The Rapture Comes on a Sunday

I wrote this story years ago and included it in the book I co-authored with my dear friend, Elizabeth Taylor (the Canadian YA author, not the movie star). We wrote the book Half Past Perfect to help people—even those who wouldn’t normally consider themselves writers—get a foothold in recording their life stories. We included sample short stories (just 2 to 3 pages) at the end of every chapter to illustrate that a story doesn’t have to be long to be meaningful. This story is a retelling of one of my most enduring memories from childhood. I was thinking about it this week and decided to share it.

Enjoy!

The Rapture Comes on a Sunday

by Barbara Allen Burke

“Hey, Barbie!”

I heard my mother’s stern Sunday voice calling.  I ignored it and continued to rummage through the refrigerator.

“Barbara JoAnna Allen!”

Ooh.  Now I was in trouble. I looked over the refrigerator door.  My mother glared at me from the kitchen sink.  I watched soap suds slide off her fingers into murky dishwater.  “You get out of that refrigerator and get your chores done. Now move.” She started scrubbing a pan. “I don’t want to be late for the service.”

My sister Karla stood beside her on a stool next to the drain board.  She was still wearing her church clothes from the morning service and had a dishtowel wrapped around her waist.  She looked over her shoulder and made a face at me.

I walked behind them on my way out of the kitchen and yanked the towel to the ground as I left.

I hung over the top of the corral fence, chin resting on crossed arms.  Sunlight glinted off the horses’ water trough. A breeze ruffled waist-high grass.  It was one of the first really warm days of the spring season. After four hours of choir practice, Sunday school, and the Morning Worship Service, it felt good to be outside. Usually, the prospect of another two to three hours of church in the evening didn’t bother me.  I’d never really known anything else.

Not today.  Today the sunshine called.  Today I was tempted to run barefoot through the field and tramp down a swath of grass to make a nest for myself.  There I would lie on my back and watch clouds.

I climbed down from the fence and started back toward the house.  Unaccustomed to my rebellious feelings, I slid deeper into them.  I deliberately scuffed my shoes in the dirt.  I stooped to gather a handful of stones from the gravel at my feet.

“I hate church,” I thought to myself. I threw a rock at the corral fence.  It hit the wood railing with a thud.  Anger had made me accurate.

I went in the back door, bracing for my parents to tell me to hurry.  I was surprised by silence.  I walked through the family room into the empty kitchen. Soap suds filled the sink. My sister’s dishtowel lay on the stool by the drain board.

“Mom?  Dad?”  Where was everybody?

I hurried through to the dining room – empty – and into the living room– also empty.  My father’s Car and Driver magazine spilled onto the floor.  My youngest sister’s blocks sat in a messy pile in the corner.

And then I knew with blinding clarity what had happened:  The Rapture.  The Lord had returned to call his faithful servants unto himself and I, Barbara JoAnna Allen, had been left behind.  I could just picture it.  While I was moping in the yard, my more righteous mother, father and sisters had been transformed into ghostly, light-filled figures and lifted straight to heaven.

I brushed away tears and trotted through the house, afraid to confirm what I already knew.  The bedrooms were empty, the beds rumpled, closet doors open.  I ran into my own bedroom and there, lying on the bed, were my Sunday clothes, set out by my mother.  They accused me of my mean-mindedness and sloth. And now the Only Train Bound for Glory had come and I had missed it.   How stupid could I be?

I walked more slowly, trying to remember all the sermons I had heard about the years of Tribulation that would follow the Rapture. I had to find a way to face it.

I headed toward the barn. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. The family station wagon sat in its usual place.  I stared.  There in the car sat my parents in the front seat, facing each other, talking.   My sisters leaned out of the windows.

“There she is,” called my sister, Karla.  “Are you coming or what?  We’re waiting, and the car’s getting hot.”

I didn’t know what to do.  I wanted to run and kiss my sisters’ faces, curl up on my mother’s lap and let her stroke my hair.  I wanted to hug my dad and feel him hug me back.  I wanted to laugh out loud.  I wanted to apologize to God.

What I did was get in the car.  It was time to go to church.

The Things We Carry

Maybe it’s just me, but when I was little I was fascinated by air travel. It seemed like such a romantic pursuit to me. People actually dressed up to fly—men in suits, women in Jackie Kennedy dresses and matching sets of luggage.

I was in college when I took my first solo trip by plane, coming home for Thanksgiving after my first term away. I flew from Portland to Denver in the middle of one of the worst blizzards ever. We were in a holding pattern over Denver for three hours. It was not a romantic trip. My second flight was the next year when I flew from Denver to England, meeting up with my study abroad group in London. My flight was cancelled at the last minute (a very harrowing experience for both my mother and me) and I was rerouted through Chicago. I didn’t know how to read my boarding pass when we changed planes and I decided that my best resource was a very chic young woman sitting in the waiting area. She was stunning, wearing a wool dress with matching jacket and pumps. She was also kind, helping me figure out my boarding pass and chatting with me while we waited. She told me she was flying to London to meet her fiance who was a banker or something. I suspected she’d materialized from the pages of a novel. My suspicions were confirmed when she opened her toiletries case, a very smart hard-sided leather box that, looking back, was probably Louis Vuitton. There was a mirror attached to the hinged lid which she used to reapply her lipstick.

I was entranced. I figured that someday, when I was a real grown-up, I would fly to London to visit my hypothetical fiance, and I would carry a beautiful travel case in which my jewelry and makeup would be carefully arranged.

I did make it back to London many years later. I actually got engaged on the trip. Somehow, the beautiful travel case didn’t materialize, but the allure of owning one never went away. Little did I know that it would take a painting assignment and a trip to the Goodwill Outlet store to make my dream come true.

Our final assignment for my class was to do a painting on a 3-D object. It could be anything, as long as the meaning of the object was reflected in the painting. Feeling stumped, I visited the Goodwill Outlet store in town, a huge warehouse with giant, rolling bins crammed with assorted cast-offs: clothes, tools, appliances, toys. I wandered the aisles until I came across a Samsonite toiletries case. It was burgundy, hard-sided, and the latches still worked. The lining was clean and intact, and it even had a little mirror attached to the lid. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t Louis Vuitton. But after handing over three dollars, it was mine.

The idea for the painting came quickly. I was intrigued by the idea of the things we carry through life, the things we choose to take with us on our journeys. Then I thought about the project I had done recently, writing the biography of my client, Jack Jouett. For three years, while working with Jack to record his story, sort through photos and memorabilia, and research his history, I felt I had taken a journey through his life. I would paint the case to reflect my travels.

First, I removed the handle and the mirror and taped off the hardware. Then I painted the case itself, covering the surface with gesso and several thin layers of paint in crimson, turquoise, buff white and a fun paint made with stainless steel. The surface was hazy and atmospheric.

Next, I wanted to add some images. Jack has great photographs, including some taken in the 1940′s when he was a young man living in the Virgin Islands. He’d gone on a sailing trip with some friends through the Caribbean, and the photos from that trip are some of my favorites. I copied the pictures onto photo transfer paper in my laser printer, cut out the photos I wanted, and layered them on the surface of the case.

One of the themes that continually emerged while working on Jack’s story was the idea that he kept circling back to places he’d lived before. Not only had he circled the globe, the events of his life continually carried him back to favorite places:  New Orleans, Washington, DC, China, the Virgin Islands. I decided to stencil a number of different circle designs on the case itself. In many places, the stencils obscured the photographs, hiding them behind paint. I decided this was fitting. Most of the details of Jack’s life were buried by time, as they are for any of us, and working with him was a process of searching for the images that made up his life story. Finally, I covered the surface with a thinned down glaze of burgundy paint, further obscuring the details, but softening any remaining hard edges.

Here’s how the project turned out.

The photographs are visible if you look closely.

And another detail . . .

We had our final critique this week, and my class was intrigued by my project. Not surprisingly, they were even more intrigued by Jack. Of course, I was happy to talk about him and the things I learned circling through his life.

And my travel case? I’m definitely keeping it. It is perhaps the most practical art project I’ve ever done. I could use it to hold my art supplies. It would be a great storage bin for photos or keepsakes. I might even load it up with my makeup and jewelry when I take a trip. Whatever I do, it will remind me to pay attention to the things I carry with me.

Gravity, Burma Bridge Busters, and Uncle David

If there is one thing I now know for certain, it is that our stories have gravity and weight. Years ago, I started documenting the life and work of my client, Jack Jouett, whose father was hired by Chiang Kai Shek to help establish the Chinese air force. Years later, Jack himself spent most of World War II working in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater, a part of history about which I was at the time woefully uninformed. I spent a lot of time learning more than I ever thought I would want to know about World War II, aviation, and the CBI Theater. I also talked at length about it to almost anyone who would listen. Because I cared about Jack’s story, other people were drawn to it as well.

One of those other people was my father, who subsequently learned more than he ever thought he would want to know about World War II, aviation, and the CBI Theater. Once you’ve made a decision to learn about something, you start to notice details that you might otherwise have let slip by you. The gravity of an idea has a way of pulling them into your orbit.

Which is what happened last May. My parents attended the 90th birthday party of my mother’s uncle, David George, who lived about an hour away from them. I remember Uncle David from childhood visits. He was always cheerful and engaging, and a family favorite. When my parents showed up for his party, they arrived a bit earlier than most of the guests and sat around the table chatting. My father’s attention was captured by a framed set of images that included a photo of a younger Dave in a military uniform, and a flag with a bit of writing in Chinese. Years earlier, my father might not have noticed it. Now he was curious, drawn.

“What’s that all about?” he asked.

“The flag and the Chinese writing is a piece of cloth I had sewn on the back of my flight jacket when we flew B-25′s in World War II,” David said.

“You were in airplanes in World War II?” my dad asked him, feeling stories collide. “Over China?”

“Well, yeah,” said David. “the CBI.”

In the years I had been working on Jack’s story, talking about Jack’s story, I hadn’t known that a member of my own family, someone I knew and had talked to, had been in the same area of the war. I had never thought to ask.

It turned out that the flag was something called a “blood chit,” usually made of silk and sewn to the jacket giving instructions to people discovering the soldier in the event of a crash. Translated, the Chinese characters say:

This foreign person has come to China to help in the war effort. Soldiers and civilians, one and all, should rescue, protect and provide him with medical care.”

Horrifying and comforting all at the same time. It also often implied that a reward would be given for caring for a downed soldier. This bit of fabric apparently meant enough to David that, all these years later, it hung on his wall.

Other guests started arriving for the party and interrupted their conversation. Several times over the summer, however, my dad drove to David’s house and he learned the details of his life. These details built a story that now acquired a weight all its own. My dad gathered photographs, did research, taped interviews, and typed up what he learned. He sent a draft of the story to me. I’ll share a little bit of it.

In 1940, David Nobel George graduated from a small high school in Rifle, Colorado, on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies, and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He was sent to Army bases around the U. S. to train on bomber aircraft. Training was haphazard, with the limited use of one bomber and broomsticks for rifles. The bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 shifted everything. David and his crew were sent by truck to Muroc Dry Lake in California, now Edwards Air Force Base. Training continued in earnest.

Chiang Kai-Shek (yes, here he is again…) had negotiated with the U. S. to obtain airplanes for its air force to use in the CBI Theater. Through the Lend-Lease program, the U. S. arranged to deliver 33 Lockheed-Hudson A-29 planes to China, using the opportunity to transfer 33 of the U.S. Army Air Corps’ own B-25 bomber pilots and crews to their bases in the CBI. All in all, 33 planes, 33 pilots, and 33 mechanics, or crew chiefs, prepared for the trip.

David George was one of the crew chiefs being sent, and was sent for A-29 training and to get the planes ready for transport to China. They picked up the planes on June 13, 1942. Dave’s plane was the first of the A-29′s to take off from West Palm Beach, Florida, following the same route established for all U. S. pilots to the CBI Theater, with stops in Brazil, Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic, Africa, the Sudan and on. Both David and my client Jack followed the same flight path.

David’s trip was more eventful, however. Leaving Sudan, David’s plane lost an engine and did an emergency landing on a small airstrip in Asmara, Eritrea. David was, of course, in charge of fixing the plane. There was a Douglas Aircraft depot 35 miles away through the mountains, but they somehow had to get the plane there. They pulled the wings off the plane, turned the landing gear around, put the tail wheel of the plane in the back of a jeep and towed Dave’s plane through the mountains to the other base. Dave learned that another A-29 had lost an engine as well. He sent the remaining good engine from his plane to Khartoum to repair the other plane and had the bad engine returned to him. For the next two months and 20 days, David rebuilt both failed engines and put his plane back together. He and his pilot resumed their flight to China, traveling through Karachi (then India, now Pakistan), on through Lahsa, Tibet, and finally into China. Instead of being the first A-29 to arrive, Dave’s was the last.

Having delivered his plane, Dave and his pilot were transferred back to their post in Karachi as part of the 10th Air Force. They were assigned to squadrons for bombing missions on B-25′s. Dave’s squad, the 490th, started in India at Malir Air Base, where they developed and perfected low-level ridge bombing, called “skip bombing.” They became so successful one of the generals started calling them the Burma Bridge Busters. Their skip bombing technique did the heaviest damage to the Japanese, taking out railroads, airfields, communications areas, supply bases and, of course, bridges. The insignia for their plane was the Skull and Wings.

Above is a picture of David’s squad (he is second from the right on the back row). As the crew chief, it was his responsibility to make sure that the plane could fly, and to repair it when it couldn’t. David told my father stories of mission after mission from those years as their squadron moved across India toward Burma. On the 47th mission:

The pilot brought it home all shot up. It had a big ack-ack shell go off right under the left wing. By the time I got it back up in the air again, I’d changed one engine, two gas tanks, an oil tank, and the left wing, all on that side. We did all that work out in an open-air environment. The only cable that was not cut was the right aileron cable. The others all had nicks in them. They didn’t have potentiometers to tell them how tight to adjust the replacement cables (since many were salvaged from other damaged planes) so I would just feel the tension on the other ones and try to get the same feel. It took about three months to rebuild that plane. The wing that I got to replace it with was a later model than my airplane and it tended to fly just a little yaw. They could trim it out and it would be okay. . . . I tweaked it just a fuzz more and it went on to complete over 100 missions without a turnback due to mechanical issues, so it must have been okay.

This was an understatement. Over 100 missions without mechanical failure, in the middle of a war, in spite of enemy sabotage, on-the-fly repairs, touch and go landings, and heavy use. Dave’s plane was the first to reach this milestone. It was considered quite an accomplishment, and on the day of the 100th mission, January 20, 1944, a reporter came to their base in Assam, India, to record it, singling out David George for his excellent work.

After writing up all of David’s interviews, my father decided to compile everything into one big notebook. He made a copy of David’s photo with the blood chit flag and put it on the front cover. About two weeks ago, he drove up to David’s house and handed him the notebook, another piece of evidence of his life to go with the framed flag on the wall.

Last Saturday, November 19th, my dad called me. Uncle David had died that morning, quietly, peacefully. Dad was sad, of course, sorry not to have time to have gathered more of the pieces of David’s life, wondering if he had captured enough.

But this week, which included our country’s Thanksgiving celebration, I am mostly grateful that David’s orbit crossed over into my father’s and, ultimately, into my own. His story has substance and weight. I know with certainty that it will connect to other stories, other people.

With thanks to David Nobel George, 1921-2011.

My Life in Books

About a year ago, I discovered an artist named Jane Mount who, like me, works at the intersection of art and books.  Mount, a painter, creates portraits of people’s versions of their ideal bookshelves. Check out her blog at “Ideal Bookshelf” and you’ll see what I mean. She’s painted portraits of collections of cookbooks or of children’s books, but mostly the common theme of the selections seems to be that the books were well-loved by someone. It was fascinating to scroll through the pages of paintings and to find one that included some of my favorite books along with some that I had never read. I came away with a list of new books.

I also came away with a challenge. If I were going to have Jane Mount paint a portrait of my own Ideal Bookshelf, which 10 or so books would I include. I spent about an hour scribbling lists. There were a couple of books that instantly came to mind–Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee,  Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, and Ivan Doig’s memoir This House of Sky. But what about the remaining spots? Which would I choose? How could I choose? I actually started feeling a little panicky. It seemed like I should know the answer to this question. I mean, what if I were suddenly being exiled somewhere and could only take ten books with me. It would be helpful if I already knew which ones I’d take.

But my ten favorite books? In which categories? I could more easily list my 10 favorite memoirs, or 10 favorite children’s books, or 10 favorite mysteries, or 10 favorite books on psychology. But the ten favorite of all?

It’s an impossible task, of course. If you are anything like me, you form attachments to books the way you form attachments to people, and for the same reasons. People fill different roles in my life and speak to different aspects of who I am. What’s more, different people have filled these roles for me at different times in my life. Just because one of my best friends in high school is not the same person as one of my best friends now doesn’t make her presence in my life any less meaningful. The same is true of the books I’ve loved. They’ve served me differently over time, but with the same kind of importance.

In fact, spending a couple of hours, as I just did, reviewing the books that have been important to you over time is an interesting way to explore your own biography. It’s telling your life in books. It may not have the specifics of where you were born and went to school and held a job, but it will give you an idea of what was important to you throughout your life. To test my theory, I thought I’d write a quick review of the highlights in my life in books.

Early Childhood:

Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson, which I first remember being read on Captain Kangaroo, my favorite television show.

The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf.  I loved how Ferdinand would “sit just quietly” under the cork trees.

Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. What a great message, about what it took to become “real.” And those illustrations…

Elementary School:

The Hobbit, by J. R. R Tolkein. My father gave it to me one year for Valentine’s Day, and it was way better than chocolate, which is saying something.

Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis. Lewis and Tolkein were friends, so it seemed natural. I wanted to be Lucy.

Strawberry Girl, by Lois Lenski. Lenski wrote books based on children who lived in many parts of the United States. I read all of them. It was while reading Lenski’s books that I decided I wanted to be a writer and a book illustrator.

Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember getting so engrossed in a midwestern snowstorm described in the book that I was shocked to walk outside into the Colorado summer sunshine.

Junior High/High School

Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle. I developed my first crush on the boy character in this book.

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This was so good to me, I couldn’t believe it was considered Literature.

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Reading and studying this book in my English class was like visiting a new world for the first time, and taught me that I wanted to live there permanently. Directly responsible for me becoming an English major.

Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad. This was so dark and mysterious. I was hooked. I just recently finished Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, which is her take on the same themes, and it took me back to my high school days.

College/Young Adult

Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner. This rocked my world. What more can I say.

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. Best book I’ve ever read on writing.

Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein. A perfect antidote to the ennui and self-seriousness that can infect earnest college students.

Riverside Shakespeare, by William Shakespeare. I was, after all, an English major.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. Loved this way before I saw the excellent film versions.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. Read and re-read this while hiking in the moors in England.

Young Parent

Once I had children, I got to revel once again in the world of children’s books. My kids are grown now. It’s been more than a decade since I’ve read these books out loud. Still, I won’t give any of them away. Here’s a selection:

Eloise, by Hilary Knight. I loved this character even before I realized that she had a pug. And then I really loved her.

Olivia, by Ian Falconer. I have all the Olivia books. I even have an Olivia stuffed toy. I bought none of them for my children. In fact, my children bought them for me.

Have You Seen My Duckling, Nancy Tafuri. I have so many memories of reading this wordless book to my children, helping them find the missing duckling on every page.

If you Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Numeroff. This one made me giggle even more than my kids.

But Not the  Hippopotamus!, by Sandra Boynton. This one is so fun, right up to and including the payoff on the final page.

When the Sun Rose, by Barbara Berger. Berger was from the San Juan Islands, which is where I found this book. I loved the lyrical story and read it so many times I could recite it, even today, from memory.

Vera the Mouse, by Marjolein Bastin. Vera is another in my collection of spunky, confident female characters, much like Eloise, Olivia, and Alice from the Cul De Sac comic strip. But I found Vera first.

This would at least get me through my twenties, and I’ll stop here. There could be sections for mysteries, memoirs, and others, but at least it’s a start. It’s a way to review my own history in a different way, and an invitation for you to do the same.

What would be on your list?

 

The Power of a Name

 

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