Postcard Memoirs

Mitchell Sommers

There’s a picture of my father, Private First Class Harold Sommers, hanging in my stairwell.  It was taken in Germany, on the day they surrendered, where my father served with the Army Corps of Engineers. It was at a point in the war where he was no longer wading ashore Utah Beach or freezing in the Ardennes Forest, but had the more mundane duty of guarding German POW’s. 

The original snapshot has been blown up to poster size. He stands against a concrete wall with barbed wire on top.  His helmet is slightly cocked.  His expression straddles the boundary between smile and smirk.  His eyes have a squint to them, and are infused with something I’d describe as sadness if I was presumptuous enough to say that.   Some days I look at that picture, and I feel a tightness in my chest, a second or two of gasping for air.   

Late summer, 2004: My father was still alive and my girlfriend and I drove with him to Pittsburgh for the unveiling of his sister-in-law’s headstone, something Jewish tradition generally requires a year after death. My father ran into an old friend from his neighborhood, as well as other relatives and old friends, there to pay respects in advance of the Jewish High Holidays.  From there, we headed to the delicatessens of Squirrel Hill.

Nostalgia. Pastrami.  Then the Pennsylvania Turnpike back to Lancaster .

As the Pittsburgh stations drifted out of range, I started flipping around the dial, trying to find whatever NPR station I could.  The announcer talked about the Iraq war, at one point mentioning the torture at Abu Ghraib.  “I understand that. I understand why they’d do that.”  My father’s voice was softer than the words he spoke.

I didn’t know what to say.  No, that’s not true. I did.  My father was a classic New Deal Democrat. His postwar years were spent as a union organizer.  Later, he was a local party chairman, an unsuccessful candidate for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and a successful one for Lancaster City Treasurer.  And he never, ever missed a chance to bash Bush.

“What do you mean,” I said.

“I just understand.”

I thought to press. To ask exactly what a Jewish soldier who had guarded German POW’s meant by associating himself, however tenuously, with hooded prisoners, naked bodies, and vicious dogs being discussed in the news.

Laura was asleep in the back seat. It was just father and son.  All I had to do was ask.  You’re 82. I’m 46. Tell me. Just tell me what you did. Instead,  I flipped the dial again. I found a Cards-Pirates game. And kept driving.

So I gasp when I see that picture of my father. But sometimes I find comfort, too. My dad. No Greatest Generation fake fawning. Just my dad.

Other times, I just walk on past.

Mitchell Sommers is an attorney in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, concentrating on bankruptcy, foreclosure and debtor/creditor rights. He is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College and Penn State Dickinson School of Law. He received his M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans and is on the editorial board and board of directors of Philadelphia Stories, and co-edits the online literary journal Tatanacho. His fiction has been published in PHASE, Philadelphia Stories, and The Big Toe Review, and recently won Honorable Mention for a short story from Central PA Magazine. Mitchell has written op-eds for many newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, is a columnist for iPinion, and his short play Holiday Treat(ment) Part Two was performed for the Creative Works of Lancaster’s 2010 Christmas Special.

He is currently working on a novel about Colonial Pennsylvania and a play about the origins of the housing bubble and recession. He can be reached at sommersesq@aol.com