No. 4, August 2007
by Archangelo Leone
I'm looking at page 97 in my latest book and scratching my bald head. What to do? My books contain a lot of research filler material and progress precedes at a snail's pace. The train of thought at my age has a lot of crooked rails to derail it at times. My work schedule is dictated by age, physical condition and how fast I can out-talk a deaf, talkative wife who can't hear most of what I have to say. The little Boxer barks at everything and occupies my Archie Bunker chair without my given permission.
Breakfast is a silent routine of two adults wandering aimlessly and a little dog who is anxiously waiting to decorate the foliage in the back yard with interesting chunks of waste matter.
There is nothing interesting in those precious moments directly after stumbling in some direction … any direction …. upon arising. She's first on the toaster and burns her finger tips. I'm next in line; burn my finger tips. The dog wears a look of disgust on his ugly black face and retires to the chair for a quick nap to think about food, going to the bathroom outside and scrounging at the breakfast table until apple time. That's when he barks (commands) for a sliver of freshly cut apple. That is probably his most favorite food. His other foods include anything he can clamp his vise-grip jaws on before you do.
At noon, he waits for his leash as he imagines he is a human mailman. I shoo him into the car, roll down the left rear window and he juts his ugly jaw out through the opening and stares down any body or anything walking by. His sense of ownership is greatly distorted by his bitch mother who is "easy" and couples at will with a bunch of wayward, horny Boxers. This exaggerated sense of ownership had gained him access to the proverbial "doghouse" but he doesn't care as he is a dog anyway. He is an absolute canine dictator who defies me openly and shows distain for whoever is his proclaimed master by pulling down the bed covers on my bed when we're shopping. My wife doesn't care.
She has defective hearing aids that whistle intermittently and make her imagine she hears fire trucks approaching. I hear them too at times and I don't wear hearing aids. Where are the fire trucks? She's a fan of the Boston Red Sox and has cast a lifelong spell on their arch rival, the New York Yankees. It worked too, for a while, as they lost a whole bunch of games the first part of 2007. The sound of her four-pronged cane approaching is like listening to a monster from the bowels of hell dropping huge feet upon the earth, shaking everything in it's path. The dog seeks a neutral corner and I wait for the first words, most of them threats. Her family seeds must have blown a hole in the family nursery as she is a pure Calabrese! There is nothing worse except an inbred Sicilian, I guess. That's my wife, for better or worse but mostly for worse. She goes to church but can't hear a damned word in the sacred songs the other members of the choir fill the air with and between second winds, she had time to throw visual daggers at me all the way to the rear of the church where I'm sitting. There is no peace here or in Iraq! Sad.
Archangelo Leone copyright 2007
Tony Leone, CSC, has been featured on most D-Day websites and filmed on many local veteran programs and on Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation." Featured speaker on local school programs and the subject of newspaper stories by the local paper, the Glens Falls Post-Star reporter David Blow. Columnist and cartoonist for California industrial newsletter and former editor/post adjutant of the American Legion Post 553 newspaper.
An Autobiography
The Internet has it all on the D-Day websites. I was born and raised in Utica, New York in the slums and my sick mother pulled a wagon loaded with junk to put food on the table. Pop hurt his back on the railroad and was an expert at the fine art of homemade vino consumption. He died in 1941; mom passed away in 1943. In on the invasion of Normandy in 1944 and spent time after the war in rehabilitation programs
conducted by the US Navy in Chelsea Naval Hospital and various VA hospitals in New York State. Received New York State's highest military medal of honor, the Conspicuous Service Cross (CSC) for Normandy, as well as other British, French and American awards.
Won awards also in short story writing, poetry and my stories have been published in service magazines. Nine books have been written, most of them war genre type. In order to expose families to the madness of war, I self-published many of them. They lived and felt WWII along with those who were there. A lot of my books are in the US Coast Guard Library, the D-Day Museum in Louisiana and in private libraries owned by ex-veterans.
We owned Lincoln Press/Lincoln Digest in California for a short while, printing up many of JFK's political leaflets.
My son and I ran Leone Construction in South Glens Falls for many years until the economy of the times closed the books. I am a professional writer who attended several schools to perfect my art. I will continue to write...forever?
Living