"Your Children Got a Little Drunk"

By Larry Yates

My dearest husband,
It’s Christmas Eve, we all drank eggnog,
To search for a little joy.
Matt dressed our dog in a shirt you wore;
Nan made my pot a toy.
Charles scolded dog for being gone
And slept on the kitchen floor.
Your children got a little drunk.

You say they must become gentlefolk.
They cannot grow up crude.
How can I polish their manners smooth
When I can hardly get us food?
How can I get my jangly nerves calm;
When you aren’t here to soothe?
Your children got a little drunk.

You write there is no candy
For soldiers going to a fight.
Here there is no candy
For children trembling in the night.
They fear they’ll lose their father
To Yankee cannon balls.
They fear they’ll lose their mother
To the blackest of blues.
They want their fears to go away;
They want their father home to stay.

I am glad Alex visited your camp
And rode your horse with you,
But why did he see a deserter shot twice?
Now it’s his nightly bugaboo.
Aren’t there ways that are nice
To raise gentle women and men?
It’s Christmas Eve again,
And again you are away.
Your wife is in a holiday funk;
Your children got a little drunk.

Please take care of yourself.
Your loving wife, Patience.

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Larry Yates served four years, two months, and thirteen days in the Marine Corps, 1962-63. JFK froze our discharges over the Cuban Missile Crisis, thus the extra time. Larry rose from second ammo humper in a machine gun squad to an intelligence pogue. Years later he retired from teaching and programming at Columbia University to write plays and a musical (findthegoldenbird.com). The lyric above is part of an epistolary song cycle: “Passions of American Wars.”

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What’s happening at VetRep…

Catch our interview this week with Larry Freeland on the Savage Wonder Podcast here.

Tickets are going fast for the Parlor this season, get yours here before they sell out! We’re currently playing Bad Jews by Joshua Harmon, with Jenn Haltman’s Central Park West coming up in June.

We are currently offering multiple dates for our online and in-person Playwriting for Veterans classes, and our Acting for Beginners class is now being offered weekly every Saturday from 10am-12pm. Scholarships for qualifying veterans, as well as multi-class passes are available. Registration details can be found here.