And then came August
[A short Story of Growing up]
In 1981, when Christopher Wright was thirty-four years old, two years away from sobriety, the Holy Spirit would descend on him and he would never drink again. However, at the beginning of this story, he has still gone through this process of sobriety, he is in a semi-conscious state. When you first see him, he’s thinking, pondering, falling asleep, often thinking he can actually do without drinking, a bit maddening and embarrassing for not trying, but his world is a fog, and he’s aware of it, and he’s getting tired of it. He is happy with most of the people he meets on the surface, but inside he is inertly crazy, he feels dirty: this feeling varies, of course, sometimes he also considers himself quite an exceptional person; however, unsophisticated (which it is not), difficult to adapt to its surroundings, and feels that it still has more goals to fulfill, but death is better than living an unhealthy life: a life that goes back and forth to the bar every night ; in an unhealthy state all the time, difficult for him to be cheerful, pleasant most of the time; and he’s attractive to women, he always has been, particularly one at the moment. He thinks that he can somehow achieve something great, but his options seem to be diminishing as time goes on and his drinking increases. He sees heaven as a way home (if indeed there is a heaven, and drunks go to heaven, he’s not sure, maybe that could be the unforgivable sin, but he feels it isn’t); yes, heaven would give him immortality and a safe distance from the bottle; and death is always around the corner, in the corner of his mind. But being stubborn and still functioning quite well, he might stand a chance if he can change, if he can only have the courage to face his alcoholism, where most of his demons come from.
Now, Christopher Wright, known more familiarly as “Chick,” left home at a young age, St. Paul, Minnesota, and spent eleven years in the army. He now he came home from the war as a Staff Sergeant (Vietnam War). And in the following years, five years to be exact, he amassed for himself one million three hundred thousand dollars, from real estate transactions. He had created some ill will from his family members, neighbors, and was known for a time as “The King of Landlords.”
This occupied his energies for a while, and during this time, he had gotten sober, but had a heart attack, stroke, and neurological disease, then decided to dedicate the rest of his life to the honorable rejuvenation of world poetry. ; trying to be like all the great poets before him. He refined himself, without liquor, especially literature; bodybuilding, Sunday walks in the part, medicines, patience, rest. From an armchair he read hundreds of books, theories, concepts, he got rid of his hypothetical enemy, ignorance, he became a scholar, with titles and all those good things. A campaign, which took him several times around the world, during the next fifteen years, during which he showed himself infinitesimally equal to any living scholar. The year this story begins finds him tired, he has become discouraged; His thoughts focus largely on his past war experiences, his illness, his wife, and the children who have left him.
Earlier in his life, Mr. Wright had married a woman several years his junior, who brought him into the circles he now so admires (he married in 1972, after returning home from the Vietnam War and he had a son), and enjoys an impeccable entrance of scholars.
His ex-wife had given him a son and, after the magnificence of this performance, she had left him, because of his impending illnesses. The boy, Cody G. Wright, became a great soldier in his own right, in the United States Army, a Captain, and a connoisseur of good form in all military duties, a fine example to others.
Cody had written his memoirs under the title: “And then came August”, about the war he had been in, the war in Bosnia. [1997]. Faced with the gossip of his formation, this work was quickly tendered among publishers, it obtained a private printing, but only one, it was not powerful enough for the public to demand a second printing.
Young Cody had a picture of his father, he was on a seesaw, and his father was behind him, they were in a park together. It was such a common image that he kept in his house, now in Columbus, Ohio, that it was as if it were part of the furniture. He was shown in the background of a park in the 1970s, he had long light brown locks, dressed in a jean jacket, in the West German city of Dieburg, where he was stationed for a short period of time. This was Cody at four years old.
His memories of Dieburg, meager though they were, were unformulated and pleasant. He was very young, but he remembered guests arriving at the apartment, meeting his father in a guest house with him following him, his friends holding him up in the air in bars, his father showing him off, his father gasping in the edge in case someone dropped it; from time to time whispering to his wife and friends to be more careful with him, and singing his songs on the guitar and the strange dialect of the Germans. He remembered some of these things, and his father told him about these things, and so he thought they were part of his memory.
It was years later, when Cody grew up, when he was ready to go into the army, he moved in with his father, just his father. He continually went out at night, on his drinking trips. It wasn’t like the trip he once took with his father, a fishing trip out to Gull Lake, and there, in the cabin by the lake, he and his father swatted mosquitoes half the night, laughed the other half, and started to speak. vacant cabin door so they could get a good night’s sleep; he went fishing in the morning. It wasn’t like the picnics he took him to, either. His father was desperate for this miserable and unclear life that his son had taken: a path that he had once taken.
So, for Cody, life was a struggle against youth, and he waited for a decision, and he made one and the Army made one: in six months, impressionable months, he left his father’s house and faded into imperceptible Army life. . It was August 1991, he was nineteen years old. It was for him a concession to his boring life, accommodating his hyperactivity, his lack of money and perhaps refinancing his nightlife, bodybuilding. He told his father in a letter, “It has nothing to do with us, as for me joining the army, it is time I consider a more adventurous life, so please don’t take this any other way.” Therefore, he didn’t want to hurt his father, but he was almost exhausted with his dull life. His father understood him, had given him patient frowns, interrupted his game, devoured his months, when he entered the Army, and tirelessly, given him variety of splendor; therefore, he would do the same for Cody, he was sure.
As a young man, before adolescence, he had lived almost entirely within himself, seemed like an inarticulate boy, always thinking, rarely angry with anyone, a totally American boy, you might say. Educated, full of spirit and who loved animals, nature. Shy and sensitive as a young man,
7/6/06