Frederick Dahl

Sometimes the reading of something is inextricably linked to the time and place where it was read. I read "The Ugly Little Boy" when I was a teenager. My family spent time at my grandparents' farm and then a couple more at a lake. We were a suburban family enjoying the fruits of a good life, and when I read the story I was struck by the deep sadness and sacrifice at the heart of the story. I talked to my father about it and we went fishing for lake trout and life was good. My father is dead, the suburbia he moved us to suburbia is dead, and the ideals my father fought for in World War II are dim memories like that story read in a cabin by a lake long gone. There were horrors like my father's cancer, and the upheaval of the 1970s and too little appreciation at the time for what my father provided, but I would trade this pathetic world of political correctness and identity politics to travel back in time and spend one moment with real heroes. I reread the story recently and for a moment went back in time to a better time.