Stanley Speaks

By Connie Kinsey

I imagine it eventually broke – that green Stanley thermos. The thing he carried. In January 1970, I see us stopped at the truck stop on Route 66, piles of snow…my dad carrying the thermos, my mother with her purse and all our money and papers and birth certificates, my brother with a Matchbox car, and me? Probably a book. Pippi Longstocking comes to mind.

But that thermos. So many trips cross country and cross ocean. Or did they leave it in the car we had shipped? I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter. It still crossed the ocean on a ship. Twice. Going and coming.

My dad told a story about one of our earlier trips. I was barely verbal. We were all asleep and he was driving. The car had that weird oatmeal smell that happens when car heaters collide with bitter cold. He opened the thermos and poured a cup of coffee while steering with his knees. Me. Long before car seats, I came up behind him and said, “Hot.”

*****

“Yes, Punkin hot,” the startled man says.

It’s my job to keep the coffee hot for this man and the woman. I have been with them a long time. Many trips east and west along this road. Get Your Kicks on Route 66. The man would sing to his daughter. Peals of laughter when she was young. Eye rolling later.

And me. A little more scarred. A little more dented. A little more stained with each passing year. I don’t remember when my glass cracked, and I was returned to the cabinet under the sink--my home always in every trailer, every Quonset hut, every apartment, every house they lived in. Until I was trashed.

I served a lot of years too.

Black. The coffee was always black without sugar. The Marine Corps way. Of course. He was a Marine’s Marine, but gentle with the family. So gentle. And soft spoken.

If he raised his voice, when he raised his voice, the very earth trembled. But it was seldom called for. Not in the car. Not on these trips

Maybe in Vietnam. Maybe reviewing the ranks. Maybe. But I wasn’t there. I can’t speak to that.

Truckstop waitresses. “The check please and a thermos of coffee.” He’d hand my steel self to the overworked woman who perhaps was wearing too much makeup and sensible shoes. A beehive hairdo.

The kids were used to the west coast to east coast crossings. Marines are stationed on one coast or the other. Days in the car. Diners. Motels with Magic Fingers. Cold. Hot. Everything in between. Albuquerque, St. Louis, Chicago, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina. So many stops, but not enough. The kids didn’t ask, “Are we there yet?” They asked, “Do we need gas yet?” Meals and bathroom breaks were dependent on the needs of the car.

Once the woman left the purse in a bathroom in the Painted Desert and didn’t discover it for miles and miles. They reversed direction hoping against hope. All their money. Everything. In that purse. She was in tears. But there it was. Right where she had left it on top of the rolling towel in the ladies’ room. Another opportunity to fill me. To use the restroom again. She gripped her purse tightly on the way to the car. He carried me.

Nervous laughter. Was he mad? No. Of course not. Frustrated and scared as she had been, but not mad.

He was slow to anger.

Oh, how he longed for me in the jungle. Though hot and wet and miserable. Scared and confident and all the emotions in between, he longed for coffee. Always. There was coffee sometimes. Instant. And lukewarm. Better than nothing but not much.

Coffee was comfort. Coffee was energy. Was go-juice. A necessity. A luxury. Coffee was home. Back in the world, he drank it by the gallons.

I got a workout on these trips. And then in North Carolina, 1972, he would go fishing and take me. Silent, sitting on the New River. Not interested in the fish. Interested in feeling safe outside. So different from Hawaii. Hawaii reminded him of ‘Nam. North Carolina was so different. A beach yes. But scrub pine and flat. Gray ocean, not blue. Little to remind him of Vietnam though it didn’t need reminding. It never went away. That feeling of fear, dread, readiness, attention.

I probably got thrown out when he did. The Marine Corps sent him to Vietnam four times and then had no use for him. Was he damaged goods? He would have had no use for me. A cracked thermos.

Semper fi.

****

Connie Kinsey is a military brat who has put down deep roots in a converted barn on a dirt road at the top of a hill in West Virginia. Her award-winning writing has been published online and in print.

She is also a spoken word artist and the Writer-in-Residence for the Museum of the American Military Family. Connie has blogged at https://wvfurandroot.com since 2008 and is wild about comments. She can be reached at c_kinsey@frontier.com