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Pownell’s News Agency, 1951

John T. Hitchner

Jockey lean,
infielder quick,
my father pushes through swinging doors,
paces to newspapers stacked like guards
in Pownell’s back corner.
Under globe lights
he scans The Evening Bulletin,
then tucks Cold War news and local sports
under his arm.

I watch him from the front seat
of our ’48 Chevrolet.
I am ten,

not old enough for magazines
high school boys gawk at;
not old enough to bum cigarettes
from counterman Pete Pownell;
but old enough to know
the hometown boy killed in Korea last week,
old enough to know
my mother, father, and I will attend
his funeral tomorrow.

At the roasted peanuts warmer
my father jaws Bud Gessner
(“Guessin’ Gessner” to my baseball buddies and me),
probably about umping bases
at next week’s games.
He cuffs Chick Dudley’s right arm,
knocks the air between them with his fist
as he talks with Harry,
probably about the soldier’s funeral.
Chick nods,
squeezes the cigarette between his lips.

A hometown guy, my father.
Everybody knows him.
Everybody likes him:
ex three-sport high school athlete,
shipyard riveter after Pearl Harbor,
now farm machine part clerk.
He clears a four-figure sum every two weeks,
enough for house rent, food, insurance.
Little left over.

I rubble the Chevy’s glove compartment,
unfold a map of our home state,
tap our hometown—
a black dot southeast of Philadelphia,
city of the “Fightin’ Phils”
and “High Flying Eagles.”
I daydream smacking home runs
and snagging touchdown passes.

Wide smile rare as a fifty in his wallet,
my father pays Pete Pownell
for news, sports,
aromas of cigarettes, peanuts, and goodwill.

Home, my mother serves
chipped beef and gravy—
“s o s” Dad calls it.
No talk of sports,
no Sinatra on the radio;
only news of young soldiers
led by an old general not yet faded away.

I ask, “Can we go out for ice cream?”
“Not till next week,” my father says,
without looking up from his plate.

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