David A. Schwinghammer
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Books
· Soldier's Gap
· Soldier's Gap
· Soldier's Gap
· Soldier's Gap
Short Stories
· Mengele's Double, Chapter 12
· Fisher of Men, Chapter 11
· Mengele's Double, Chapter 11
· Honest Thief, Tender Murderer, Chapter 11.
· Mengele's Double, Chapter 10
· Honest Thief, Tender Murderer, Chapter 10
· Fisher of Men, Chapter 10
· Mengele's Double, Chapter 9
· Seminary Boy, a memoir
· Fisher of Men, Chapter Nine
Articles
· The Jerk
· Bone-headed Supreme Court Decisions
· Republicans Work Hard at Creating Divisive Issues
· Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School, book review
· Auschwitz (Always Remember Your Name), book review
· Fahrenheit 2021-22
· Biden's Approval Rate Plummeting
· Mr. Trump, have you no sense of decency?
· Critical Race Theory
· Clueless Judge Compares AR-15's to Swiss Army Knives
Poetry
· Should I Take Ballet?
· Caboose
· The Girl Next Door
· Llama, Llama (dedicated to William Blake)
· The Terminal Booger
· Fashion
· Widow's Peak
· Myth
· Alumni Game
· Stradivarius
More poetry...
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Dreams about Lindbergh, flying in your sleep, and a dog that chases anything that moves.
The Time I Met Lindbergh, the Flying Dream and Bud
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When I met Charles Lindbergh I asked him why he’d flown for the Nazis in World War II and he said he wanted to be on the winning side. Of course, I know Lindbergh flew for the Americans as a civilian, but this was a dream, you see, and who knows why I asked such a dumb question in the dream. I could understand his wanting to be on the winning side as all my life I’ve been a sports fan, and it seems that the people fill the stands with their homer hankies only when their team soars to the top. Not that I like it. I’ve always been a Yankee hater and they’ve won something like thirty World Series. You see people all over the country wearing Yankee hats. Anyway, getting back to Lindbergh, he’s from my home town, you see, and I’m always walking past his museum and the farm he used to live on. There’s a park there now and a river with this rickety bridge that Lindbergh built with his own two hands. There are nature trails going every which way, and that’s where I met Lindbergh, or his ghost or somebody, cause he’s dead, you know. He was a tall, skinny guy with blonde hair, but I’m sure you knew that. I wasn’t foolish enough to just accept his assurance that he was Lindbergh, but he knew that his wife’s name was Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and he knew about the kidnapping and all that. I asked him why he let that Condon geezer negotiate with the kidnapper, since the old boy had a couple of screws loose. He said that looking back on it, he didn’t really know either. He guessed he was in a state of shock.
I asked him if he thought they got the right guy. He said the man in the graveyard definitely had a German accent, and this Bruno Hauptmann guy had a criminal record in Germany of breaking and entering and he had the money and everything, so he was pretty sure, yes. What about the Fish person that Bruno had insisted gave him the money? Why would Fish leave the money with Hauptmann? Lindy said he didn’t know about that. He supposed Fish could have been an accomplice.
We moved on to talk about the airline industry. He said he felt there were too many planes, and he’d become convinced that the Federal government needed to regulate. He wasn’t happy with conservation methods either, and Bush was a terrible president. I had a thought: if he’d wanted to be buried in Hawaii, what was he doing in Little Falls? He said it wasn’t a matter of where you wanted to be, it was where they put you. He then excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he didn’t come back, I went to look for him, but never could find him again. I’ve been having this dream for some time now. I think I’ve been having this recurring dream because I‘ve been jealous of people like Bill Gates who has all that money and of George w. Bush, who would never be where he is if he hadn’t been born into the Bush family, and of people like John Updike, who got all that help in his literary career.
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I am the only person on earth who can fly. Every night I fly out of the open window up towards the full moon, flapping my arms like a mallard and I soar over the houses and the churches and the schools, hoping that someone will see and say, “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s superman,” but nobody ever does. My main complaint is that God didn’t give me the ability to fly during the day. When I tell my wife that I can fly, she just looks at me like I’m cracked. Lately she’s been threatening to have me committed. I don’t think it’s fair that Snoopy can have such a wonderful fantasy life: Joe Cool, the WWI Flying Ace, the author, the lawyer, the tennis phenom, and I have to settle for a pedestrian life as an insurance agent. I’ve taken to wearing a cape and a fedora hat during the day when I can’t fly. My wife says I look like a complete idiot, only artists and old men wear fedoras these days. Occasionally I’ll run down the street with my cape extended and try to catch an updraft, but this only results in a skinned knee or a sprained ankle. Today, I quit my job. I had made one of those phone calls to this select list Prudential sends me, and I could hear myself the way the person on the other side of the line must have been hearing me all along. The droning voice going on and on and on about providing for your family when you’re gone. Who really cares about his family when he’s gone? Is he going to be able to look down on them and feel somehow complacent because they have a $100,000 annuity? The wife wasn’t happy; she’s suing for divorce. That night I had trouble flying, kept getting hung up in telephone wires and had trouble with landings.
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I have this Springer Spaniel named Bud, whom I’ve always envied. All he does is eat, sleep, and take me for a walk. His one fault is that he likes to chase cars and has had several close calls. One day he was run over by a mail truck, but the local vet was able to pull him back from the abyss. But this did not deter Bud from chasing cars. If anything he’s worse. He’ll chase anything that moves, lawn mowers, baby carriages, golf carts. At night Bud slips his leash and is off cavorting into the night, returning only when it’s time for breakfast. I can hear Bud’s distant barking in the night. He has a distinctive voice, kind of like a vacuum cleaner with a cold. For an old dog, going on eleven, that’s seventy-seven in human years, Bud is awfully frisky. We’ve had our talks about the prowling at night and the time he chased a police cruiser all the way back to the station and wound up behind bars at the Humane Center. The only reason I found him that time is because a woman who works there remembered Bud from the time I gave him up for adoption, but reconsidered when Bud appeared to me in my dreams giving me that Clint Eastwood look he has when he‘s upset with me. But Bud is Bud. You can’t make a donkey out of a jackass I guess. Lately I’ve been chasing cars myself, just to see what Bud sees in it. I think I’ve found my niche.
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Web Site:
Mystery Writer
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