This picture is from my 2002 Bikes & Stuff day trip. It shows the target of the trip which was the Bicycle Museum of America in New Bremen, Ohio. I made a few interesting stops along the way with the most interesting to me personally being a funeral home in Centerville, Ohio. My g-g-g-great grandfather, Benjamin Robbins, was a co-founder of the town and the funeral home is built around the stone house he constructed in the early 1800s. I’d stopped by the house before but this time was different. As I approached the building taking pictures, a door opened and I was invited inside.
Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full sized photo and the associated trip journal.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me annually, it’s a holiday. This year, Easter and April Fools Day coincide making things like Easter Snipe Hunts something to be on the lookout for. I always post on Sunday and, although the reasons are somewhat different, Easter always happens on Sunday. That means there have been several Easter anchored posts in the past. Despite them all being pretty shallow, I’ll post links at the end of this article.
It’s a familiar story I’d never heard before. In no way is use of the word “familiar” meant to be dismissive. It’s just my way of acknowledging that many aspects of Malcolm Fletcher’s story are to be found in the stories of thousands of other World War II soldiers. Of course each of those stories is also unique in ways both small and large. Large happenings that make Fletcher’s story unique include the actions that earned him a bronze star and the day he watched his brother get shot and captured. Getting coffee and doughnuts from the Red Cross in February and washing clothes and shaving in May are among of the not-so-large pieces of the story that make it real. Numerous photographs, maps, and drawings — many by Fletcher himself — really fill things out.
It’s a great story and well told but there’s no denying that the mere fact that it is being shared plays a big role in setting this story apart from most of those others. The majority of those soldiers never told their story to anyone. A relative few did write it down or record it but not many saw an audience beyond family, friends, or a veterans organization. That Malcolm Fletcher wanted to share his story is obvious. He expanded his wartime notes and produced a “diary”. The title is his. Not For Morbidity’s Sake came from the fact that, as his son Michael says in the foreword, “…he took no pleasure in telling most of this story”. Malcolm Fletcher died in 1994 and Michael, with help from his brother Mark, made publication of the diary a reality. To a large degree, this meant editing their father’s writings but they also augmented the story with information gathered from other family members, friends, and even some of the men who served with Malcolm.
Those observations also fed some slightly philosophical thinking on the horrors of war and the brotherhood of man. He had personal experience with both. Whether the deeper of Fletcher’s thoughts came during his time in Europe or while he subsequently transcribed his notes in safety in the USA is unclear and unimportant. He was in the midst of battles where men destroyed each other with cannons, bombs, rifles, bayonets, and flame-throwers. He saw many and met a few French, Belgium, and German civilians whose world was ravaged beyond comprehension. And he was there at the end of the conflict interacting with German and Russian soldiers to learn that “These Russies are just like us.”
You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover. Or, sometimes, by reading the title. That was the case for me with Onramps and Overpasses and the impression I got from the title and cover pretty much explains why it stayed on the unread pile so long that I don’t remember where it came from or why I have it. The cover is a nicely done long exposure photo of cars on a divided four-lane highway passing through what looks to be a rather scenic area. The title reinforces the image of high-speed limited-access roadways. The subtitle, “A Cultural History of Interstate Travel” does a better job of describing what’s inside but the preconception created by the cover and title led me to overlook the word “cultural” and misinterpret the word “interstate”. In my opinion, Perrier goofed on the cover and even more so on the title. Those are, however, virtually the only mistakes she makes here.
