Sgt. Mom

Air Force veteran, historical novelist, and cat-person

Tales of Luna City – Mills Farm

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(A diversion for a Friday – a bit of my own and my daughter’s version of a Texas version of  Lake Woebegon or Cecily; the chronicles of Luna City, the small Texas town that the railway bypassed in the 1880s, which has a hopeless high school football team but a splendid marching band … )

Oh, what is there to say about Mills Farm, the destination event-venue, country-themed retail emporium, petting zoo, specimen garden, and country amusement park just to the south of Luna City which has not been said a thousand times already in expensive full-page advertisements in glossy lifestyle and travel magazines, or in television spots that are enticing mini-movies all crammed into sixty seconds? Because Mills Farm is owned and run by a large corporation who also own and run many similar properties all tailored to local idiom and conditions star-scattered across the United States and Europe, the money and expertise is most definitely there.

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70 Years On

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This last weekend marked the 70th anniversary of VJ-Day; the surrender of Japan to the Allied forces. This marked a day of wild rejoicing in New York, Honolulu, London and in practically every town and city across the Western world which had sent armies and navies into a bitter fight against Imperial Japan a fight which had been up and running in China long before Japan chose to take the fight to America by launching an attack on Pearl Harbor.

Time has had its’ usual way with those who fought in it, and survived. The generals and admirals who stood at the top of the military chain of command are long gone, being middle and late-middle aged in the 1940s. The colonels and naval commanders are pretty much gone from the scene, the captains and ensigns vanishing likewise; most of the veteran survivors still with us were very young men and women, little more than teenagers at the time of the war; young and happy to be reprieved from fighting in a war which looked to drag on for another five or six bloody years. By the next significant anniversaries the 75th and the 80th, there will be even fewer remaining.

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Friday Night Lights – The Luna City Mighty Fighting Moths

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(A diversion – the surprising high school football traditions in Luna City. This particular project is coming right along, and may yet be my next book. More chapters are posted at my book website, here.)

Final Cover with Lettering - smallerThe marquee sign outside Luna City High School makes note of the fact that the school is home to the Mighty Fighting Moth Football Team District Champions 1967 1971 1974. That there is only a small space left to insert another champion year or two is clear indication that the Mighty Fighting Moths football coach, school administrators and team boosters have completed their journey through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and accepted the sure and certain knowledge that there will likely never be another district championship in their future with quiet fortitude. It’s not that the Moths lack heart and determination; players and boosters alike begin each football season in the spirit of game optimism, and in the hope that maybe this year the Karnesville Knights or the Falls City Beavers which are the two regional football powerhouses and die-hard rivals will not be able to defeat them 80+ to 6 with the casual absentmindedness of a man swatting a fly while thinking of something important. Texans live for high school football; it is simply the expected thing to do, and Luna-ites are heart and soul Texans, even those who came from somewhere else, like the Walcotts or the Steins, or Chris who bartends and manages the Ice House, Gas & Grocery.

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The Valley of the Shadow of the Mushroom Cloud

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I see that the 70th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki this last weekend brought the usual hand-wringing and heart-string twanging on the part of the news media, and another round of the endless discussion over whether it was justified or not, with the same old patient answering of what the alternative would have been. I’ve really nothing more to add to that particular discussion, save noting that the stocks of Purple Heart medals struck and stockpiled in anticipation of American casualties in a full-frontal invasion of Japan have only in the last fifteen years been diminished to the point where a new order for them had to be initiated this, after Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Kosovo, Gulf War 1, and Iraq.

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