Red brick building just outside Madison
empty now, might’ve been an auto repair shop once. “Hinman 1935”
read some arched letters incised over its door. Cool, dark
cavernous depths in summer, a dusty,
oiled black floor. Where men worked,
maybe brothers. Grease-stained fingernails
Ivory never would’ve done.
Clamped Camels between
thin smoking lips after supper…listen
marbles, hopscotch, a fat-tired bicycle
bounces past, streamers, clothes-pins
rat-a-tat.
The men work on a Woody, Franklin, a Model T,
radio tuned to the crackle of Game. Everyone shuffles around
it after work. Girls wear strapless sun-dresses, sunburn. Lemonade’s spiked.
Sweaty undershirts. Pinochle champeens.
***
kids gambol through dusk, chasing fire-flies,
Mason jars. Before we entered the second World War.
Before the oldest veterans who marched in the Parade
fought brother against brother 1865.
Before the Great Western Turnpike was dotted with
rusty yellow-blue battle signs to tell the tale. “Hinman 1935” explicit, simple.
Before gasoline cost 25 cents a gallon.
Before when dogs caught rabies,
children, polio.
Across the ocean, genocide. Families starved in camps. Extermination.
My grandfather secreted antibiotics between boxed, dried beans he sent. He searched
Germany for his wife’s Jewish physician, his friend, Doktor Wolff
who delivered my mother at their home, his best buddy
he got drunk with after in celebration after.