Our Town
My first experience in literature was Poppa reading aloud to me when I was six years old. While to some, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe may not be great literature; it is what set my imagination on fire at an early age.
I can’t recall Poppa reading and acting every character out. All I know is that when he began a chapter each night, I was transported to Narnia, the magical land within the book. I would spend the rest of my life having a passionate and personal relationship with all kinds of books, and Poppa would too. I nary recall a time when he didn’t have a book cracked open. After Mother died, he rarely read the newspaper, but instead retreated into the magical world of books.
Poppa was always a showman, often reciting aloud a paragraph in a book he would be reading. It always captivated me.
I went to high school on 46th Street in Manhattan. The High School of Performing Arts. I recall one year for the senior play, they chose Our Town, by Thornton Wilder. When I told Poppa, a nostalgic sadness overcame him.
“What’s wrong Poppa?” I asked.
“C’mere,” he said, and walked me to the bookcase. He pulled out a tattered, stained and folded copy of Our Town.
I reached out to touch it, but he held it just out of my reach.
“I carried this copy of Our Town with me throughout the war.”
“Why?” I asked.
He looked upon me, wondering if he could trust me with the story. I was only fifteen.
“I loved theatre, something I doubt you understand,” he said as he carefully replaced the play in between two books.
“Thanks a-lot, “ I responded.
He acquiesced. “The play was poignant and it made me love drama. Not like today, where it’s all action. This was about the human condition. Marvelous.”
He sat, forgetting momentarily about the dreadful tasting casserole he intended to prepare for dinner. “Perhaps it was a slice of American life in my back pocket at all times, it was a reason to hang on, long before I knew you were coming. Anyway, one night, before the jump (referring to D-day) I was in my bunk, reading the play. A few guys were sitting nearby playing cards and it was pretty quiet. One of the guys, I wish I could recall his name, asked me if I wanted to play. I waved them off. This was Our Town I was reading!
None of them had heard of it, and I explained that it was a famous Thornton Wilder play. Now you have to remember that we were all American, but television hadn’t been invented yet. We listened to the radio in those days, and while I listened to theatre, most of these guys listened to the farm reports.”
“Hey Hartman,” the dealer called out, “Why don’t you act it to us?”
“I sat up in my bunk to read aloud; slowly, from ‘Lights up.’ I began with the stage directions, and then the dialogue. I played each part and soon, cards were set aside, and they were watching me as I read. As the pages turned, it grew later and more of the guys were returning, each new entrance hushed by the previous GI who now stood listening to this marvelous piece of American literature being read aloud.”
“The guys were hanging to the side of bunks, lying back staring into the air -- for a moment creating the setting in their minds as I took them home for a short time. I can still recall it clear as day. All boys. God we were boys, some of us no more than 21. All of us homesick, and expected to be men. But they listened like patrons at a fine Opera house.
I never finished the play that night. I stopped after Act One promising to continue another time. When we jumped a few days later I had it in my pack.
The card player was a boy from Nebraska. He didn’t survive D-day. I knew because I had to radio in the deaths. I knew his name at the time, but the names have faded, but I will never forget them, I don’t want you to think that, I can recall every guy. I still feel badly that I didn’t finish reading the play that night -- for him. No life should be ended without experiencing something great in one’s imagination.”
“I did finish reading to two of the guys though. Up in the bulge. One night in a trench. We didn’t think we’d make it out alive and we were scared. One of the guys who’d been there the first night I read asked me to act aloud again.”
“I read Our Town as the shelling came. It was our prayer. We survived the night with Thornton Wilder.”
“I sometimes wonder if any of those guys became as enthralled with the theatre as I was.”
I can only imagine those soldiers transported, as I was by Poppa’s lyrical voice, to a wonderful place far away.