The Great Generation

The following story was mailed to me by a woman named Carole. The letter was written in pencil.

Carole’s mother was young. Twenty-two years old. She was married and pregnant with her second child. The year was 1945.

The War was freshly over. The Depression was still a recent memory. Carole’s mother wanted to buy her husband a gift for his birthday. He was turning 25.

Her husband had just gotten back from Europe. He had helped liberate the French. Viva la France.

He was battleworn. He was scarred all over. He wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the shrapnel, it was that he’d seen too much.

He got a job working as a janitor for a public school. It wasn’t a great job, but it put food on their table and diapers on their baby.

It was going to be a sparse birthday. The young mother only had $9. She was a homemaker who kept her loose change in a tin biscuit box. She saved up quarters and dimes and nickels in the box. Only silver. No pennies.

One day, the mother was out shopping for her husband. She was going to buy him a pipe or a bottle of whiskey or something like that. But she met a man on the street.

The man was selling pencils. He had one leg. He was partly blind. He was singing songs to passersby. He was covered in rags. He, too, had been in the War. And he had the injuries to prove it.

She watched him grovel to pedestrians. And she watched people ignore the man. Something moved her. Something compelled the young mother to give him the box of money. It was only $9. But in 1945, nine bucks was a lot of bread.

He cried when she gave it to him.

“I can’t take this,” he said.

“I want you to have it.”

“Why are you carrying around a box of money?” he asked.

“I was going to buy my husband a birthday gift. But I think it’s more important that you have it.”

The man accepted the money.

On the day of her husband’s birthday, she had nothing for him but a homemade birthday card, and meatloaf made with crushed Saltines and topped with ketchup. And she prepared the world’s smallest vanilla cake.

Her husband was about to blow out the candles when they heard something outside.

It was singing, coming from the sidewalk. They went to the window to see an Army band playing outside. There were trumpets, French horns, flugelhorns, a snare drum, a bass drum, and a tuba. They were playing hymns.

And when the happy couple came to the window, the band began playing “Happy Birthday.”

The man with one leg was there, too. He was singing louder than anyone else. He gave the birthday boy 207 pencils for a gift. And everyone in the band brought food, beer, and cards.

Carole’s mother invited everyone inside for cake. There was music. And singing. And dancing. Lots of dancing.

“My family used those pencils throughout the years,” said Carole. “But we were sparing with them, because my father always said they were the greatest gift he had ever received.”

And a few days ago, one of the last usable nubs of those pencils was used to write me this letter.