An Impromptu Incongruous Interlude with My Auntie Sam

1962…

Teeming rain never stopped his daily routine…

After Mother was picked up by her church ladies for weekdaily Mass, Marc Gillette donned his hooded wet-weather suit and galoshes for an hour’s walk between WGN-TV’s Breakfast with Bugs Bunny and The Morning Movie.

Prior to leaving, he glanced at the kitchen calendar…It was one year since he retired from the United States Government…

Retirement was his second childhood. Not only living with his widowed mother in their old family home, but as a disciple of Louis Marx, not Karl, he had his toys.

One was a new version of his childhood clockwork miniature trainset, The Honeymoon Express. A train, now a red streamliner instead of the old steam engine, eternally journeyed around the pleasant Honeymoon Cottage. He imagined it as his own home with the North Shore Electroliner he viewed from their attic window. Marc refused to install the annoying circling aeroplane that resembled a bomber or paratrooper transport preparing to drop its load, for he’d been one of the latter and a victim of the former.

His other indulgence occurred after taking Mother to Walt Disney’s Babes in Toyland and rewatching the original Laurel and Hardy film, retitled March of the Wooden Soldiers, on television. For Christmas he purchased a fort and 100 Disneykins redcoat toy soldiers; the only soldiers readily available that weren’t modern or from the War Between the States. They evoked his viewing Queen Elizabeth II leading her Guardsmen down The Mall following the Trooping of the Colour.

Centurion-General Gillette commanded four marching trumpeters and four drummers leading four platoons brandishing muskets with fixed bayonets followed by four artillerymen dragging their cannon.

Like Dr. Frankenstein, he swapped legs between one standing at attention and a marching trumpeter to create a marching colour sergeant bearing a flag of his own design and a standing trumpet major/orderly. He converted another drummer to be their drum major with a bass drum.

Two others had their trumpets removed, arms severed and relocated to pull Nurse Snow White’s covered wagon ambulance; all were painted white.

The Principality of Lichtenstein was denied admission to the League of Nations because it didn’t have an army, ergo, the Kingdom of Marc wouldn’t be refused!

‘And it rained, rained, rained…’

Singing Dorsey Burnette’s Noah’s Ark, he briskly strode up Chestnut Street.

A horn beeped; a Chrysler New Yorker pulled up to the curb,

‘Would you like a ride somewhere?’

She was in her early 20s, well-dressed in a grey flannel suit and black pillbox hat.

‘Thank you, no, but that’s very kind of you. I’m out for exercise; going nowhere, not somewhere.’

‘How about joining me for some mental exercise and coffee and cake?’

‘That’s tempting, but I don’t take candy from strangers.’

‘I know you live dangerously…Willoughby…’

Jackie Kennedy Junior had addressed him by his O.S.S. codename when he fought in Occupied France. He last heard ‘Willoughby’ when his old flame ‘Queencobra’, a Franco-Anglo Special Operative, requested their reuniting for a rescue mission in Indochina.

She presented her credentials,

‘I promise I’ll have you back home for your morning movie and before your mother returns from church…’

She’d done her homework…

‘…and it’s my treat!’

Intrigued, he opened the door, swiftly moved his upper body in, rapidly shed his rain jacket, placed it on the floor, pulled down his rain trousers, leapt into the front seat, shut the door, removed his galoshes and also placed his wet trousers on the floor.

He wore black trousers, turtleneck and…

‘Not many American males wear berets…’

‘Groucho Marx did…because he wouldn’t tip hatcheck girls.’

‘And…’

She displayed Marc’s large official photograph, wearing his Special Forces beret, camouflage ascot and super-starched fatigues,

‘Your eyes make that Green Beret superfluous! Do you know what today is, Colonel?’

‘Call me Marc. It’s my anniversary of leaving the government.’

‘Call me Samantha. Uncle Sam’s checking up on you.’

No wonder they use women; they love snooping, and men love to impress them…

‘Auntie Sam?’

Her genuine laughter relaxed him as they drove off.

Some questions he expected, others came out of the blue...He replied he was satisfied with his life and pension and in good health. She related his former cohorts were equally content.

They arrived at the Waukegan Shopping Plaza.

‘Thanks, Marc. We’ve finished!’

Leaving the Chrysler, she produced an umbrella and opened the door for him. They put their arms around each other and gleefully ran like school sweethearts beneath her umbrella to Walgreen’s soda fountain.

She swayed to Woody Thorne’s Teenagers in Love as she ordered for both,

‘Coffee’s coffee, but hot chocolate’s a treat!’

They were alone in the comfy booths.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t travelled.’

‘I’ve seen enough of the world, most travellers run away from themselves…’, He clicked his heels, ‘“There’s no place like home…”’

They savoured their fresh marble cake, marshmallow hot chocolate and each other,

‘Fred Flintstone you aren’t! We pay you the most attention because you’re the only one who hasn’t married and had children.’

‘I haven’t a patronising bone in my body.’

‘That’s exactly why I’d love to work with you. Any woman in your life?’

‘Just Mother. They’ve all got husbands and kids, so they’re not very interesting.’

‘Like Queencobra?’

‘I’d love to see her again.’

‘She’s being a naughty girl with the O.A.S...’

‘I love naughty girls, but she’s une Française traditionnelle, not a DeGaullist. I’m surprised he hasn’t renamed France after himself. Did they recruit you straight out of college too?’

‘Yes…Fortunately, there’s not a hot war going on like when you were commissioned. Once a nuclear war comes, the living will envy the dead.’

‘You don’t believe that do you? I guarantee that in London during the Blitz or the Doodlebugs no one envied the dead, whether they glowed in the dark or not. They didn’t anywhere else either. Unwounded survivors are always grateful.’

‘I believe we’ll eventually make peace with the Soviets. They’ll lighten up, we’ll crack down, then we’ll meet in the middle.’

‘Sounds like a Democrat; they want the power of a dictatorship for themselves. Republicans want Communism to fall so everyone is free. What do you want out of your government career?’

‘Power.’

‘Why?’

‘If you have to ask, you’ll never know…’

‘It’s an anaphrodisiac to me, I had it during the war. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely", Lord Acton knew what he was talking about.’

‘You’re big on platitudes…’

‘There must be something in them if they’re still being quoted.’

‘Ever get bored, Marc?’

‘Bored people have no imagination…’

‘…And people with no imagination have no intelligence…You remind me of Marcus Aurelius…’

‘I’m not that old, Auntie Sam!’

‘He described you well, “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”’

‘I’ll bet you were the smartest girl in school.’

‘She could recite it in Latin!’

They cheerfully laughed; a buzzing came from her wristwatch,

‘I’ve time enough to get you home for your movie.’

The deluge subsided as they returned.

‘I envy your era…’

‘In college I regretted missing the Lost Generation in Paris after the First World War. You’ll have your place in the sun, it’ll be different, and those like me will only be in the old WGN morning movies…’

‘You’re still fit; I can get you back if you want.’

‘Thank you, no. My time’s done; it’s your turn, Sam. It’s not just a different world and different people; there’s a different intellect.’

‘You’re black-and-white…I’m colour…’

She parked in Marc’s driveway.

’Can I call my guardian angel when I need her?’

‘No one calls their own guardian angel; the higher power always watching you dispatches her only when she’s really needed.’

‘Will I see you next year?’

‘I’ll be in Europe, like you were…’, she sparkled, ‘I envied your escapades with Queencobra...’

‘It’s wonderful to share them with you. Does that sound silly, Auntie Sam?’

‘Not at all!’

‘I can forgo my morning movie and show you around Waukegan?’

She pointed at her jet-set blue Pan-Am flight bag on the back seat, the item that replaced travel stickers on suitcases screaming out, I travel to exciting international places, and you DON’T!

‘Sadly, I have to get my rental car to O’Hare and catch a flight back to D.C. today…It would’ve been fun…’

‘NEVER stop having fun!’

‘I would like to work with you…’

‘Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Theologian's Tale; Elizabeth. "Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing. Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness. So, on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another. Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence." I learned that in Lake Forest College long ago, but I lived it today…’

‘You’re an extraordinary gentleman…Marcus Aurelius was right again about you, “Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.”’

‘Thanks! They only know Markus Twainus here…’

Yearning showed in each other’s eyes...She kissed him on his mouth and squeezed his arm.

They spoke simultaneously,

‘Sic transit gloria mundi…’

‘Green light…Go!’

‘Geronimo!’

He dashed home holding his wet weather gear.

She beeped and returned to her own time and place in the whole wide world to report,

Lieutenant Colonel GILLETTE passed his examination.

He is content where he is and will not leave his immediate area where the highly classified information he learned could be extracted by an enemy intelligence service.

He has no idea he is restricted…

‘The best prisoners are those who do not know they are prisoners…’ Fyodor Dostoevsky

FIN

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