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Show goes 70 JjL urn IIT PRATT JmSTr U - lHrjS rAR: Forty-four- fx ,T. -iaUe, who hi the pro- Si general repair 'tt ' u, alley back of bis Z by W drI,t b08rd th4t .1 a. i very despondent about H nrht that the doctor who ier ile"('dne" ,nd hl J w He believes there must e Anyway, be breaks the I fi 2 wife. Amy. who ha. 2i' Hieered him. is quite U J, WUbert around to order 3 leaves the house to get work, but forget, to juoodby. i CHAPTER H g rinkle, upon learning that S -d Plawed t0 open a gen' '. "flop practically In their decried it bitterly. She r. being the wife of what she n an(jy man lowered her J ,din. She declared she R ive nothing whatsoever to J the enterprise and would tfve than to so much as u. She took this decided Spite the fact that she had n (income from a small estate ,r parents and that on this ihe and Mr- Winkle could naged, though their stand- u ing would have been sharped. sharp-ed. ip time Mr. Winkle still wore ( the trousers In his house, c, seeded on the basis that it t respectable for him to " and more reasonable to i than to have a social stand-took stand-took his wife at her word and-span concrete floor, the shming lathes and other power tools, the clean benches with every screw driver in its proper place, and the work in hand left and waiting in good order from the dav before Mr. Winkle and the other mn of his age had assured each other that they would never be used as sol diers. They were of that lost generation gen-eration between rounds c: the world war, too young for the first session and too old for the second. Even after the draft registration for them, they had said the sarre things. "We couldn't stand the life." they proposed. "Marching all night and crawling on your stomach in a ditch is for the young fellows." Yet Mr. Winkle had wondered, If there wasn't some plan for using them, why were they registered? There followed a period of listening listen-ing to every scrap of further information infor-mation to be found in the papers, over the radio and in the magazines! Most of this was conflicting, with no one able to make up his mind. Finally a few bold facts became plain, at least in relation to Mr. Winkle's draft board in the town of Springville. It began to call older men. Right now it had reached those married without children, but with wives who had independent incomes in-comes of their otfn. Mr. Winkle met the first requirement. require-ment. Mrs. Winkle lived up to the second regulation. Her small income, in-come, together with the fifty dollars a month allotment paid to the wives of soldiers, would be enough for her to support herself. Sitting there in his shop, Mr. Winkle Win-kle thought of his fiehtine hack- mentarily and made him slightly 'zzy. He could think only that he must be agreeable. "1 expect 3 must." "Listen." the reportographet uig"d, "how about a smile on this ono'" Mr. Winkle spread his lips and exposed ex-posed his teeth. He looked straight at the camera, holding his head a little high as previously instructed so that his glasses wouldn't reflect the light. "Do you think any sacrifice Is worth making to defend your country?" coun-try?" Another flash went off. Mr. Winkle blinked and coughed unhappily. "Of course," he said. "Yes. Certainly." Mr. Onward gazed at him and then shrugged his shoulders, as if telling himself that nothing more could be done with this quizzical subject. Quite suddenly he went away. Mr. Winkle worked on a bicycle, then on the motor of a washing machine. ma-chine. He ate his lunch, listened to the radio, and attacked the motor again. All the while he felt queasy about the visit of Mr. Onward, the reportographer, but at the same time wondered what he had concocted. concoct-ed. He learned sooner than he expected. expect-ed. Early In the afternoon he heard the newsboy calling his wares from afar and then down at the end of the alley. Evidently the paper was cashing in on the hot news in Mr. Winkle's vicinity. The boy appeared in the entrance of the shop, announcing excitedly, "Your DiCture's In thp nnner Mr Winkle! Right on the front page!" Mr. Winkle could not overcome his resolve to wait until he went home to see In the delivered paper there just what The Evening Standard had to say about him. And after all, it wasn't every day that you got your picture in the newspaper, especially on the front page. He purchased a copy and, after the boy left, he looked at it. It wasn't as big as what the Russians were doing in Russia, or what the United Nations were doing around the Mediterranean, or what the U. S. Navy was doing in the South Pacific, Pa-cific, but it was the next most important im-portant thing to those large events. There was a picture of Mrs. Winkle Win-kle standing outside their house, just as he had seen her last that morning, with Penelope at her feet. There was a picture of himself, the one where he smiled. The smile looked rather ghastly, and set and stiff, but to anyone who didn't know him very well it might have been taken for happiness. Most of all, above this exhibit, there was a sizable black headline which said: WINKLE PROUD TO FIGHT Mr. Winkle felt not only conspicuous, conspicu-ous, but misrepresented. He was glad to learn that Mrs. Winkle had ground. It had not been much. Up until the time he was ten, he was known in his neighborhood for having hav-ing won several fights. There was a certain group of boys he could bully and bluff, or lick, if it came right down to it. Then that prowess had come to a quick end. His teeth, growing in crookedly, were being straightened by that ignominious process of having hav-ing wire bands put around them to draw them into place. Returning home from school one day with two other boys, a discussion rose among them as to whether or not he could lick one of them. During the experiment of proving he could not, the inside of his mouth was cut to ribbons by the copper bands the main contributing cause of his humiliating and painful defeat. de-feat. From then on Mr. Winkle, boy and man, ceased to be a warrior. That was the extent of Mr. Winkle's Win-kle's fighting history. Now, belatedly, belated-ly, at forty-four the moment made him think of his age as being only six years until he was fifty it seemed as if it were to have a future. Why, he thought, this is impossible. impossi-ble. It's really incredible. Mr. Winkle wasn't in the least sure about how he would fight. It himself dying, painfully, for water. t his shop across the rear property without an en-if en-if even a window on the !e. Mrs. Winkle had never in, even when she found it Portable not to starvei And en on she developed into preferred to think of her by any other word; a at morning Mr. Winkle wit the frorlt door quite ere going downtown to He walked up the block, be corner, and then to the ta? this he went to his :re he worked until dinner 1 then retraced his steps. :!7 in which he had his mot s depressing thorough-' thorough-' Wite an attractive one. 1 tot lane lined with trees ler of private garages. s shop was no eyesore, tantial frame building cheery blue, with wide ,50rs to permit the entrance iles needing his attention, indows. Above the doors would be different if he were younger, young-er, or happened to be a great big strapping sort of fellow. He wanted to uphold his country. He questioned not at all his country's coun-try's calling upon him to do it. But he felt doubtful of what kind of soldier he would make. He hoped there was no question about this matter in the mind of anyone any-one who detected in him signs of not looking forward to going to war. Mr. Winkle roused himself and began be-gan to work on a bicycle. The representative rep-resentative from the newspaper arrived ar-rived in the middle of the morning. He was a tall, brash-looking young man with a wild mop of hair who introduced himself, "I'm Onward, the reportographer." "The what?" asked Mr. Winkle, staring at him with assurance that he was not going to like Mr. Onward On-ward any more than he cared for being interviewed. Mr. Onward set down the camera he carried and explained with broad patience, "Reportographer. It's a contraction of reporter and photog- "Listen," the reportographer urged, "how about a smile on this one?" made no comment, and in passing noted what a phenomenon this was. He was happy to see that Mr. On-ward On-ward had kept his promise of not mentioning his method of carrying on his work, but he was astonished to read what he had written. " -I'm proud to fight for my country,' coun-try,' Wilbert Winkle, 44, of 711 Maple' Ma-ple' Avenue, first married selectee U the 36 to 45 draft age group to be called in Springville, declared today. Winkle, who operates The Fixit Shop went on to say that he is anxious to defend the four freedoms, which he regards as the privilege -.v American today. This,' he ;f announcing: I FIXIT SHOP le kpair Anything fe had worried a little wording of this. Making to the plural was more ' if there existed a SI of workers. The fact as no one except him-Mrhaps him-Mrhaps deceptive. But he bout it when he con- he and the shop itself Counted as two. up to the boast on his '! s adept at finding out futile was with any me-'!eet me-'!eet and. what is more, -i n right. People from all "ct"n of town, and many C away- brought him rs or called him in. He "-with one exception any me along. thing with which he e nothing to do was fire- ft08. as Mr. Winkle wJTr " block alon u' route to get the fifty 'Bom where he started. Jghtfui man. lirLiv8hop roethc-dically, we the doors and letting 4tt M Uy' very mornin P'ace of work rtth a e changed his clothes, ,1. e way down before Si, orking outfit. He ad-BWa ad-BWa neatness, the spick- 1 rapher. Technically, I'm oniy we last part. But with so many reporters re-porters gone off to war, I got to be both. I made up the name myself. "Listen " he said as he opened his camera, "I got one divorced wife, two kids. I got one married wife, three kids. 1 haven't taken a vacation vaca-tion the last two years because I couldn't stand being home all day. I tried to enlist to get away from it They wouldn't have me. I guess they figured if I got killed they'd have too much to support." The reasons why men went to war, Mr. Winkle thought, were varied Mr Onward regarded Mr. Winkle with some amusement. He seemed to think it a little funny that he was being drafted. When Mr. Win-kle Win-kle protested that his activity was somewhat premature, and that be might not be accepted by the Army, Mr Onward grinned and began ordering or-dering him to stand at different Em about the shop. He proceeded proceed-ed to take a series of flashlight pictures, pic-tures, meanwhile asking questions in an indifferent, offhand manner. "How do you feel about being a 80MrCw"nkle blinked as a flash went off'ta his face. "Why." he s tarn-mered tarn-mered "I guess I feel all right. "f-Do you regard it as a privile to bVtbe first of your classification S be called on to defend the four The ashlfght had blinded htm mo- f Ol cvcij - - stated, 'is worth any sacrifice, if need be, my very life.' " Mr Winkle was keenly Interested in learning if Amy's change of attitude atti-tude had persisted from morning until night, or was simply the temporary tem-porary result of the first upsetting event of the day. Upon reaching home, he saw at once that its effect still had its hold on her. At least she was in something some-thing of a dither, a condition she had rarely entered ever since he had become a repair man instead of a respectable accountant (TO BE CONTINUED! |