wanted to go home. This was not fun! I didn’t believe Danielle, but.....

The night was long. I slept close to the window in the back room with the Bouchard children. I felt safe enough, but I watched the trees silhouetted against the night sky until the sun came up. I wanted to go home.

Forty years later:

Slidell is a fairly large city. The pine tree forests have made way for large red and yellow brick houses. It’s home to people who left New Orleans for the quieter, saner life of the suburbs. Marlene’s house in Slidell sits on a street called Rustling PInes. The guest room in which I’m housed has a wonderful view of the tall pine trees that line the street. After a long day of sightseeing, visiting relatives and old friends, I retire to my room...the room that looks out at the pine trees. I undress and get into bed only to see the window is open and the pine trees are tall, black figures against the ink colored sky. I get up and close the drapery before I go to sleep.

Fifty years later:

November 16, 2007...The Los Angeles Times: One Hundred and Twenty Million trees lost in Louisiana and Mississippi after hurricane Katrina, many of them the famous long needle pines. Dare I tell anyone that, while I’m sorry about the impact on the area and share the concern about the carbon dioxide the trees are sending off as they decompose, and I sympathize with Marlene who is unhappy because her street “looks naked without it’s beautiful pine trees,” I am hoping to go back one day to see her street lined with tall, strong, happy moss covered Louisiana Oaks?

My poor widowed mother is hysterical.

“Henry, please come quick! David looks dead!”

My hulking brother-in-law takes one look at me lying prostrate, fully clothed in an overcoat on my bed, unconscious eyes rolled back with only the whites showing.

Henry guffaws with the knowledge of an experienced heavy drinker. This is one time we are grateful to have this roughneck in the family.

“Don’t worry, ma, he’s just drunk.” Henry’s voice has a calming effect as he goes about his sobering up routine, commencing with a slap across my face, then a quart of black coffee and twenty push-ups.

How we get from Faribault, Minnesota, fifteen miles back home to Northfield driving on a narrow, twisting, black ice road in a 1939 Ford sedan is a miracle.

“Jesus, Dave, slow down!”

Ten miles an hour on slick ice with a coating of fresh snow in December’s zero degree weather is absolute hell.

At one A.M. the traffic is light, thank God. No room to pass another car.

The first attempt to navigate a left curve spins the car into two 360 degree pirouettes.

We have to pull off the asphalt onto the dirt shoulder for even a gentle turn to avoid going into another tailspin.

Over and over again. Mile after mile. A thirty-minute drive stretches into two hours of torture.

With three equally inebriated passengers giving incoherent instructions, we finally reach home port.

Somehow, each is dropped off at his or her front door.

Sheer will power overcomes the debilitating intoxication from too much sherry wine, and we finally pull into the driveway, stagger into the house, drag a lifeless body up the winding staircase and flop into bed― the same bed where we find my father’s body three years ago, leaving a young widow and six children. No wonder my mother is hysterical. How can she ever forgive me?

"Son, promise me you'll never frighten me like that again," she pleads.

"Cross my heart and hope to die," is my inappropriate response.

My shame and embarrassment are big-time. This miserable 20-year-old miscreant will never touch another drop of sherry wine.