Bob Hope died the day before my vacation started, so that was in the back of my mind as I pondered a subject for this year's vacation poem. I was thinking about going to either the Ernie Pyle Historical Site in Dana, IN, or a planned Korean War Museum in Tuscola, IL, but couldn't make it to either. I did visit an antique auto museum in Volo, IL, which strangely enough, once had a more famous visitor.

The great man was here

He was here.

According to the pictures

in the garage,

the great man was here.


Touring in a vintage Cadillac,

smiling with the owner of this

gallery of ancient motorcars,

he was here.

But the sleek, red Chrysler

was much more like him,

or was it?


Or perhaps the Jeep.

The Jeep which came

with a bivouac scene

from a brutal time.


When a ski-nosed clown

went down the road to war,

to make the soldiers laugh,

and bring a piece of home

and joy to a joyless place.


Happy to be here,

close to the inferno.

A song, a dance,

a golf swing,

a smile to be shared

with the boys,

no matter where they fought.

Some of them forgotten,

some of them unpopular,

some who never came home.


He's gone now,

or is he?

Perhaps by the stones,

the wooden markers,

The Wall, a ski-nosed ghost looks back

and shares a laugh