Fiction Commons^™

Vignettes

Manuscripts

No abstract provided.

The Village Store, Bill Osborn

Manuscripts

I sometimes wonder if my great-grandfather would recognize our village store. To be sure, the size and general shape of today's shop would differ little from the one he knew, but might he not be surprised to see the fire-engine red of the Coca-Cola signs plastered abundantly over the dark brown clapboards?

Grandmother Looks On, Rosemary Ronsheim

Manuscripts

Pretend for a little while that you are seventy or eighty years old. Put yourself in the position of your grandmother who has come to live with you since grandfather died. It is seven-thirty in the morning and you are sitting in the living room. You have probably received a brief "good morning" when you stepped into the kitchen and may have been brushed aside as someone leaped to save the burning toast. You very sensibly have announced, "I'll go away until the children are off to school."

Teeth Tales, Virginia Rodman

Manuscripts

False teeth and the fashion of filling teeth were known even by the ancient Egyptians, but the science of dentistry is a fairly recent one. Just as far back as colonial days when life was centered in New England, the care of teeth was very crude as compared to modern methods.

My Father, Kathryn Alfs

Manuscripts

My father is five feet eleven inches tall. He has large grey-green eyes, a somewhat too-large nose, a medium sized mouth, and a very square jaw. His physique is typically middle-aged. After being teased to destraction about being built like a butter-churn, he now wears. a corset with the fond delusion that it pushes his stomach into his chest and looks youthful. Aloud he swears it is for his posture. He now resembles a top-heavy butter-churn.

Gentlemen, Be Seated, William Miller

Manuscripts

I'm a little devil. Every morning I walk a block to the bus stop preceding the one in front of my house so that I can get a seat. I feel sure my neighbors give me icy stares as I sit comfortably with my nose in a book. I never see them. Yesterday morning I was too late to walk -to the other stop, so I stood while the lady next door sat in my seat and smiled at me with sarcastic little daggers throughout the fifteen-minute ride. She probably thinks I have no conscience, but I do and I …

The Incident Of The Apple, Jeanne Mccoy

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For the last five years, Pa had babied and coaxed this pet tree of his. It was healthy and well-developed, but never before had there even been the slightest excuse of an apple.

Kelly's "Rock Of Gibralter", Barbara Barth

Manuscripts

"Kelly, Kentucky! Stop here three minutes. Next stop Hopkinsville." A town like a million others. Hay, feed and grain shed and a dinky little station. A small boy, whose pants were patched with flesh, and a dog mooching on the platform. Everyone on the day coach gives Kelly one look and one sigh and pulls in his neck. Just another three-minute stop.

The Blades That Severed Two Lives, William Hardman

Manuscripts

The snow was still falling as it had done during the past three days. The wind was gaining momentum as the flakes glistened in the light of the shell-bursts. This was a new obstacle for the men who had fought through the rain and mire of France and Belgium. Although the defensive position was just inside the land boundary of Germany, the climate had not changed with the borderline. Winter had set in.

Sleigh Bells Ring, Joanna Jennings

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"Jimmy! Jimmy! Come quick! It's snowing again." Immediately two freckled noses were pressed into mere buttons at the window, as two pairs of eyes gazed rapturously at the whitening world.

Autobiography [Part Iii], Irene Brown

Manuscripts

Before graduating from nurses training, I started serving in the capacity of Supervisor of Nurses of the Eli Lilly Research Clinic at City Hospital. Here we had both an in-patient and an out-patient clinic where we were doing research on blood dyscrasias and hypertension. In this position I continued on at the hospital with the Lilly Company until my marriage, April 4, 1941.

Mrs. Harper, Marjorie Little

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Mrs. Harper came to keep house for Grandma many years ago when everyone in the family was ill. Grandma had about given up hope of any answers to her advertisements asking for help. One day a taxi drove up in front of the house. A small, bird-like woman hopped out. Her hair was pulled tightly back into a knot at the back of her neck. She wore a gray dress and a funny little hat perched on top of her head. She paid the driver and came lightly up the steps. Ever since then Mrs. Harper has belonged to us …

The New Recruit, William T. Sharp

Manuscripts

The new recruit has just entered a completely different phase of life in which he immediately becomes extremely insecure. He has no idea what is coming next, and this insecure feeling is so radically different from the security of the average American home that he suffers a considerable amount of anxiety until he is able to make an adequate adjustment to service life. He is no longer allowed to say what he pleases when he feels the urge to do so, and the resulting suppressed emotion often makes him irritable toward his fellow cohorts.

Winged Suicide, Jack Demlow

Manuscripts

With every flight you become more convinced that a combat mission in this ship is nothing short of suicide. This :suicide ship is the Army Air Forces' CG- 4A Cargo Glider, commonly referred to as the "Whisper Ship," "Flying Coffin," "G-Bird," or "One-way Johnnie." Just looking at the glider, crouched in its own grotesque manner on the runway, makes you say to yourself, "How will it ever stay in one piece during the flight-not to speak of the landing shock?" Approaching the ship, you can not help noticing the flimsy fabric, the wooden skids beneath the repulsive, stubby nose, and …

The Hand Of Fate, Muriel Holland

Manuscripts

Anita Colby ripped open the yellow envelope in her hand and devoured its message in one hasty glance. "Jan!" she screamed. "Jan! You'll never guess what!" Her roommate emerged from the depths of a wardrobe trunk long enough for a curious "What's up?"

Une Belle Jour En Normandie, David Craig

Manuscripts

The two soldiers lying on their bellies in the slit trench tried desperately to burrow their bodies deeper in the slime. Bits of wet grass and broken twigs were imbedded in the oozing mire which covered their helmets, raincoats, leggings, and clodhoppers, giving them the protective coloring of their muddy surroundings...

Stormy Vveather, Tom Beckwith

Manuscripts

"Life is bare, there's gloom an' misery

ev'rywhere,

Stormy weather;

Since my man an' I ain't together,

Keeps rainin' all the time."

The Locks, Allyn Wood

Manuscripts

He came out into the sun. Spice of wood-dust hung over the line of shanties following the canal; it was the dust of their houses baking on the bare packed bank that scarcely lifted above the water Waiting passively behind the bridge. Sometimes little clapping water-hands beat against the iron doors of the locks beneath the bridge, beat against the concrete sides of the bridge, beat, clapped, despaired, and fell. Brown and oily and dusty, the water lay with a strange subservient beauty behind the locks, moving round and round ever so slowly, as if it must remember motion while …

Rabbitries, Allyn Wood

Manuscripts

The girl in the car drove slowly out of the city. She crossed train tracks with a leap of the heart, following the straight line which was the street and then the highway. By its outer edges will the city be known by those who arrive and depart, will it be loved by those who can love, with fatalistic wonder, their creation!

The Mullein, Allyn Wood

Manuscripts

She had been seriously ill. For a few days it made no difference that it was autumn, one of the most beautiful that she might know. She stayed in the front room on a cot with an abundance of cool pillows. The door remained open, for there was a kind of claustrophobia while she scarcely breathed; by lack of oxygen all other capacity for emotion was suspended, and with forced objectively she contemplated the ensuing question, Does cessation of breathing end all emotion?

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Volume 13, Issue 1: Full Issue

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No abstract provided.

Vignettes

Manuscripts

No abstract provided.

Period Of Disaster, Hank Hurt

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it's over now! The blaze of battle has died down and the fury of the beast has been subdued.

School Days Fifty Years Ago, Patricia Pointer

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Not long ago I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of my grandfather. While discussing my graduation from high school and the coming year at Butler, r was' amazed to discover that he had taught school in a rural district some fifty years ago. Naturally I wanted to know all about it because, although I've read much about the strict old schoolmasters who :'didn't spare the rod," I had never seen or talked to one. As I listened to his tales, I felt almost as if I were reading the "Hoosier Schoolmaster."

First Impressions, Elsie Ruth Young

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Many times something that happened years ago will stand out clearer in our minds than those things which happened last month or even last week. Thus it is with my first symphony concert. I was in the third grade when my teacher voted to take us to the matinee concert of the Cincinnati Orchestra each time it came to our city, At least a month beforehand she, being an able musician herself, endeavored to explain the program to us and thus gave us adequate preparation for listening.

The Character Of Tailholt, William T. Sharp

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All those who really knew John Taylor are dead and forgotten. His generation have by this time advanced a considerable way down the line of history. Not all has been forgotten, however; as the story was passed on to me by my grandfather's narrations, I feel as though I really knew old John myself.

The Ride, Phyllis J, Banks

Manuscripts

Going to school was a thrilling event, especially since it involved riding in a shiny black and red pony cart behind the most handsome pony you ever saw. I discovered after a few rides that Jerry was not only 'handsome, but high-spirited and of a very unstable disposition. He resented being held in check when galloping down the hill or swerving around the corners.

My Future, Billie Cole

Manuscripts

The drama of the future becomes ourselves. A part of us is already dead, gone, and no longer existing anywhere. From the beginning of our existence we have left behind a part of us each day, a portion of burned energy which will never return.

Patty, Geraldine Harman

Manuscripts

The electric light in the middle of the ceiling illuminated the large, wide, antique bed in the center of the room. The carved headboard seemed to fill the space along the entire wall, although there was also a small desk in one corner covered with an arrangement of various pens and pencils and different shades of ink.