Chuck Zumbrun

Tales from Skunk Hill

Needs and Wants

I’m reading Ken Follett’s ‘Fall of Giants’ (hey, I’m not going to apologize for reading popular fiction by the fire on a rainy cold March night) and at one point in the book a German soldier crosses no mans land during WW I and talks to the Russian soldiers in the trenches. “What are you fighting for?” he asks them. They give him a variety of answers, but as the German looks around he thinks what they really needed was “soap, good food, and new boots.”

Today we were standing around Farmers Grain and Feed in Columbia City watching an Indiana March sky drizzle on us and discussing the relative merits of different boots and admiring Jeff’s new pair of Red Wings.

That came to mind tonight as I was reading, and I thought, “as far as material items go, yeah, give me soap (and hot water), good food, and new boots, and I have pretty much all I want or need.”

Well, that and maybe a good warm coat and gloves.

P.S. I have an almost new pair of Red Wings too.

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