my favorite soldier

He would introduce me as his girlfriend.

A bottle of JOY dish detergent sat beside his sink every day of my childhood. I thought he bought it because his name was on the bottle. That's how we pronounced it, "Joy." Nine years ago, I started writing a book about my Uncle Joey… I don’t know exactly when.  And when you’re paying tribute to a man who lived 94 years, I’m not sure the timing much matters.  What does matter is that I never finished it.  I don’t know if I will or I won’t—and again, that doesn’t really matter right now either.  But I can tell you why I wanted to write it, AND, I can tell you why I stopped.

I met my Uncle Joey—who was actually my GREAT Uncle—32 years ago.  He was 61 and I was, well, I was just born.  In my earliest memories, he doesn’t have hair, he’s tall and thin and old.  You have to understand that to a child—anyone who isn’t a child is old.  But still, a 61 year age difference is significant.  We didn’t seem destined to become buddies....

Joey was battling lung cancer in my earliest memories of him.  I don’t remember his hair growing back—memories are funny that way.  I remember him bald and thin—and I remember him silver haired—getting his ears lowered at the barber shop—and plump from beer—and  later Little Debbie cakes and coca colas.  The thing is though—I remember.  God’s smart, you know. He gives us the people who we need in our lives—we don’t always know it—or even accept it, but I believe it is so.  When Joey’s hair grew back—and silver, I began to grow—and so did my voice.  An amazing thing is the power of a child’s voice.  I know, I have two children.  They are sometimes profound, yes, but they are also…loud.  Joey always said, “I’m deaf in one ear and can’t hear out of the other….” a result of work with heavy artillery during the war…and later also a result of time.  Still, when I was a kid, that phrase was usually followed by the words, “But I can still hear YOU!”  I think I drove him crazy sometimes. He’d look at my mom and say something to the effect of, “she doesn’t say much does she?” 

For some reason though, he kept me around.  He may not have had children of his own, but he had children—all of us…and knew how to keep us quiet.  Candy and food. I think this is how our friendship really began. There’s a small window of time in one’s life in which to acquire a taste for potted meat on saltines and Vienna sausages….why do I remember that?  Anyway, like I said, Joey kept me and the other kids around.  Sometimes he'd take Amy and me along on a trip to the Farm Bureau—the old Farm Bureau beside the train trestle.  Well, as it turned out, the Farm Bureau was the only store in the entire state it seemed (Mama never let us browse candy aisles) that offered Big League Chew in original, cherry, and grape!  Joey would get a paper bag for each of us and he’d lean against the counter and talk to the ladies who worked there. He’d tell us, “Fill ‘em up” and when we’d return he’d say, “that’s not full; get you some more.” Do you know just how many caramel cremes, fire balls, and pixie sticks can be stuffed into a lunch size paper sack?  We blew bubbles gigantic enough to swallow an entire face head hair and all.  We’d ride home with the windows down, hair whipping, dust swirling, bubble gum bubbles popping and country music on the radio.

As we grew older, he and I, we spent our time telling stories.  We’d go out for dinner…spaghetti—always.  He’d complain that he didn’t like it much and then order it anyway, he’d pay—insist on paying—and then thank me for going along.  He’d say, “Now I want to take you and your mama to dinner again…just let me know when it suits…” 

He’d tell me over and over about his time in The War…like he did with so many people…and I’d listen and ask questions…I don’t think  I really digested the significance of his stories until I was in college. My generation has a hard time comprehending something like a ‘draft’. Joey and his fellow soldiers left their homes, their families, their country, and some—their lives, because it was their duty. My generation and those that follow have a hard time being told what to do. Four years and five days….that’s how long Uncle Joey endured away from the farm—as a soldier in the US Army—because it was his duty. I called home every day of my Honeymoon….It’s all about perspective isn’t it?  I don’t believe in war…but it is because of his service that I have that prerogative. He worried for our current military men and women…he hated the idea of sending them into harm’s way. He’d say, “I saw so many terrible things…some good too, but a lot of bad.”  I understand that he didn’t talk about the War for many year after his return home. By the time I was born though, he seemed comfortable telling the stories. I have two favorites. He and a fellow soldier were entrusted with a German prisoner. They were told to return without him. They knew they couldn’t hurt him—they couldn’t communicate with him either—so they returned without him…after letting him go.  In the other story, he found a bulb for his military issued flashlight in a pillbox somewhere in Belgium….it fit and lasted him the war.  He brought the flashlight home only to have it stolen one night when he left it in his parked truck outside a dance.

God delivered Uncle Joey from the horrors of war, and God delivered him from the horrors of cancer.  Mother Teresa said, "I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much."  I think God trusted Joey…and I think that his long life was a gift from God to us…I learned so much from him. 

So why didn’t I finish the book?  Well, there’s a line in writing the truth.  There’s the whole believability factor for one. You know—those ‘would you believe’ stories. Like when Joey liked the paper boxer shorts the hospital gave him so much, he decided to wear them home. And then, there are the “you’d have to see it to believe it” stories…like when he dressed up like Judge Judy for Halloween.  Mostly though, I was afraid that someone might misinterpret my goal.  I feared that the impression might be that all I had done was to portray a quirky old man, although this might be true.  I’m kind of quirky sometimes myself…aren’t we all?  I didn’t wish to write my Uncle Joe into a stoic hero.   This world is full of too many of them already.  Those heroes who were once real men who have been elaborated, molded, and glorified to a degree that they are no longer of this earth with us but deserving of a higher landing perhaps on a Mount Olympus somewhere.  That wasn’t him—and he wouldn’t have been comfortable with that.

My uncle Joey is a hero because he lived the most real life that a human man possibly can, and he survived…he survived to tell his stories and to laugh at himself.  I can’t take this man and gloss and polish a life that is most amazing with its coat of tarnish, rust, and sweat. In our world, heroes are good to have but they should always be real.

Whether or not I write a book about him…or ever find the time to write a book at all, I won’t forget him and the way he made me feel…each time I saw him—whether it had been two days or two months, he’d grab my hand and pull me in for a smacker on the cheek.  “How you?” He’d say. His knees and toes, and sometimes his head, and sometimes his all over…hurt him every day and he rubbed turpentine on all of it, still, he’d walk across the room just for a hug…or down to the basement to gather some potatoes he insisted I needed to have.  He made me feel like to him I was the most important person in the room.  Like he’d been waiting just to see me…few people make you feel that way, you know?  His heart was generous and warm and ever so humble. He might have complained, but that was the extent at which he thought of himself. He cared so much for each of us…he worried so much for each of us.  He loved each of us just as we love him.

Copyright © 2011. Carrie Ellen Campbell. All Rights Reserved. http://carriellencampbell.blogspot.com. Please respect Carrie's intellectual property. Sharing blog posts is permitted, but no part of this material may be copied, downloaded, reproduced, or printed without express written consent. Contact Carrie at: carrieellencampbell@icloud.com.