MINORITY REPORT

In the spring before the war my mother aroused the snoring lump that was my father of an intruder in the midnight lilacs. Rudely prodded in his hairy middle, he rose as

omnisciently from the posted bed as a beachmaster from a polar ice cap, menacing in stubble and maroon pajamas with silk silver stripes, he ran loading his army .32

with dubious cartridges which, when fired, would expel curiously plump billows of choking white smokeballs and he flung open the door with an ominous grunt, stubbing his

great toe and blatting like a trombone manned by a neophyte. The rascal vanished up the yellowlamped suburban street closely followed by father, hair askew and in

the fog of belching artillery his eye gleamed bloodshot. Puffing and snorting like a 200-pound partridge, father returned to his castle, and blowing into the gunmuzzle, he

sank once again into summer - sticky bedsheets. My mother was ever so proud and assaulted romantically her annoyed hero; she pronounced that he showed no fear but

during the war father made a mint in burn ointments smelling of old eggs and helmet-liners from soybeans and kept his revolver out of reach locked up in his bureau drawer.