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101 Word Short Stories

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The General

July 29, 2022 2 Comments

By Leonard Kress

We mowed his lawn, five bucks each week—the General, USMC, retired. Lacking children, he and wife and invalid sister lived in the only rancher on a block of split-levels. When word mobilized back in sixty-eight that some of us had canvassed for Eugene McCarthy, he fired us. Later he’d don his old, still-fitting fatigues. His lawn was easy to mow, hard to give up for any cause, flat except by the property line, where it peaked like a Green Beret. How unlike his other boundaries, trampled to dust from years of our cutting through (as effective as any Dow defoliant).

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. J. C. Todd says

    July 29, 2022 at 11:18 pm

    Long history compressed into this.

    Reply
  2. Jerry Jerman says

    August 3, 2022 at 9:59 am

    Efficient as a snappy salute. Effectively conveys both the lawn and the general himself.

    Reply

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