Click here to download the catalog as a PDF file. To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. ODD ANGRY SHOT • JOHN CONNOR • dicKie’s star A Christmas Carol. ’m goofy about Christmas — no matter when it comes. I say that I because many times in my life it hasn’t come on December 25th, or even close to it. I only care that when it happens, my loved ones are all accounted for and preferably safe and if not safe, prepared. I’ve missed lots of ’em on duty, foreign and domestic, including three in combat and one in a military hospital. Those were just dates on a calendar. The real Christmas, the joyous celebration could come later. I learned that as a kid growing up in the Western Pacific. Another Christmas came and went. Mom was in a hospital in the States or Hawaii, I forget which, fighting another battle with recurring cancer. Dad was at sea and supposed to be “home” sometime around Christmas. That didn’t happen. I recall being a little disappointed, but I knew even then Christmas was whenever my family said it was. As our “homes” went, this was a great one; a lively community of mostly IDP’s from World War II — International Displaced Persons — the majority making livings fueling and provisioning American, Australian, New Zealander, British and civilian ships. The port was always exciting, at least for kids, and outside the port there were sandy beaches between rocky points and a deep reef-ringed lagoon. Mornings and evenings there was even electricity in some places every day! We lived in a Quonset hut with an added-on palm-thatched “open air living room.” A long walk away, British friends lived in a stilt house with a rounded, conical thatch roof which looked kinda like a beehive. Their family surname began with a “B”, so naturally, they were “The Three Bees” and their home was “The Beehive.” places and hung too loose in others, and their teeth looked terrible. Their grown daughter was very thin, very quiet, and she always wore long dresses and carried a handkerchief in one hand. She cried often, seemingly over nothing, but she laughed a lot too, and always smiled at me. Christmas Eve That OD container held a wind-up military issue Victrola, and Dad brought records with Christmas carols. The “turkey dinner” was delicious fried fish, steamed yams and fruit. We decorated a “Christmas tree” made of bent, twisted wires, sticking bits of green paper into the twists and then draping it with brightly colored thread and even a few “real” Christmas ornaments. There was something hooked on a wall I hadn’t seen before: a star, obviously bar and little sorta-hotel had kept their decorations up, and the whole place was ramping up for a belated Christmas party. Dad came down the gangway with a seabag and a big, olive drab suitcaselike container. His eyes were wet and he was smiling. A signalman had just handed him a personal message relayed by MARS operators: Mom was out of surgery. It was a “partial success.” She The “turkey dinner” was delicious fried fish, steamed yams and fruit. We decorated a “Christmas tree” made of bent, twisted wires, sticking bits of green paper into the twists and then draping it with brightly colored thread and even a few “real” Christmas ornaments. would start more radiation treatment immediately. Mixed blessings, but “Mom alive” made Christmas for both of us. But there was more. The Three Bees had delayed Christmas Eve for us. Mr. Bee and Dad were pals. He barbered and clerked in a ship’s provisioners. Mr. Bee was coaching Dad on his Japanese and teaching him some Chinese. I was aware the Bees had been “interned” by the Japanese during the war, but that wasn’t an uncommon story at all. I knew several former POWs and interned civilians. The Bees were really nice, happy people. They looked to me like their skin was stretched too tight in some cut from a tin can and hammered flat, with a hole punched in the top point for a dirty loop of string. It was inside a box, maybe a cigar box, made into a shadow box, and to me it looked like a little like a native shrine. There were a few blue buttons in it that I thought at first were incense buds. Mrs. Bee called it “Dickie’s star” several times, saying things like, “Oh, Dickie would love this evening so,” and then snuffle until Mr. Bee would pat her shoulder and say, “there, there, Mother.” Then she would flash a ragged smile, take my hand and rejoin the singing. The daughter — I can’t recall her name — smiled more than I’d ever seen The Three Bees Life was good. Mom was gravely ill, and I knew of Dad’s past wounds and present duties. I worried, but I had a kid’s subconscious confidence, mixed with a military kid’s knowledge that the world is a dangerous place: if anyone would survive, it would be my mom and dad. Dad’s ship and two others made port the week after Christmas. Every café, 86 WWW.GUNSMAGAZINE.COM • DECEMBER 2009