Ted Getzel Works

Louie #5

(1951- I am about 5)

He brought an ‘03 and M - 1

To teach a lesson to his son.

Now

I know

He was torn apart

By guilt and pride within his heart.

Louie was always the family engineer and mechanic. With six brothers and sisters he was always, busy. He had a native genius for repairing and building anything. If something didn’t work he’d take it apart and put it back together and it was fixed. It seemed like every weekend of my childhood was spent at an aunt’s or uncle’s house watching my father work.

Me: Why don’t you teach me how to fix cars?

Louie: Over my dead body! You’re going to use your head and not your hand to make a living!

So I would watch him and occasionally he would let some nugget of his knowledge slip when I asked a direct question, but not very often. He didn’t want me to make the mistakes in life that he felt he had made.

It was a hot sunny day at Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Joe’s little attached house in Middle Village, Queens, New York. Middle Village was a product of the post World War 2 building boom, though it was within the city’s limits it had the feel of the suburbs, trees (though very small ) lining the newly laid down street grids, gravel driveways leading to carports , or in the case of the single family houses at the corners garages, and front and back yards, many filled with swing sets. Sylvia and Joe had no children of their own, so when we visited they spent a lot of energy spoiling me and my brother George, mainly through showering us with treats and attention. Sylvia once taught me how to fry an egg, knowledge I still use to this day. They also put a lot of their energy into turning their yards into gardens. The front yard had a, then, exotic mimosa tree at the center of a tiny lush lawn which was surrounded by a manicured hedge.

Louie: I hate damn hedges.

Me: Why?

Louie: I’ll tell you when you’re older.

The back yard was divided front to back by a landscaped hill created by the developer that separated it into an upper and a lower level. After a year or two of weather the hill was starting to erode and look ugly. My uncle Joe decided he needed a retaining wall with steps in the middle to allow easy access to the upper yard.

I watched my father and a crew of relatives dig the deep trench that would become the wall’s footing. Sweat flew from my father as he out worked everyone else. When the excavation was three and a half feet deep,

Louie: It’s gotta go below the frost line or it will heave in the winter.

My father pounded steel reinforcing rods into the ashy subsoil; in between the rods they added a layer of gravel and small stone.

Louie: It’ll be as strong as the Siegfried Line.

Then they started mixing bags of cement and gravel in a big metal l tub.

Me: I want to help!

They made a little crater in a mound of cement, handed me the hose, and told me to fill the depression to the top with water. I did it just like they told me. I felt so---big. I watched as the mixed the slurry with hoes. Then they shoveled it into a wheelbarrow, rolled it across the yard, and tipped into the foundation. After a good bit of concrete had been mixed and laid, my father grabbed my right hand. I looked up at him.

Louie: Come walk out to the car with me: I have something important I want you to help me with.

Hand in hand we walked down the graveled driveway towards the shiny gray, Oldsmobile Super 88 parked at the curb in front of the house. I loved how the gravel felt through the soles of my sneakers and started to drag my feet to accentuate the sensation.

Louie: Come on now; I told you this was important.

I started high stepping. We went to the back of the car. My father unlocked the trunk and raised the lid. There were two green Army blankets wrapped around what I guessed were guns. Louie bent over and undid the blanket to the left. I was right. It was one of his army rifles. Its oiled wooden stock glinted in the early afternoon sun. I looked at it and then up at my father in awe.

Louie: That’s one of my war souvenirs. Called a Springfield ’03. Bolt action –they used it in the first war, and reissued it to us at the beginning of the second war,

He unwrapped the second blanket.

Louie: That’s my M-1. Semi-automatic. No bolt like the Springfield. Just pull the trigger and it fires; when they faced us the Germans though we all had machine guns. Not as accurate as that ’03. We kept the 03’s for sniping. I want you to help me carry these to the backyard. I nodded.

Louie leaned the rifles against the big gleaming chrome back bumper of the Olds and slammed the trunk lid closed.

Louie: You carry the M-1.

He picked up the rifle and laid it in my outstretched arms. It was very heavy, like my tricycle, but I never had to carry that. He picked up the Springfield, with its long scope and barrel like it was a feather and walked slowly back up the driveway. Even though he was walking very slowly I struggled under my burden to keep up.

Me: It’s so heavy.

Louie: Guns are always heavy no matter how strong you think you are.

He swung the ’03 over his left so it hung by its strap against his back. He bent sideways and with his right hand took some of the weight of the M-1.

Louie: Keep holding it I need your help.

We walked all the way to the edge of the trench like that. We stopped. He lifted the M-1 from my grasp and threw it into the hole. Then he slipped the Springfield off his shoulder and tossed it in as well. The guns settled part way down in the wet concrete. Everyone, my brother George, my cousin Stuart, Uncle Joe and Uncle Charlie stopped what they were doing and just stared. Louie went over and got the wheelbarrow, filled with concrete, rolled it to the lip of the excavation and poured the contents over his souvenirs. Engines of death he wanted me not to know any more about. He turned towards me.

Louie: Listen. There are these people called archeologists. There job is to dig in the ground and find things that people made and used a long time ago. I hope in a thousand years from now, some archeologists dig up those rifles and ask: what were these things used for?