Miss Birdie and the Mysterious Jake Aaron (a Re-post)

 

 She slowed at the sight of a shiny black car  coming across Miss Birdie’s bridge. The driver, a dark-haired man who looked irritatingly familiar though she couldn’t call his name, threw up his hand and nodded before turning onto the hard road and disappearing around a curve.

Who was that? I know I’ve seen him before but not here at Birdie’s. A salesman?. . . too late in the day. . . odd, I thought I knew all of Birdie’s friends.

Miss Birdie was sitting on the front porch in one of her red-painted rockers. Her head was bent, one hand covering her eyes, as if she were praying, and she didn’t move as the jeep rattled across the plank bridge.

Closer to the porch, it seemed as if Miss Birdie was having a conversation of some sort.

Oh, dear. She’s been so sharp for all these years. . . I wonder… is she beginning to wander in her mind . . .

The old woman looked up as her visitor approached. “Why, honey, how good to see you. Reckon you thought I was just a-talking to myself like as if I had that Old Timers. Get you a chair and I’ll tell you what I was studying on.”

She drew a long breath and stared off across the road to the mountain beyond. “That feller was here just now. You might say he’s an old friend.”

Her wrinkled face gathered into a bemused smile. “ Yeah, buddy, an old friend is just what he is. Jay Caron . . .Jay Caron. . .that’s what he goes by now. I was saying it over and over so’s I wouldn’t forget.” Her brow furrowed. “When first I knowed him, back when I was a little un, he was Mr. Aaron, the peddler. And then, it was a few years back of this when Calven was tangled up with that no good feller his mama was living with, me and Dor’thy saw him up at that fancy place over beyond Burnsville--he was Jake Aaron then and his hair was just as siiver-

The old woman shot a sharp look at her visitor. “No, I ain’t a bit confused. When I was but little, when I was a young woman, and just now--hit’s the same feller ever time, no, not his son nor grandson. You got to understand, Mr. Aaron—Jay Caron-- ain’t like most folks. Names and looks might change but it’s still him. With him time don’t matter. He holp me out of an awful fix back before Luther and I wed and I’m right certain he had a hand in helping Calven get away from that evil feller they called Pook.”

The old woman fell silent, her eyes distant, gazing into memory. At last she roused herself and turned to speak.

 “I been studying on things my Granny Beck told me many a year ago. She said that time was . . . in the old days the crossing betwixt one world and another was more frequent and seldom remarked upon. Not much was thought of it if the Little People—them the Cherokee called Yunwi Tsundi --sheltered a child for a night. . . or a year. . .  those of the other world walked among us. And a man might walk in and out of Time.”

What is this? She doesn’t sound quite like herself. She sounds like she’s dreaming or as if someone-something?—is speaking through her. Though heaven knows, some of those stories she’s told me up in the graveyard. . .I wonder. . .

“What did he want? Now I couldn’t rightly say. He’s a nice spoken someone and we had a little visit. He was asking about my arthuritis and how was Dor’thy and Calven. Just a-chit-chatting, you know. He said he’d taken a notion to see me again, something about. . .what was the word. . . mitzy ? . . .something foreign. Then he hopped up and was off just before you come, saying he had other visits to make before dark.”

“Now, I see that look on your face. Don’t you fret none—not about that feller nor about my rememberer. I know what I know and Mr. Aaron ain’t never brought me nothing but good. He's been what you might call a guardian angel.”

The old woman stood, straightening up and taking a few tentative steps. She stretched out a gnarled hand, flexing her fingers and rotating her wrist.

“What’s more, honey, I believe that old arthuritis done gone off with him. I feel right peart now.”

 

NOTE:Jake Aaron, or later Jay Caron, pops up several times in my writing. He first shows up in Lydy’s tale (In a Dark Season) as a pack peddler Lydie meets in an inn just before the Civil War.

In Day of Small Things—spanning almost a century in the telling—Mr. Aaron’s a peddler with a mule, a mysterious someone with a car and driver, and a retiree living in a gated community.

He’s in Crows—at the beginning and at the end.

And, in an unpublished short story I’ve written. he’s an artist living in present day Marshall.

I don’t think I’m done with him yet . . . or maybe, he’s not done with me.

And while I’m talking wo0-woo (paranormal stuff,) I’m reminded of James Suttles who makes a present day appearance in In a Dark Season and helps out Sim in Crows. Could be a descendant/ancestor thing but on the other hand . . . (cue Twilight Zone theme music.)

 

Miss Birdie's Christmas Memories--a repost

 

Why, how proud I am to see you here on Christmas Eve! Come on in and get you a chair.

Oh, my, is this some of your cranberry bread? I’ll have it for breakfast tomorrow before Bernice’s boy comes after me – I’ll be eating Christmas dinner with them like I always do.

You like my little tree? Don’t it smell like the woods? It ain't but a little cedar that sprung up in the old pasture over yon –they ain't not good for much but they do make a nice Christmas tree. Them little bows is from ribbons I saved from Christmases back of this and I made the paper chain with color pages out of magazines. That feller at the dumpsters is good to save me magazines with lots of bright pictures.  How my Cletus used to love making them chains – one year he made one so long that we looped it round the tree and just kept going all round the room.

No, we didn’t have Christmas trees when I was growing up. My mama was a widder and she didn’t have the money nor the spirit to make anything much of Christmas time. And she had quit going to church when my daddy was kilt. So Christmas was mostly just another day – except . . .

Except this one time I remember – back when my Granny Beck had first come to live with us. I was the least un and all the others had married and moved off. So it was just the three of us, Granny Beck and Mama, and me. My granny, oh, she was the sweetest thing – she was crippled bad with arthuritis and couldn’t hardly walk but me and her was best friends. She told me stories of all kinds – Cherokee stories about the Yunwi Tsundi – that’s the Little People in the woods-

Oh, yes, Granny Beck’s mama was full blood Cherokee. And her mama’s daddy, he had told my granny all manner of Cherokee tales when she was little. She passed them on to me, alongst with Bible stories like David and Goliath and old Noah and his ark. And stories about Jack the Giant Killer and his rascally ways.  She told me about Santy Claus and his reindeer too and Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus in the stable.  Ay, law, her and me had us a time . . .

But this one Christmas Eve, she told me that iffen I was to go out to the barn at midnight, I’d find the old cow and the mule kneeling because the critters in that stable long ago had kneeled to do honor to the baby Jesus.

Why, yes, I did go and look. Me and Granny Beck shared a room and she had told me the story and promised to wake me when it was near midnight. My mama was hard asleep – she took some medicine in those days that was so strong she’d sometimes fall asleep right at the table. She didn’t hold with stories and Granny always waited till Mama was somewheres else or sound asleep one to go to story-telling.

 Law, I remember it as good as if it was yesterday –  slipping out the door and hurrying to the barn in naught but my night shift and Granny Beck’s shawl. There weren’t no snow but the ground was froze hard and my breath was like smoke wreathed around my head. They had been a hard frost and it seemed like I could hear little ringing sounds all round. And the sky, oh the sky! The sky was just as clear and the stars – law, how bright they were – like great golden lamps shining down from Heaven. You don’t see skies like that no more along of all them old security lights folks put up.

 But I was telling you about the barn. It was some warmer in there and the smell of the critters and their manure seemed to make it even warmer and homely-like. It was dark as could be but I had brought a little battery lantern we had and when I opened the stall door and mashed the button, the first thing I saw was the bright gold of the hay in the manger and for a minute . . . now you’ll laugh at me . . . for a minute I thought I saw a little hand waving and I was just as sure as anything that it was Baby Jesus.

Just like Granny Beck had said, old Poll the cow and old Nell the mule was kneeling down and I stood there all amazed, kindly like them shepherds Granny Beck had told me of, the ones the great shining angel came down and spoke to.

Of course, I was just a young un and so ready to believe . . . I almost didn’t go forward, thinking that was I to turn off the lantern and go back to the house, Baby Jesus would still be there and I could hold that memory in my heart forever, rather than finding out it was a trick of the light or some such.

But at last I had to look. I held my breath and crept forward betwixt the cow and the mule to look in the manger. . . 

Let me wipe off my glasses on my apron – they’ve got fogged up somehow. . . 
You get to be my age, honey, and so much that you loved is gone . . . but for the memories. I picture it like walking down a long hallway and they's doors on both sides. I can go down a ways and find Cletus, cutting a shine over some new playtoy, or I can go back a mite farther and find Luther and me on a certain snowy night  . . .

Course, there's some doors I don't never open -- those lead to the bad memories -- but this one about my Christmas with Granny Beck is mostly all good. 

So this was the way of it. I tiptoed up to the manger and shone my battery lantern on the hay, dreading to find that what I’d thought was Baby Jesus a-waving at me was a possum or some other varmint. And lo and behold, when I got close enough to see right into the hay, I like to fell down on that hard clay floor.

There, laying in the hay, just like Baby Jesus, was a baby doll with one arm raised up. I just stood there staring, my mouth hanging open and the tears starting to come.

You see, I hadn’t never had a real doll – it was hard times, like I said, and there weren’t no money for play toys. I had made dollies out of old corn cobs that I wrapped in leaves for blankets but oh! how I had always wished I could have a real doll. And here one was, just a-waving at me.

Well, honey, I snatched that thing up and took off running for the house to show Granny Beck. I was so stirred up that I forgot to be quiet but it didn’t matter – Mama was in her bed and snoring like one thing. In the little back room, Granny Beck was setting up against her pillow, just waiting for me.

 I went straight to her. ‘Granny Beck,’ I whispered, ‘Poll and Nell was kneeling down, just like you said.’

‘I knowed they would be,’ she whispered back at me. ‘Crawl in under the covers with me, honey; you must be most froze to death.’

I crawled in beside her and showed her the baby doll.

‘And looky what was in the manger – the prettiest baby doll you ever did see – just like the ones in the wish book. Do you reckon Santy Claus could of left it for me? He ain’t never come here afore . . .’

Granny Beck put her arm around me and hugged me close. ‘Why, child,’ says she, ‘I’m as sure of it as anything . . .’

Now as I grew older, I begun to wonder how that baby doll got there. I knowed for certain it weren’t my mama’s doing and, even if somehow she had made out to order that doll, Granny Beck weren’t able to walk as far as the barn. I asked her about it a few years later -- not long before she passed away but she just said she didn’t know a thing about it. And I reckon it suits me to leave it at that.

No, I don’t have that doll anymore. I kept it hidden for a time but one day Mama found it when she was rummaging around after some old clothes. She took on something awful, saying I must have stole it. . . .  I tried to tell her how I found it but she called me a liar and a thief and threw my baby doll in the fire. I cried to see it swivel up and turn to ash. . .

Oh, honey, now don’t you cry too. I shouldn’t of told you that last part. But what you got to see is that I still have what matters . . .

I still have the memory of that night – the way the stars hung so low, the sparkle of the frost on the dead grass and the bare tree limbs, the smell of that barn stall, the sound of the critters breathing, and the wonder and the magic of it all. 

And I can still feel Granny Beck’s arm around me and how nice it felt to lay there warm beside her with my baby doll from Santa . . . ain’t no one can take that from me.

Miss Birdie and the Tamalada -- a repost

 This was six years ago, when they didn't have to worry about brutal masked thugs showing up. 

tp  

Why look who's here!  And busy as you must be on Christmas Eve. Come right in and git you a chair. You got a house full, I reckon. Rosemary and her man stopped by earlier to say howdy. What a fine gang of young uns they have -- that little Sam is shooting up like a weed and the twins are such purty little things. Smart as a whip, all of them, and not bashful a bit. That Bethy don't never see a stranger, I believe.

Rosie said as how Laurel and her feller was on the way and that Phillip's young uns was both coming too. Law, what a time you'll have!

Me? I'll be at Dor'thy's tomorrow, like always. And this year they'll be a crowd. Calven, of course, and his girlfriend and her family, all nine of them.

Oh, yes, Calven's got a girlfriend. This time I believe it's right serious. He met her at that school where he teaches--he brought her over last week and I wish you could have seen him, just as proud as a peacock when he brung her in. She's a beauty with them big dark eyes and long black hair. And just the nicest somebody. We made friends right off and when Calven told her I'd be at Dor'thy's for Christmas Day, her face just lit up. 

"Then you must come to the tamalada at my family's house tomorrow," she says and when I ask her what that is, she says it's when everybody gets together to make something called tomollys for Christmas dinner.

"Dorothy's coming," says she, "and I'd love for you to meet my grandmother. I think you two would like each other."

Well, she kept on at me and then Dor'thy called and said she'd come pick me up the next day and carry me to the Cruz's house-- they live just off 213, it turns out. "It's a kind of a working, Birdie," she says. "Like when a bunch of us would get together to make apple butter or some such. I haven't met Mariposa's folks yet, but the way things are going, I believe they're going to be family before long. Calven is plumb foolish over that girl."

So the next day, Dor'thy come by early and off we went. The Cruz's house was down a little road off the highway and you could see where they'd had a nice garden.  There was four or five vehicles parked out front and a passel of young uns running around the yard.  Dor'thy and I set there a minute, kindly shy of getting out but then the front door opens and out skips Calven's girl with the biggest smile on her face. She runs up to the truck and before you know it, we're in the house where several long tables is set up and music is playing and five or six women is all jabbering away--in Spanish, like your Julio.

"Honey," I say to Mariposa. "You'll have to tell me what to do."

She laughs and calls out to the women to hush. Then she tells them who we are and they all gather round and make us welcome. They explain that they are making tomollys to freeze for Christmas dinners. 

They most all of them speak English pretty good and I feel a lot better. Dolores, Inma, Maria, and Clarita are some of the names I catch, and then Mariposa finds me a seat at the long table between her grandmother Clarita and a little old woman all in black. I believe she was even older than me, but she was going at them tomollys like one thing.

What the folks was doing was spreading something like cornmeal mush, only thicker, on dried corn shucks that had been soaked in water. Then they put some spicy good-smelling meat that looked like pork barbecue on top of the mush and wrapped the shuck all around the filling and tied it up like a neat little package. Clarita told me that the tomollys would be  steamed afore we et them but that most of them would be put in the freezer to wait for Christmas Day. 

I tried to watch close to see what was the way of it. Clarita got me started, showing me how to spread out the mush on the smooth side of the shuck and how to put the meat in the middle.  I got the hang of folding up the package after the first two or three. My old fingers had trouble with the last part -- tying a little strip of corn shuck around the rolled up tomolly. It put me in mind of how we used to tie off a hand of baccer with a leaf--I had the knack of it back then but with the old arthuritis, my fingers ain't so nimble. 

So I would spread and dab and roll and then hand my tomolly to Clarita to tie off. We went along right good, talking about Calven and Mariposa mostly. The little woman to my other side didn't say nothing and I figgered she must be deaf for whenever I looked her way she would nod and grin at me and go right on rolling up them tomollys and tying them off too.

Dor'thy was at the other table setting between Mariposa and her mother, and she looked to be getting along just fine. I turned to say something to Clarita about that and saw that she'd gotten up and was talking to another woman who had just come in.

I finished the tomolly I was working on and waited, but now Clarita and the other woman was heading out the door. Well, thought I, what shall I do, and I began to try again to tie that little strip.

Just then a crooked little  brown hand reached over and took that tomolly and quick as quick, tied it up with a fancy little loop --prettier than what Clarita had been doing.

"I thank you kindly," I said to the little old woman in black but she just grinned and shook her head--either to say she couldn't hear me or that she didn't speak English or both. 

So I grinned back and said right loud, pointing to myself, "BIRDIE." And she nodded and patted her skinny chest and kindly whispered what sounded like Yo-landa, then motioned at me to get on with my tomolly making.

Which I did, passing them off to Yolanda to tie, and us grinning and nodding at one another like a pair of monkeys. 

By the time Clarita come back, I had a right smart pile of tomollys in front of me, all tied off as neat as could be.  "Miss Birdie," says she. "How did you manage-" and then she picked up one and looked close at it. 

"That's the way Mama used to tie hers," she said. "Too much trouble for me. How in the world. . ."

I turn to point to Yolanda but she ain't there. Nor is her chair nor the pile of finished tomollys she was working on.  Matter of fact, there ain't room for none of that for I am sitting at the end of the table and it butted up against the wall.

There ain't no way I can explain this to Clarita. So I just ask her what is her mama's name and I ain't a bit surprised when she says her mama's been gone these twenty-some years and that her name was Yolanda.

Oh, honey, at my time of life I see a lot of folks what's gone on ahead. It don't bother me at all.  But they ain't many of em as helpful as Yolanda. She was a good-natured somebody. I think we could be friends.

They made me take home several messes of tomollys for the freezer. I steamed up one yesterday and et it for dinner and it was right good. Let me send some home with you -- I reckon your crowd would enjoy them too.

And tell them all Merry Christmas--from Birdie and Yolanda.

Amory and the Wild Girl--a Miss Birdie repost

                                                              

 Now Amory was the last of his family and lived up 'Simmon Cove, in the old house where he was born. One by one his sisters had married and his brothers had gone off to Detroit, leaving Amory to care for his mama -- his daddy had died right young. And his mama was a sour sort, dragged down by the hard times she'd seen but when she took sick and couldn't hardly go, Amory cared for her better'n any daughter might have. It was one of those wasting sicknesses and she lingered on for several years, getting littler and meaner every day till she plumb swivvled up to just a little piece of hatefulness. 

Neighbors come by to try to lend a hand but she run 'em off one by one, saying Amory could do for her. And Amory would just shake his head and say she weren't no trouble and he didn't mind.

Finally the old woman passed away and all the neighbors began to hope that Amory, who weren't yet forty, might have a chance to make him some kind of a life. He was a fine-looking feller and more than one young woman made sure to take a pie or some such up to him, by way of being neighborly after his mama passed. 

But seemed like Amory weren't looking to make a match with no one. Oh, he ate them pies and the girls would find the pie tins in their mailboxes, washed clean. Some of 'em kept trying but when they got no more encouragement than a clean pie tin, at last they give it up, figgering he just weren't the marrying kind. 

 Now it fell out that a fox or some varmint was particular bold that fall after Amory's mama passed and was about to eat up every chicken in the holler. Amory had lost several young hens -- taken right from the chicken house -- and he determined to set a trap and make an end of the slaughter. "Or I'll have no eggs for breakfast nor fried chicken on Sundays," said he.

So he set him a trap right where the varmint had broke in before.  And come morning, when he hurried out to see had he done any good, he'd caught something, all right -- he could see the red fox color there against the fallen leaves. But  as he got closer, lo and behold, it weren't no fox, but a young woman, her tangled red hair blazing in the rising sun.

She was skinny and ragged and scared to death. The trap had closed on her ankle and she hadn't been able to work it loose though her white skin was bloody with the struggle.

Now this was back in the Thirties when there was all manner of tramps and hobos and wanderers -- folks whose farms had been foreclosed on and who'd taken to the road in search of someway to make a living. Amory figgered she was likely one of these and, tender-hearted as he was, he set down beside her, talking gentle as he eased the trap from her slender ankle.

"If you're hungry," says he, "come up to the house and share my breakfast, Eggs is better cooked with streaky meat and I've got cornbread a-bakin'."

She looked up at him for the longest time with her strange pale yellow-brown eyes and at last she nodded. And when he got the jaws of the trap loose and helped her to stand, she followed him like a puppy to the house. At first she balked at entering the door but Amory left it wide as he went to fixing some breakfast and by and by, in she crept. And when he set two plates on the table and took his seat, by golly, down she sat in the other chair and lit into that food like she was a starving thing.

 She was still eating while he filled a zinc washtub with water he'd heated on the stove, laid out soap and towels along with some of his mama's clean clothes, and went out to do his chores, leaving the wild girl mopping the egg yolks from her plate with a piece of corn bread.

"You'd feel better, was you clean," says he and off he went with never a thought for his few valuables. And when he come back, there she sat on her chair, scrubbed clean, hair shining like a sunrise, and wearing a pale green dress that his mama had sewed before she got so sick. And then the girl smiled at him.

Amory's heart turned over in his bosom. But he knew he must go easy and slow and he asked her did she want to stay on a while and help with the farm. "I can give you my mama's room and plenty to eat but cash is scarce just now," says he. And her eyes got wide and she looked toward the open door but then she looked back at him and smiled that smile again.

From what I heard, Amory treated her like a wild thing he was trying to gentle -- fed her and talked soft to her, and left the door half open so's she could leave ever when she wanted. 

Word got round that Amory had a woman living there with him. Of course, all them pie makers got their noses out of joint and had to traipse up there to see who it was had won over the bachelor they'd all tried for.

"They's something uncanny about her," said one, after trying to talk Amory and the wild girl into coming to church. "She don't say a word, just sets there squnched up close to Amory and him stroking that ugly red hair of hern like she was a cat. He says her name is Ruby but he don't appear to have no notion of what her last name is nor where she come from."

"I don't believe she does a lick of work around the place," said another. "Did you ever see such pale skin? And those eyes. They just ain't natural."

Well, the tale of Amory's wild girl was a nine day's wonder but by and by folks stopped talking about her. Times was hard and everyone had to tend to getting their own living without worrying about this stranger up 'Simmon Cove. And Amory had always been a solitary somebody anyway.

It weren't till sometime the next summer that Amory appeared at Granny Cutshall's house, wild-eyed and weeping. "Come quick," says he. "I believe Ruby's near her time."

Granny packed her midwife's bag and got up on the mule behind Amory and they set off at a pace she said like to have been the end of her. As they drew near the cabin, a vixen with something in her mouth dashed under the mule's nose and up into the woods but Amory didn't pay it no mind, just hauled Granny Cutshall offen that mule and towed her into the house.

The bed in Ruby's room was empty but the covers was thrown back and the sheets was all streaked with blood. Amory stood gaping then let out a cry and ran out of the cabin, calling for Ruby.

Him and Granny Cutshall searched and searched but not a sign of the wild girl did they find. Granny managed to make Amory understand that the stains on the linens was just what come with birthing -- and that sometimes women got took quare after childbirth.

"Women," says Amory. "Women sometimes do." 

And he cast a terrible look all around the slopes of 'Simmon Cove afore putting Granny back on the mule and carrying her back home.

He never was the same after that. Let the house fall down around him and let his garden grow up. He tended a big patch of field corn though to feed the mule and the great flock of chickens that he kept. Folks said that every night he'd let one of those chickens loose and set there near the edge of the woods, waiting to see did a fox come for it.

It was a few years later, folks begun to fear something had happened to Amory for his mule had come down the road, without its halter on. A few men went up to check on him but he weren't in the cabin nor the barn. 

What few chickens was left was all up in the trees, like something was after them and the men began to study the ground, looking for tracks.

"Over here," says one. "There's boot prints leading off into the woods. Maybe he's gone after whatever has the chickens so stirred up.

They found him, dead as a hammer, and curled up by a big old rock, the size of a Chevrolet truck, Gid said. Something had dug out a den under that rock -- foxes, by the rank smell of it, they said. 

There weren't a mark on Amory -- he looked to have died peaceful and happy. There was a kind of a smile on his face and wrapped around his hand was a long hank of the purtiest bright red hair you ever saw.

Miss Birdie Studies on Memorial Day--A Re-post

 

Why, Lizzie Beth, you like to give me a fright. I was just setting here thinking and didn't hear you pecking at the door. Come right on in and get you a chair.

No, I weren't here yesterday. Bernice sent her boy to bring me to Decoration Day at their cemetery over on Ridge Top. 
You know I love Decoration Day and visiting with all the Quiet Ones -- and I know a good many of them up there on Ridge Top. 

We set out flowers and they had little American flags for all the veterans, even the ones that fought in the War Between the States, which seemed kindly strange to me. And that's some of what I been setting here studying on.

There was a feller there gave a speech about how Memorial Day was started to honor the folks who died fighting for their country and how at first it was just the Union soldiers what was honored and the Confederates had a different day but then they said Memorial Day could be for both sides. Which makes sense, you know, for they all believed they was fighting for their homeland. Though some, I reckon, was fighting because they was conscripted and didn't have no choice. 

And that got me thinking. Now that they don't have the draft anymore, I guess men, and women too, sign up of their own free will -- though I've known of several troublesome young uns right here in Marshall County that the judge told them they could choose between jail and enlisting and so they joined up. 

I wonder, if those same young uns got blowed up by a land mine, would you still say they sacrificed their lives for their country? And if they got sick and died or if they got killed in an accident and not in battle, are they still heroes? 

And what about them that came back home from war but had been so ruint by what they'd done and seen that they went to drugs and ended up dead? Seems to me they ought to count as much as the others.

Oh, how I do run on. . . don't pay me no mind, Lizzie Beth. I been setting here studying on all this too long . . . thinking on how many wars there have been in my life and how many Memorial Days I've gone and stuck flags on graves. And wondering if ever there will be an end to war and these young uns going off to die.

Of course we had ought to remember them -- for their folks's sake as much as anything. When you've lost a young un, maybe it eases the hurt to hear them called heroes.

But you know what I wish? I wish that instead of planting poppies and waving flags and having picnics, some smart folks would set to and work as hard at making peace as they do at making war.