Book #41 which is Also Book #42. All the questions and answers in the universe.

Before I go on and on let me be clear. I liked this astoundingly creative and inspired book a lot. Also, by reading it I felt initiated into a circle of smarty-pants who finds this philosophical smart funny stuff funny. 

Seriously though, 5 books of the series all in one volume were a little hellacious. It felt like being forced to eat a whole big container of popcorn when you had enough after two handfuls. I liked it but not so much of it that I couldn’t put it down. So much was happening (Earth is destroyed; no it isn’t; we find out who created the Earth and why and that’s just 3 of the 1000 stories that dance psychedelically across the pages.  Wait, I have another analogy. At times I felt like the sober person stuck in a room with a blabbering tripping person whose stories’ ability to hold my attention waxes and wanes. So that’s why I’m counting this book as 2 books. Besides that it’s poetic for this book to land on #42 because. Because you know the answer if you read the book. I can’t explain it. If I tried you’d just shake your head and wince a little.

500 pages into the book and I can’t read another page.

I decide right then and there to move the dining room from the kitchen to the formal dining room that I’d been using for an office. I disassemble and move and reassemble and sweep and mop and throw things away.

Then I moved all the other furniture in the living room around, cleaned the refrigerator, and cooked dinner. After that I spent many hours HOLDING the book while watching Orphan Black, Kitchen Nightmares, Devious Maids, Nurse Jackie on On Demand.

I just don’t want to open the book up. I just don’t. So I carry it here and there and read a few pages and a few more and make it to page 550.

A student comes by my office and asks how the book is going.

I’m stuck, I say. I want to care but these characters are faceless to me, they’re scurrying across time and space and I’m hoping one of them explodes soon. Or something happens. Because there’s too much but then there’s nothing, it’s chaos.

He nods. What part of the book are you on?

I start to answer then…. I can’t. I’d have to have the book in front of me to know.  I passed the mice, the whale thing, the towel part and Marvin the robot just did a bad thing.

He nods. Keep reading.

I do.

I finish the book and feel like I tackled something big. This is a great book and if you want a big fat book to keep you busy for a month (or a long long weekend) you won’t regret taking this book with you because you can put it down, pick it up, put it down. And it doesn’t make you cry. That’s a bonus.  Other books I’ve read have held me so rapt that I wanted to scream at anyone interrupting my journey through the story.  I cried through the last 10 pages of The Book Thief. I sobbed in my daughter’s arms after finishing the Fault in Our Stars. I read parts of Unwind to people and quoted Tina Fey for days. I cried 10 times during The Shack -- silent, hot tears of grief and joy.

I loved those books, and most of the other books I’ve read because they moved me.

I liked this book.

Now that I’m done I don’t want to write anything (and OH the grading I have to do, and the file moving stuff for an online mandate and that kind of fun) I want a book to love. 

Rough Draft #27: Colon Chester Moore

Colon Chester Moore was born on July 9^th, 1921 in Telogia, Fl. He grew up with his mother and father, C.P and Leona Moore, his three brothers Clifton, Clayton, Cleveland, and his sister Clearcy May. They all lived in Hosford, which is a small little area outside of Tallahassee. He spent a lot of his childhood in Tallahassee.

 However, on August 24^th, 1942 Colons life went from normal to anything but. He was drafted into World War II. He said that he was very sad when he got the news, because he did not want to leave his family or his home. Sadly, he had no choice. Eventually he came to the conclusion that going to war was just what had to happen, and he got used to the idea and became accustomed to a new life.

                  After Colon packed his bags and said his goodbyes, he was sent off to training. He was selected to go through a telephone and telegraph school for 8 weeks. This actually paid off in a good way. He then was placed into the AAA gun battalion. He was trained in Virginia first and then in Iceland to shoot at the enemy aircrafts with 90mm guns that shot 10 miles up into the air. 

The men he trained with along with himself had never done anything like this before. He said that the good thing about being an AAA gunner was that they were very protected. The reason they were so protected was because they worked with very expensive guns, tanks, and other equipment; so needless to say, they wanted the utmost protection for that expensive gear.

 His outfit (group) was actually the very first to get the radars that were able to find planes much more efficiently. Colon says that the reason he thinks he was selected to work in this section of the army was because he went to the telephone and telegraph school, so he thinks that saved his life from being in the much more dangerous positions of the war. He was the only person in his boatload of draftees that was put in the position he was given because knowing telephone information was a scarcity at the time.

                  Then he went to Europe to get advanced training. There was a camp in England and Wales. His outfit was sent there to do further training and stayed there for about two months. They were trained by older soldiers who had had plenty of experience in war. This all took place before the invasion of France. He said that along the banks of an ocean (he couldn’t remember which one), laid the camp, and they would do practice shooting with phony aircrafts flying over them. In Iceland, they slept in big barracks that would hold about 100 men.  In England, they had building built for the soldiers to stay in. He said that England was well prepared to train soldiers.  Colons outfit invaded Northern France, Central Europe, and Germany.

                  Although he was not directly involved with concentration camps, he did speak of one sad memory he had. He and his outfit were patrolling around and came across a small hut. They opened the hut and out came many war prisoners. He said they were about starved to death, pure skeletons. So they loaded them up onto trucks and drove them into a small town nearby. 

There was a big café and a big store. Their captain sent a few of them to the stores and said “you go down there, and get every bit of food in that grocery store, and in that café to feed these people.” The owners of the store were yelling and telling them that they were not allowed to do that and the soldiers responses was “You watch us!” Colon then explained how the Germans had tons of pits where they would dispose of the bodies. He said “Those Germans, they were some mean people..”

                  Colon said that the soldiers were encouraged to write to their families by the officers and command. They wanted the best for their soldiers given the circumstances. After all of the war and invasions, it was about time to come to an end. Sooner or later, the head of command gave great news. “No more war.” Colon said that each month the commanders of each outfit were given rations of food and whiskey. They saved up all of the whiskey for this exact moment. Colon said “they saved all that stuff until the war was over, and we had us a big party!

 They parked all of the equipment and guns and then they went to a small town in Europe that they had locations for the soldiers to live in after war. Colon said that they just lived like normal civilians for about 3 or 4 months after war. He said it was good living and good food. The town was not bombed because it didn’t have any military facilities so it was not worth bombing. He said it may have been called “Wiesbaden” but he isn’t totally sure.

                  Colon was honorably discharged and awarded with a good conduct medal and a victory metal. After a few months in Europe he returned home to Florida, reunited with his family, and eventually got married.

                 

Comments: Add sources/citations  and more specific dates/units where you can. Also, make it clear if this is fact/fiction.

                 

                 

                  

Rough Draft #26: The One With a Guys Named Rico and Sway

When it came to flying, no one could catch us. We were all so young and no one ever expected anything from any of us. Just a bunch of kids from Brooklyn, ending up in shit hole Tallahassee. I tell you what, when I joined the force and they told all of us we were headed to Florida; I expected beaches and babes not farms and rednecks. But anyway, enough of me.  I’m only an eighth of who I am and whom I represent. I’m a Cosmo, a group of the most elite Air Force Squads of not only WWII, but to date.

Billy

Rico

Sway

Lester

Derek

Dean

Franky

Darryl

When we were first sent to Tallahassee, they put us all on janitorial duty of the women’s college close to where we were stationed. They never trusted us with the planes there, but we couldn’t really blame them. When we first got there, there were only twelve planes.. Could you believe that? 

They tell us we’re being sent to “Dale Mabry Army Airfield” we get there, and all they have is twelve planes?! So we took the shit for a while

(Here talk about all the training (secret) and hardships)

We were just working regular midnight detail. Other than the couple security guards at the front gate, we were really the only people on the airfield. It was just a regular Sunday night. 

All of sudden the one horn we have on the airfield goes off for the first time ever. The ground starts shaking and all of sudden, we can see planes flying through the air. We run out of the women’s school and head straight for the planes. 

The whole city is under attack by the time we get there and all we can see is red lines flying from the planes shredding through the barns all across Tallahassee. With the security guard tower destroyed, it was only the eight of us left on the airfield, with everyone back at their homes for the Sunday night sleep out (the only night the base was left semi unguarded) but no one ever expected any sort of attack.

(Talk about actual fight and how the Cosmos defeat all the intruders and save Tallahassee.)

Comments: This needs to based on history, and I don't recall an invasion of Tallahassee during WW2, 

Rough Draft #25: The One That Ends Before the Climax

Stand Tall

As a young man growing up during the mid 1930’s, in Orlando, Florida, I knew it was just a matter of time before I received the dreadful notification of ‘Boot Camp” for World War II. Yes, not to fight in any old war, but rather to fight in a global war. And, to make matters worse, I thought to myself, my name, Jeremy Tall, could possibly end up on the causality list! I was scared out of my mind but I knew that I was not alone.

 There would be thousands of men and women called to serve as soldiers and they too, were potential candidates on the causality list. If only I could fast forward in time, I would have never imagined that over 75 million people would be on that list.  Human beings died from starvation, bombings, diseases, and genocide. I’m fortunate that I’m alive to tell my story.

As I reminisce in the past, I remember the stories my dad would tell me pertaining to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the Japanese invasion of China and the Soviet Union (1937 & 1938,) and all the other global conflicts occurring simultaneously around the world. It was so vivid to me that the entire world was fighting and millions of people were just dying.  I remembered wishing and praying for peace and the strength to endure the nearly impossible task of war that waited.

On October 3^rd, 1942, I received the dreadful news from the United States Army Corps to report to The Dale Mabry Army Airfield in Tallahassee, Florida within 48 hours. What the heck was I going to do there? Learn to fly airplanes?  For the first time, something really weird happened inside of me, more specifically, I felt a weird sensation in my gut. I was no longer nervous. Instead, I was proud and excited to go and serve my Country.

When I arrived at Dale Mabry, I saw a field where several barracks, runways, a hospital, and many other buildings stood.  This was my new home in which I hope would allow myself and the other enlisted men and women the opportunity to prepare for WW II.  

Training was hard both physically and mentally. Our training was arranged in a group style. We were called the“79^thFighters”.  Our days were long and intense. Downtime was provided but with a blink of an eye it was over and we returned back to training. During my limited downtime, I wrote songs. Some days the songs contained happy words and other days the words contained sad words. I guess it depended on my mood at the moment, which fluctuated pretty often. To be honest, a little whiskey eased some pain at times.

Besides the hard training and fluctuations in my mood, not seeing or speaking to my dad was very difficult for me to deal with some days.  But as the days passed, I became closer and closer to my fellow mates, which formed into a friendship rather than just a working relationship. We first recognized that we were in this “together” and we needed each other’s support and once we all realized this, it was at that point the transformation occurred into a friendship.  We told funny stories about back home, our old girlfriends, and the pranks we did on our friends and loved ones. Then there were days we sat around and said nothing. Those days were still meaningful because we were still alive, and all together.

The bond that we had formed was priceless however, the obstacles we faced were overbearing.

Climax: Discuss a significant battle I fought in

Ending:

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Comment: Keep writing!! Finish this!!! More research/details and sources.

Rough Draft #24: Manly Chinese and French cadets were there to train

Robert Wilson who is from Texas enlisted to be an army fighter pilot. He was one of the first pilots to arrive at Dale Mabry airfield. He arrived on January 31^st1941. Just a few days earlier Dale Mabry became an Army airfield. Here Robert would train side by side with other pilots. Not Just pilots from America were at Dale Mabry to train, pilots from all over the world were there. 

Manly Chinese and French cadets were there to train.  During his time at Dale Mabry Robert learned flying maneuvers and tactics to help him fight in the war.  After a year or so Robert was transferred Down to MacDill Air Force base in Tampa. Their Robert would continue his training to become a better pilot and wait to be deployed to fight in the war.           September 29^th 1943 Robert was deployed to join the Army and the attack against Germany. Only a few weeks went by when Robert got his first orders. Him and a group of fighter pilots were ordered to bomb a ball barring factoring in Schweinfurt Germany. Robert was excited yet extremely nervous to go on this mission. 

On October 14^th 1943 Robert and many other Pilots left base towards the factories.  Just before they arrived at their location German fighter pilots and anti air from the ground attacked. Robert and the other pilots were not ready for a dogfight. The fights last for a few hours but the Germans were too strong and more prepared for this fight. Many Pilots died during this attack. Luckily for Robert he was able to escape without injury to himself or plane. 

During his fight he register two kills and four hits. Later Robert learned that the mission was a failure. Roberts group was hit really hard so they would need time to repair and get more men. Robert would not go on any more big air raids. He would participate in small dogfights here and there until the war was over.      

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt

http://www.floridamemory.com/photographiccollection/photo_exhibits/dale-mabry/

 Comments: Good start. Proofread and add more details from your research. It's unclear if this guy is entirely fictional or based on a real person***