Happy day! "Two Kinds of People," a short story about a squad of National Guard troops in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, has been accepted by Southeast Missouri University for their upcoming "Proud to be: Volume 8." As you can imagine, I'm pretty happy about that.
It's a grim tale and slightly outlandish but, strangely enough, most of it is based off of lived experience. New Orleans was a weird place after the storm.
This is one of my favorite stories...
One night, standing guard over the hospital's parking garage a police cruiser came blazing up, engine roaring and lights spinning, and squealed to a stop in front of my squad. The policeman behind the wheel wanted to know if we'd seen two men in a golf cart.
What happened? we asked.
Two guys, he said, robbed a liquor store. They smashed their way through the front glass with a brick. This set off a silent alarm and a policeman responded to the scene. The pair of criminals hopped into their booze-loaded golf cart (I love picturing what that must have looked like) and, refusing to stop for the pistol brandishing policeman, ran him over with the golf cart and escaped. The concussed policeman had reported them coming our direction.
I'm sure the policeman on the receiving end of the golf cart didn't find that very funny but, I can tell you, we soldiers laughed for a long time. We were soldiers, we found lots of things funny that others did not.
Anyway, "Two Kinds of People" will be published here, http://www.semopress.com/events/proud-to-be-writing-by-american-warriors/ , in Volume 8. Date, unknown.
The name of the story, "Two Kinds of People," is based on a quote from one of the characters. I have borrowed that very fine quote from my very good friend, Dr. Allen "Smokey" Roberds. The man is a genius.