"Hot damn. Hot damnation."
That's going to be MY country.
D A M N A T I O N
(It will say that on the maps.)
(In an arc across some place.)
(I'm not saying where, because I know there aren't that many places.)
I think we will make it pink. I like pink on maps. I don't like green or yellow, on them.
And the State Seal will be flames in a circle.
Curling, cracklin......... FLAMES IN A CIRCLE!
I LIKE IT!!
You know, they already used Dalmatia, when they could have used Damnation. Dummies. Dalmation Dummies. Those guys.
WE Damnites would always be causing trouble. See? Then people like the Dalmations would always be slamming their fists on the table, saying, "Damnation!"
We could have a submarine. An old one. It would scare other nations. Maybe take one over, we need for the map. It (the submarine) would be painted with a lot of flames on the side and the flag, and all. Then when it sank, or submerged I mean, we could use a waterproof PA speaker to go "sssssssssssssss".
Maybe let off a little steam.
That would be pretty easy to rig up.
I think that would scare people. Dalmatians, anyway.
Drying the submarine to paint it, though ~ that could be hard.
TARNATION would be another possibility. Nation Name. We'd be Tartars. Or Tarts, maybe. Our Tarnation sub would be gooey and super-waterproof. And we would run aground on people's beaches.
"Tarnation!"
Dalmatia has a coast, I think, and we could start on them. We could say they started it. Like this: "They said, 'Don't start with me.' And we couldn't take it."
And, "We put the tar in start."
That'll fix em.
I wonder what the gear shift, in a submarine, looks like. Certainly be a bad thing to grind. Or lose your clutch. WhirGRRRRRrzzzzp! Bang! "Grind it til it fits, Honey."
It would be fun to go to the Science Museum up in City? Where they have the submarine, on display, in the Port? And get a Grinding Gears tape, and play it outside.
"Brrrrrrriikkk aaak brrrrrkkk ackak kkkkuhhhppupp."
They already HAVE a tape of the engine. When you go in, to the sub, there is a humming going on; and it's coming from the engine room. Heh heh. I said, you're not running the engines heh heh, and they said no, it's a tape. With some speakers back there under the peedo tubes. Well! Wait til they find out what's playing outside! They don't spend the night in there, so we could put it on a timer, and when they closed at 5 it would stop, at 430, and we could go on for months before they caught us. Turnaround is fair play! "We demand a stop to the engine tape!" What could they say?
It was a submarine in a movie. It played a submarine in a movie. Pretty slick, after all the casting failures.
Oh. Red October. It was THAT submarine.
I once designed a boat, for the same Harbor. It was pretty similar, but it looks like a potato. I have a picture of it on the wall here; right over there. It's NOT a potato; it's a secret thing. I'm not going to tell what it is. The top-back of it glows, and that wouldn't be a potato.
I worked for YEARS as a top weapons designer for Damnation.
Think I'm going to let something slip?
I guess not.
You ever hear of "Thundering Tarnation?" That was me too.
Me and some speakers.
So we coast in to Dalmatia. The Coasters. Our ship, the sub, with the flames, is The Coaster Oven
"Dive! Dive!"
Tsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss !
Or we beach the Tarbaby, take your choice.
I have a nautical hat.
It has a lighthouse on the top.
Fully operational lighthouse.
I think it fits my stigma. I mean stature. Whatever. Station.
"He's brilliant."
"A beacon."
"Lost in the fog."
I wonder why Captains never thought of doing that? Huh? I suppose head-room. Rats.
I met a lady, Eleanor, ninety two years old, and she told me that short people worked on airplanes. That on the carrier decks and landing fields, they chose shorter people to dash out and work under the airplanes, because they didn't have to bend over. All day. (It's harder for tall people, to bend over all day. Or at all, for that matter, if the short people don't have to.) I never knew this. Really. It makes perfect sense, which is why I never thought it would be an Army Air Corps operation. But apparently they also chose smaller people as gunners and such, too. Hmm. Really very sensible. Hmm.
We got on that subject, sore backs from bending over, because I was working in the garden.
I told her, "I LIKE old people." I hope that wasn't a mistake. She seemed to know what I meant, though.
I met a guy, while I was inside the B-17 last month, an older visitor to the field, who stood beside the bomb racks. I was in the fuselage behind the bomb bay, and he was looking up in there, with his gorgeous fox of a thank-god-his-genes-survived movie-star type grand daughter.
He was swinging his arms up into the bay, sizing out how the bombs went in. I watched as he zipped backwards 50 years in time. I saw him looking at the plane's spaces, up there and over here; all the ghosts and holes and miracles and bloody goddam horror.
Six pretty small bombs was the entire payload for the crew of ten.
Ten.
Six five-hundred pounders.
Smaller than a washing machine.
She seems stunned, really, by the tiny space. That it flew into combat, with people and bombs inside. With no protection. Only guns. There was no armor; they could only shoot to survive.
"We mostly loaded incendiaries," he tells her. "We could get thirty in here." They were a lot smaller. He sizes the bomb-racking changes from beneath the bomb doors, with his hands drawing alignments in the bay. "We dropped on cities and factories."
He set fire to a shitload of Germany.
He finally saw me watching, and I felt a little silly; so I said, "You were there." (Duh.)
(Duh, Paul.)
"I was there."
He looks so old. It was so long ago. And it's still Right There, in his life. Of course.
He can't climb up into the plane. I'm not sure he wants to.
His grand daughter is awestruck. That anyone was brave enough to do this. Anyone of thousands; and especially, now, her grandfather. She has seen some of what he did.
He is wearing a brown leather aviator jacket, collar touching perfect silver hair; and from here, it looks like she is saying goodbye to him.
Maybe she feels that way too; as though he may go and never come back, and thank god he is back; back already.
She knows her grandmother more, now, too.
Well, I know it's corny, tacky even, but I stuck out my hand. He stepped over and shook it. I dare say we had an understanding. A certain amount of gratitude, was understood. From some people he didn't know; some people, vague and general; but people he did it for. And now, here some are, years later, sharing his plane, and thanking him.
It was as close as we could come to going with him.
"Wanna climb up here and have sex?" I yelled to his grand daughter. |
