Stories
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
I arrived in late October early November in the autumn red and gold tree leaves, pumpkin pie and coffee. My army job started at six in the morning and I was done and out of there by two in the afternoon. This left me all the rest of the day and into the evening to hang around in the city.
Took a city bus from out on the road along the National Cemetery, across the river where immediately was the white marble Lincoln Memorial, the tree lined Reflecting Pool, the Egyptian obelisk shaped George Washington monument and the back of the White House. Always in civilian clothes I began by going to museums, cafeterias for supper, small diners for pumpkin pie and coffee.
And I began to smoke a pipe but have no idea why or how that got started. I made a special study of it, beryl and meerschaum but quit and back to cigarettes arriving in Greece, and back to pipes on my European tour.
And I would sit on park benches or in the grass under trees and read. But I was always alone. No one of my fellow GIs thought what I did was interesting, just walk or sit and look. Watch the world whirl by. For instance I might watch a beggar asking for money on the street. And noticed it was almost all poor people who gave him money, never the rich or even modest. So I wondered about that - what was the psychology ? and began my studies in street psychology.
That was the sort of thing I was looking for. What makes people evil ? And there were characters in the army, people trained to kill, but I only knew clerks and could discern no evil. And they didn't ask why, they just followed orders, and they were anti-communists and the only good commie was a dead commie. A rather evil generalization. But they were all such nice guys.
(2 of 16)
Next Page
