Last week I finished reading Elmer Kelton's memoirs Sandhills Boy: The Winding Trail of a Texas Writer. If you are an Elmer Kelton fan the this book is a must. It is a good read and engaging.
From reading this it is easy to see where Mr. Kelton gets a lot of his material and stories in his novels. Mr. Kelton seems as sentimental in life as in his fiction which I can appreciate since sentimental is my middle name.
Here are a few quotes I found funny and interesting:
Once while we were on horseback in what we called the Beef Pasture, Ralph Scoot spurred after a badger. Roping a badger is only a little less difficult than roping a coyote, but made a catch. That turned out to be the easy part. Getting his rope back was far harder, for badgers are notoriously ill tempered. The little animal abruptly went on the offense, going up the rope toward Ralph and his startled horse. For a while it was all he and the horse could do to stay out of its way. In such a situation it is usually best to let the badger keep the rope.
......
We had one person who could have been in the model for the Sad Sack comic strip in Stars and Stripes. He seemed unable to get anything right the first half dozen times. In firing a machine gun at the target sleeve, he froze to the trigger while the weapon kept blazing away. The sergeant tried to get his attention by shouting and beating on his helmet with a wrench. The firing did not cease until the ammunition box was empty.
“Why didn’t you stop when I to you to?” the sergeant demanded.
“I couldn’t hear you,” the soldier said. “Someone kept hitting me on the head.”
......
Shortly I was on a train bound for Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio to be discharged. There we were given indoctrination to prepare us for return to civilian life. .... Among other things, we were counseled on various occupations we might find compatible with our military service. For instance, a long list of potential jobs was offered for a clerk-typist. A great many possibilities were listed for someone who had worked in the motor pool.
My classification, however, was rifleman, infantry. The list was times short. One item was walrus hunter.
In later years when I struggled with my writing career, I sometimes wondered if I had missed my true calling.
......
To those misguided souls who claim the Holocaust never happened, I can only wish they had been to those places with me. After all these years I occasionally awaken from a nightmare, seeing again what I saw then.
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We were being prepared to go to the Pacific for invasion of the Japanese homeland. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an abrupt end to those plans, to our great relief.
......
He soon discovered the truth of the old adage that you can’t go home again. He was a stranger in his homeland. Most of his relatives were gone except the younger generation, who did not know him. Most of his boyhood friends were either aging or dead. He found himself more alone than before and began writing letters to his American friends, expressing a hope that he could return to Texas when his health improved. It never did. He died, as lonely as ever, in a homeland that no longer was home, a querencia that lived only in his heart.
......
But he never went back, not even for a visit. I guess it would have been to painful. ... Dad’s instincts were right. In many cases it is better not to go back.
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