Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
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Waking Up in Sicily<br />
Keith Onstad<br />
Iwoke up that morning to the sound of the Iron Curtain falling all across<br />
Europe. I was in a field behind a low stone wall, and I knew exactly where I<br />
was, but not how I got there. I raised my head from the dust and opened my<br />
eyes as wide as I dared, but I already knew that Jeremy was gone. Gone. Off the<br />
island. Back to the real world. Beneath my body the box of take-out was<br />
smashed flat and the leftover calzones were squashed beyond all recognition.<br />
The bottles at my feet were empty, but when I turned my head I could see a full<br />
bottle leaning against the wall.<br />
We did not know, at first, that Mount Etna had erupted. We saw the<br />
mushroom cloud off in the distance towards the Naval Air Station at Sigonella,<br />
and everyone had a theory. Some thought it was a nuclear accident (although<br />
the official line was that we could "neither confirm nor deny" that there were<br />
nuclear weapons at Sigonella). Some thought one of Qadhafi's terrorists had<br />
finally made it to the big martyr's paradise in the sky. One man thought it was a<br />
test explosion in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. And a few even thought<br />
it might be Mount Etna exploding.<br />
One at a time we slipped back into the barracks to grab our cameras.<br />
We might not have known what caused the sky to darken in such an unnatural<br />
fashion, but we all wanted to record it on film just in case it was the beginning<br />
of the end of the world. After I opened my locker and removed the camera I<br />
reached under the bed (in the new Air Force we don't call them bunks) for a<br />
bottle of Vino Locale. The first thing I discovered upon landing on the island<br />
was the Vino Locale served in most restaurants. A bottle cost less than a dollar.<br />
Most of the girls mixed theirs half and half with Seven-Up to tone down the,<br />
often harsh, flavor that was an acquired taste. Quickly acquired. The alcohol<br />
level ranged somewhere between barely noticeable to kick-you-in-the-ass-and<br />
knock-you-over-for-a-week, with a tendency towards the latter. The magic of<br />
Vino Locale, however, was that you would never know what you were getting<br />
from bottle to bottle.<br />
..<br />
Back outside I snapped a roll of film that would never develop properly,<br />
and then opened the bottle of wine, lifted it to my lips, and took a long drink<br />
straight from the neck. It was the kick-you-in-the-ass variety, so I made the<br />
requisite "god-damn-that-is-harsh" face before I passed the bottle to Gordon<br />
Bradley, a buck sergeant who worked in the Comm Center and had come in on<br />
the same plane as I did three weeks prior to the eruption. He wiped the mouth<br />
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