NUMBER ONE: WINSTON CHURCHILL’S ACCOUNT OF WORLD WAR TWO 

This set of six books, each over 500 pages, describes the main developments of The Second World War, and is appropriately titled just that. When I first read these books about ten years ago my main motive was to learn about the war which I lived through as a child. Now I am starting to re-read these volumes, mostly because I have found that I do not remember those events well at all. After re-reading them I would like to share with you a sort of “short” account of what Lord Churchill had to say. I had the privilege years ago of visiting Churchill’s grave next to the family’s Blenheim Palace near-bye to Oxford, England. You might like to know that Churchill wrote many books along with guiding England to victory in the Second World War.  

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            The first volume published in this series of books, published in 1949, is entitled Their Finest Hour, and serves as an overview of the British people’s experience of the war during the four or five years of its continuance. It records how France fell to the Germans, how the British withstood the years of the “blitz” bombing of London by the Germans, and how the rise of Germany affected the surrounding world of the Mediterranean Sea, including North Africa. This book is meant to stand as a tribute to the British people for their courageous stand against Nazism. It is odd but this book reads as if it were a full account of World War Two, but it serves more as an introduction to the rest of the series, as a brief survey of some of its early developments.               

Actually, the set of books begins with Volume Two (first published in 1948) is entitled The Gathering Storm and describes the British struggle to take its place amidst the against several years of Nazi air attacks, especially on London. It gets its title from Churchill’s belief that the rise of Adolph Hitler was the source of the evil perpetrated upon the world in this war. The British public’s endurance and survival during the war was absolutely remarkable. They simply refused to give up to the Nazi warlords. Their homeland and major city, London, were almost completely demolished by the Nazi air-raids over a period of several years in what is known as “The Blitz”.  The Nazis forces forged their way across Western Europe, conquering France, as well as dominating the and chased the Brits fighting there to the sea at Dunkirk from whence hundreds of thousands were miraculously rescued by thousands of British ships of all sorts in the fog and taken back to England.

            Hitler soon conquered France and offered Britain a peace which they straight-way refused. France split into a minority government, which in order to save themselves from extinction surrendered to the Nazis plague, while others followed General De Gaulle and joined with the Brits. The Brits withstood several years of constant Germany air attacks and ultimately the Germans stopped their incessant bombing raids. Things remained terrible all around the Mediterranean region, including North Africa and the Egyptian desert. Fortunately, the conflict in the North African desert ended with a temporary victory for the British in 1941. But Hitler’s Germany continued to grow and threaten its surrounding countries.  

NUMBER TWO: MPORTANT CITIZENS OF MY HOMETOWN

            When I was a young kid back around 1940 in Bellingham, Washington there were several well-known citizens of our little city that nearly everyone knew but without really knowing. One was Arthur a guy who sold newspapers at the main intersection every day. He had a kind of shack/stand where he kept the papers and himself dry as he hobbled around the corner. Arthur had some sort of palsy issue that made him almost unable to talk and limp around as he sold his papers. He hardly ever spoke to anyone but was always friendly in his way.

            Then there was Charlie, a Black man who shined shoes in the leading barbershop near the same corner. Charlie was the only Black person in our whole town of 33, 000 people. He was friendly enough, but no one ever really engaged him in conversation as he shined their shoes. No one I knew ever had any idea where Charlie lived, or even where he ate. He received his tips for shining men’s shoes while they were getting their haircut, but I never saw anyone engaged in conversation with him.

            On a completely different note, there was Joe Martin who ran a small shoe-repair store from which he also owned and managed the local semi-pro baseball team, the Bellingham Bells. His place always smelled heavily of shoe polish and his hands were always stained from it, too. Joe was a man of few words, but his teams almost always won the State Semipro Baseball Championship and his shop where he sold all sorts of sports equipment was always crowded and successful.

            Then there was Nick Nickerson who all by himself sponsored Nick Nickerson Sports Teams for young men of high school age. It seems that he would gather guys who had just barely not made the high school basketball and baseball teams, suit them up in uniforms he had paid for himself, and enter them in the appropriate city sponsored leagues. His teams almost always won their yearly championships in their green and gold uniforms. The puzzle is, none of us who were aware of Nick’s teams ever knew who he was or why he sponsored his teams. His so-called “Boys Club” never held any meetings or even had a meeting place.

            The coach of the Fairhaven Junior High located on the South Side of town, where most of the Slavic people lived, was Jim McCarten. His school was smaller and received less money for equipment and facilities, but Jim was resourceful, and they always won more games than they were supposed to against the larger Junior Highs in and around our small town. He often had to repair the team’s uniforms and equipment in his basement. Nevertheless, his teams always had to be reckoned with, and a couple of years they actually won the County Basketball Championship.

     In our small, quiet town we really only had one Police person. I am sure there were others, but we never saw any of them. The one we saw and dreaded rode around town on a three-wheeled motorcycle marking the tires on parked cars so he could later see if they had been over-parking. Our parking cop’s name was “Morse” and that is all we ever knew about him. Sometimes we would try to erase the chalk marks off our tires and thereby avoid getting a parking ticket. I once saw Morse beat up on an old fellow who was being accused of drunkenness. I never knew of anyone else getting a ticket for anything other than overparking.