Soda Jerk Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

In the Summer
in the '30's,
Pop was Omaha's
King Soda Jerk

in the Lane Rexall drugstore
across the street
from Peony Park.

The countertop?
- -Was marble.
The taps?
- -Were huge and silver.
Behind him?
- -Were ceiling-high mirrors.

Pop himself was tall, blond,
and movie star handsome,
an all city halfback
and president of North High's senior class
headed for West Point.

How he made
the bobbysoxers melt
when he made them
ice cream sodas.
"Vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry? "

Some of the girls
liked him so much
they drank two.
Then,
for more excitement,
crossed over
to the roller coaster
and hurled
all over themselves
under the hot, Nebraska, sun.

Two years later,
just as he returned to West Point
for his junior year,
he wrote his sister,
"This place is killing
my initiative, my imagination, and my sense of humor,
but I'm sticking it out
because I want the degree."

Three years after that,
as a young lieutenant
training for war,
he saw clearly
how ill prepared America was
to fight the Nazis.
He wrote his sister,
his imagination still intact,
his combat death
was "probable,
if not inevitable."

Instead, he survived
his purple heart,
made light colonel
by war's end,
and became
nearly the hero
girls imagined he was

as he made them
banana splits
behind the marble counter
in the depths
of The Depression.