Bombers, Dr. Zhivago and Icy Roads

I sign up for all the Life Enrichment lectures at the senior hall. This month’s lecture was given by a local woman, Sandra Warren, who wrote a book about her high school’s junior and senior classmates who bought a B-17 Bomber during WWII by selling $375,000 worth of War Bonds and they won the right to name and christen the airplane. It even flew into town for the ceremony and when “The Spirit of South High” flew off, it was never heard from again. Fast forward seven decades later when the alumni from the high school decided to research what happened to the bomber and the research lead them to another project: getting a marker placed in a field near the Meadows of Dan, Virginia, where the bomber crashed on a foggy night during a training exercise---two years after it was built. The bomber never made it to the war.

And I never made it to the lecture. I got up that morning, eager to go because it had been too long since I’d talked to another human being and I promised myself this winter I wouldn’t let the weather wimp me out from going places. I took a shower and told the dog to be a good boy as I walked out the door. I got two minutes from home on a trip that should have only taken another seven to get to the senior hall if I hadn’t been behind seven drivers going 20 in a 55 mile an hour zone. It was 23 degrees and everything was covered by a thin layer of ice. I had visions of someone getting impatient, and spinning out trying to pass, causing a chain reaction accident. Finding a safe place to turn off and head back home, I did just that. The icy landscape came with flash-backs to the days when I used to help my husband salt parking lots and we'd pass by lots of cars in ditches on black ice nights. Small cars like I drive now.

Long nights of plowing snow would often have me thinking about Doctor Zhivago. I had a cassette tape of the sound track from the movie that I played in the truck. Wikipedia says this about the storyline: “It is set in Russia between the years prior to World War I and the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922, and is based on the 1957 Boris Pasternak novel by the same name.” It stared Omar Sharif and Julie Christie and I was in love with that movie back in the ‘60s. There are many snowy scenes in the three hour film but there is one in particular showing the interior of a house covered in white, icy snow. I had romanticized that scene to be the most beautiful winter-scape I’d ever seen. 

I had a chance to see Dr. Zhivago on television last week and was reminded of why I don’t like watching old movies. The interior scene I loved for so many years was not the sparkling crystal, romantic wonderland my mind’s eye had built it up to be. And Julie Christie’s acting was almost laughable, the director seemingly depending on close-ups of her pretty face to carry the story forward. And the Russian revolt, the fighting, the way people starved and fought to get enough fuel to heat their rooms in the unforgiving Russian winters was depressing and strangely seemed like a forecast of what could be coming to us if we don’t start doing a better job of protecting the earth's Breadbaskets from bio-terrorists and climate change deniers. I couldn’t believe the 1965 edition of myself could have loved that movie so much. I know I was naive back then when all I knew about the Russian Civil War came from Dr. Zhivago. Could I have believed that war and all the hardships that come with it would be worth it if only the “right side” wins? Or maybe I just had the hots for Omar Sharif. 

I’ve had Dr. Zhivago loaded on my Kindle for a couple of years, unread. It’s 700 pages long and after seeing the movie again, I doubt I’ll ever read it. The We Bought a Bomber book is 157 pages and I don’t have an interest in reading that either. From the reviews on Amazon, the bomber book sounds like it romanticizes the war effort on the home front which I suppose is to be expected---it was a uniquely all-in, all-for-one period of American history. It’s to be expected because it’s true what they say about the spoils of war going to the winners and that includes the winners get to tell the stories of glory and courage, of shared sacrifices and pride. ©