Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 14, Number 43, DeMotte, Jasper County, 8 September 1944 — MR. WINKLE GOES TO WAR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MR. WINKLE GOES TO WAR

By THEODORE PRÁTT

W.N.U. RELEASE

THE STORY THUS FAR: Forty-four-year-old Wilbert Winkle, who is the proprietor of a modest general repair shop located in the alley back of his home, Is notified by his draft board that he is In 1-A. He is very despondent about it He had thought that the doctor who examined him wqjild not overlook his dyspepsia, his near-sightedness and his caved-in chest. He believes there must be some mistake. Anyway, he breaks the bad news to his wife, Amy, who has always domineered him. It Is quite a blow to her, too, for she is threatened with not having Wilbert around to order about. Winkle leaves the house to get busy with the day’s work, but forgets to kiss his wife goodby.

CHAPTER II Mrs. Winkle, upon learning that her husband planned to open a general repair shop practically in their living room, decried it bitterly. She felt that being the wife of what she termed a handy man lowered her social standing. She declared she w r ould have nothing whatsoever to do with the enterprise and would rather starve than to so much as glance at it. She took this decided stand despite the fact that she had a modest income from a small estate left by her parents and that on this account she and Mr. Winkle could have managed, though their standard of living would have been sharply curtailed. At that time Mr. Winkle still wore one leg of the trousers in his house, so he proceeded on the basis that it w r as more, respectable for him to provide, and more reasonable to eat w r ell, than to have a social standing. He took his wife at her word and built his shop across the rear of their property without an entrance or even a window on the house side. Mrs. Winkle had never visited him, even when she found it more comfortable not to starve. And from then on she developed into what he preferred to think of her instead of by any other word; a termagant. Each morning Mr. Winkle marched out the front door quite as if he w r ere going downtown to business. He w r alked up the block, around the corner, and then to the alley. Along this he w r ent to his shop, w r here he worked until dinner time, and then retraced his steps. The alley in which he had his shop not a depressing thoroughfare, but quite an attractive one. It was a dirt lane lined with trees and a number of private garages. Mr. Winkle’s shop w r as no eyesore, but a substantial frame building painted a cheery blue, with wide double doors to permit the entrance of automobiles needing his attention, and tall windows. Above the doors .was a sign announcing: THE FIXIT SHOP We Repair Anything Mr. Winkle had worried a little about the wording of this. Making his promise in the plural w r as more impressive, as if there existed a large staff of workers. The fact that there was no one except himself was perhaps deceptive. But he felt all right about it w’hen he considered that he and the shop itself could be counted as two. He lived up to the boast on his sign. He was adept at finding out what the trouble was w T ith any mechanical gadget and, what is more, at putting it right. People from all over his section of town, and many from farther aw’ay, brought him their difficulties or called him in. He accepted—with one exception—any work that came along. The only thing with which he w’ould have nothing to do was firearms. He didn’t like or trust guns in the least. It was also his conviction that they caused much more trouble in the world than any w'orth they had,

and that when a man had a gun in his hand he felt beyond himself and proceeded on a false basis of power. If a customer had a rifle or a shotgun or a revolver needing repair, he had to take it elsewhere. This morning, as Mr. Winkle walked a little over a block along his circuitous route to get the fifty feet away from where he started, he was a thoughtful man. He opened his shop methodically, throwing wide the doors and letting in the sun. Usually, every morning he looked at his place of work with pride while he changed his clothes, peeling all the way down before donning his working outfit. He admired his own neatness, the spick-and-span concrete floor, the shining lathes and other power tools, the clean benches with every screw driver in its proper place, and the work in hand left and waiting in good order from the day before. Today he didn’t see any of this. For one thing he was too shaken by Amy’s astounding behavior and the way his draft notice had affected her. For another thing, his imagination got to, work instead of his hands. A bullet sped into his flesh, tearing through his body, leaving a gaping, bloody wound in which gangrene developed with awful rapidity. He saw himself dying, painfully, gasping for water. He saw his body in a trench with many others, and the

earth of some strange, foreign land being throwm upon it. His mind dwelt on the unenviable picture. Even when he managed to shut it out, he didn’t get right to work. After he had changed, he sat in the worn but comfortable old chair near the stove. Rocking slowly and blinking through his spectacles, he reviewed the events leading up to the tragedy. Mr. Winkle and the other men of his age had assured each other that they w r ould never be used as soldiers. They were of that lost generation between rounds of the world w r ar, too young for the first session, and too old for the second. Even after the draft registration for them, they had said the same things. “We couldn’t stand the life,’’ they proposed. “Marching all night and crawling on your stomach in a ditch is for the young fellows. M Yet Mr. Winkle had wondered, If there wasn’t some plan for using them, why w T ere they registered?

There followed a period of listening to every scrap of further information to be found in the papers, over the radio and in the magazines. Most of this was conflicting, with no one able to make up his mind. Finally a few bold facts became plain, at least in relation to Mr. Winkle’s draft board in the town of Springville. It began to call older men. Right now it had reached those married without children, but with wives who had independent incomes of their own. Mr. Winkle met the first requirement. Mrs. Winkle lived up to the second regulation. Her small income, together with the fifty dollars a month allotment paid to the wives of soldiers, would be enough for her to support herself. Sitting there in his shop, Mr. Winkle thought of his fighting background. It had not been much. Up until the time he was ten, he was known in his neighborhood for having w r on several fights. There was a certain group of boys he could bully and bluff, or lick, if it came right down to it. Then that prowess had come to a quick end. His teeth, growing in crookedly, were being straightened by that ignominious process of having wire bands put around them to draw them into place. Returning home from school one day with two other boys, a discussion rose among them as to whether or not he could lick one of them. During the experiment of proving he could not, the inside of his mouth was cut to ribbons by the copper bands—the main contributing cause of his humiliating and painful defeat. From then on, Mr. Winkle, boy and man, ceased to be a warrior. That was the extent of Mr. Winkle’s fighting history. Now, belatedly, at forty-four—the moment made him think of his age as being only six years until he was fifty—it seemed as if it were to have a future. Why, he thought, this is impossible. It’s really incredible. Mr. Winkle wasn’t in the least sure about how he would fight. It would be different if he were younger, or happened to be a great big strapping sort of fellow. Well, he wasn’t. He was small, almost frail, and ineffectual physically. Some men were lions and some were mice. He was a middleaged mouse. And the mouse w r as — at least he admitted it, if only to himself—the mouse was afraid. He wanted to uphold his country. He questioned not at all his country’s calling upon him to do it. But he felt doubtful, beyond his terror, of what kind of soldier he would make. He hoped there was no question about this matter in the mind of anyone who detected in him signs of not looking forward to going to war. Mr. Winkle roused himself and began to work on a bicycle. The representative from the newspaper arrived in the middle of the morning. He was a tall, brash-looking young man with a wild mop of hair who introduced himself, “I’m Onward, the reportographer.” “The what?’’ asked Mr. Winkle, staring at him with assurance that he was not going to like Mr. Onward any more than he cared for being interviewed. Mr. Onward set down the camera he carried and explained with broad patience, “Reportographer. It’s a contraction of reporter and photographer. Technically, I’m only the last part. But with so many reporters gone off to war, I got to be both. I made up the name myself. “Listen,” he said as he opened his camera, “I got one 'divorced wife, two kids. I got one married wife,

three kids. I haven’t taken a vacation the last two years because I couldn't stand being home all day. I tried to enlist to get away from it. They wouldn’t have me. I guess they figured if I got killed they’d have too much to support.” The reasons why men went to war, Mr. Winkle thought, were varied and curious. Mr. Onward regarded Mr. Winkle with some amusement. He seemed to think it a little funny that he was being drafted. When Mr. Winkle protested that his activity was somewhat premature, and that he might not be accepted by the Army, Mr. Onward grinned and began ordering him to stand at different places about the shop. He proceeded to take a series of flashlight pic-

lures, meanwhile asking questions in an indifferent, offhand manner. “How do you feel about being a soldier?" Mr. Winkle blinked as a flash went off in his face. "Why," he stammered, "I guess I feel all right." “Do you regard it as a privilege to be the first of your classification to be called on to defend the four freedoms?" “Privilege?" Mf\ Winkle repeated. The flashlight had blinded him momentarily and made him slightly dizzy. He could think only that he must be agreeable. “I expect 1 must." “Listen," the reportographer urged, “how about a smile on this one?" Mr. Winkle spread his lips and exposed his teeth. He looked straight at the camera, holding his head a little high as previously instructed so that his glasses wouldn't reflect the light. “Do you think any sacrifice is worth making to defend your country?" Another flash went off. Mr. Winkle blinked and coughed unhappily. “Of course," he said. “Yes. Certainly." Mr. Onward gazed at him and then shrugged his shoulders, as if telling himself that nothing more could be done with this quizzical subject. Quite suddenly he went away. Mr. Winkle worked on a bicycle, then on the motor of a washing machine. He ate his lunch, listened to the radio, and attacked the motor again. All the while he felt queasy about the visit of Mr. Onward, the

reportographer, but at the same time wondered what he had concocted. He learned sooner than he expected. Early in the afternoon he heard the newsboy calling his wares from afar and then down at the end of the alley. Evidently the paper was cashing in on the hot news in Mr. Winkle’s vicinity. The boy appeared in the entrance of the shop, announcing excitedly, “Your picture’s in the paper, Mr. Winkle! Right on the front page!” Mr. Winkle could not overcome his resolve to wait until he went home to see in the delivered paper there just what The Evening Standard had to say about him. And after all, it wasn’t every day that you got your picture in the newspaper, especially on the front page. He purchased a copy and, after the boy left, he looked at it. It wasn’t as big as what the Russians were doing in Russia, or what the United Nations were doing around the Mediterranean, or what the U. S. Navy was doing in the Sjo.uth Pa cific, but it was the next most important thing to those large events. There was a picture of Mrs. Winkle standing outside their house, just as he had seen her last that morning, with Penelope at her feet. There was a picture of himself, the one where he smiled. The smile looked rather ghastly, and set and stiff, but to anyone who didn’t know him very well it might have been taken for happiness. Most of all, above this exhibit, there was a sizable black headline which said: WINKLE PROUD TO FIGHT > Mr. Winkle felt not only conspicuous, but misrepresented. He was glad to learn that Mrs. Winkle had made no comment, and in passing noted what a phenomenon this was. He was happy to see that Mr. Onward had kept his promise of not mentioning his method of carrying on his work, but he was astonished to read what he had written. “ ‘l’m proud to fight for my country,’ Wilbert Winkle, 44, of 711 Maple Avenue, first married selectee in the 3G to 45 draft age group to be called in Springville, declared today. Winkle, who operates The Fixit Shop, went on to say that he is anxious to defend the four freedoms, which he regards as the privilege of every American today. This,’ he stated, ‘is worth any sacrifice, if need be, my very life.’ ” Mr. Winkle was keenly interested in learning if Amy’s change of attitude had persisted from morning until night, or was simply the temporary result of the first upsetting event of the day. Upon reaching home, he saw at once that its effect still had its hold on her. At least she was in something of a dither, a condition she had rarely entered ever since he had become a repair man instead of a respectable accountant. (TO BE CONTINUED)

He saw himself dying, painfully, gasping for water.

“Listen,” the reportographer urged, “how about a smile on this one?”