I waited until April, and then one morning on my way to school: BANG! my first sub, right in front of a grocery store. I sank my second submarine in 1944. I could afford to wait two years before sinking another one.

I sank my last submarine in February 1945, a few days after my tenth birthday. I was not totally satisfied with the presents I got that year.

And then there was the sky! I ventured forth into the sky, seeking the enemy there, while Mount Rainier towered up like a cold white general in the background.

I was an ace pilot with my P-38 and my Grumman Wildcat, my P-51 Mustang and my Messerschmitt. That’s right: Messerschmitt. I captured one and had it painted a special colour, so my own men wouldn’t try to shoot me down by mistake. Everybody recognized my Messerschmitt and the enemy had hell to pay for it.

I shot down 8,942 fighter planes, 6,420 bombers and 51 blimps. I shot down most of the blimps when the war was first in season. Later, sometime in 1943, I stopped shooting down blimps altogether. Too slow.

I also destroyed 1,281 tanks, 777 bridges and 109 oil refineries because I knew we were in the right.

‘Remember Pearl Harbor!’ they said.

‘You bet!’ we said.

I shot the enemy planes down by holding out my arms straight from my body and running like hell, shouting at the top of my lungs: RAT tattattattattattattattattatt attattat!

Children don’t do that kind of stuff any more. Children do other things now and because children do other things now, I have whole days when I feel like the ghost of a child, examining the memory of toys played back into the earth again.

There was a thing I used to do that was also a lot of fun when I was a young airplane. I used to hunt up a couple of flashlights and hold them lit in my hands at night, with my arms straight out from my body and be a night pilot zooming down the streets of Tacoma.

I also used to play airplane in the house, too, by taking four chairs from the kitchen and putting them together: two chairs facing the same way for the fuselage and a chair for each wing.

In the house I played mostly at dive-bombing. The chairs seemed to do that best. My sister used to sit in the seat right behind me and radio urgent messages back to base.

‘We only have one bomb left, but we can’t let the aircraft carrier escape. We’ll have to drop the bomb down the smokestack. Over. Thank you, Captain, we’ll need all the luck we can get. Over and out.’

Then my sister would say to me, ‘Do you think you can do it?’ and I’d reply, ‘Of course, hang on to your hat.’

Your Hat
Gone Now These
Twenty Years
January 1,
1965

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