Sunday, September 8, 2013

Displaced Person - A Magpie Tale


Tess Kincaid has offered The Mag writing group a Norman Rockwell painting done in 1946. I was just over a year old when this cover art was published. Rockwell's youngest son Peter was the model for the boy, chosen over three other applicants. One website says, Boy In Dining Car, a Norman Rockwell painting, appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post published December 7, 1946. Alternate titles for this painting are New York Central Diner and The Tip.

This painting was Rockwell's 243rd overall out of 322 total paintings that were published on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell's career with the Post spanned 47 years.

To read more concerning the history of this painting *click here*

To join with and enjoy this week's Magpie Tales writing group *click here*

Displaced Person

When they jerked me up
I found I was ten years old,
not sixty any
more and my teeth fresh
in my mouth, my joints pain free.
I was powerful
hungry so I went
to the dining car. That black
guy helped me out there.
I saw a fellow
named Rockwell sketching me up
from across the way.
He gave me this one.
I kid you not, and I skipped
out on my food bill.
So all in all, Bud
I still got all my chump change.
Now I gotta run.

September 8, 2013 10:03 AM

23 comments:

  1. this is the way it is in dreams :)

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    1. I especially like the conscious dreaming I get to do while awake. I actually don't remember very many of my night dreams. Most mornings I wake with a blank slate. When I do remember my dreams they are almost never of this world but of some other in most significant respects. One big one... it is always twilight there.

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  2. wouldn't that be something, to be jerked up to be 10 instead of 60 (i especially like the idea of joints free of pain) - loved this adventurous story poem, engagingly written

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    1. The advantage of creative writing, you get to do all this stuff. I am very fond of shape shifting in all the ways I can.

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  3. Who would want to swap being 60 for 10, though? Not I! :)

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    1. You must be sitting in your body comfortably, your pains all the right size.

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  4. Some imagination...I LIKE!
    Last line...he's still "ON THE RUN"--grin!

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    1. He's remembering the big lesson of childhood. "Don't get caught!"

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  5. If I had to get jerked up I hope it's not to 10...20 would be more to my liking.

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    1. I always think I will repeat what I have done the first time around. I doubt that I will do new things or better things. 20 puts me on a collision course with some very difficult stuff.

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  6. I like what you did here Chris....nicely done indeed

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    1. I admit to a heavily F&SF imagination in my young years. I don't read that much of it any more. I now shove F&SF right into the center of my poetry. Should I apologize for this?? :<O))

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  7. oh to be 10 again...loved what you did here..x

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  8. Fine poetry takes me out of myself, transports me to another time and place ~~~ exactly what your poem did. So nice.

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  9. Delightful write...love your P.O.V. here...

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  10. Where does one go to run out on their bill on a train?

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    Replies
    1. on the dodge, then off the train...

      It is a bit more difficult to know where to run if one has stolen the train... I actually heard a sober drunk tell his story of stealing a train. He was old when I heard him in 1983 and I presume he was talking more than twenty years before that.

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    2. Whoa, I would like to see cops trying to PIT a stolen train! (LOL?)

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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