About John M. Burt
John M. Burt has been, at various times, a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman, a massage therapist, a middle-school history teacher, a carnival barker, an assisted-living assistant, an in-home caregiver and an at-home parent. Among the jobs he has trained for but never actually done are Marine field medic, research psychologist, phlebotomist and registered nurse. He has been married since 1984, or since 1994, or possibly is still just dating, but always with the same woman. He is the father of five children, all but one now grown, all but one adopted, all but two Ethiopian, all but two boys.
The Christmas Mutiny
"What would happen, I wonder, if the Armies suddenly and simultaneously went on strike and said some other method must be found of settling the dispute?" --Winston Churchill, November 1914
In December of 1914, soldiers along the battlefront laid down their arms and observed a Christmastime truce. That much is true. They buried their dead, sang and drank together, roasted pigs and rabbits they had caught, and had bicycle races.
And there was more than one football game.
Rattler Lil
A fantasy story in which a boy in 19th Century Oregon finds a surrogate mother who loves children and hates snakes: "Snake did me an injury once", she says. Before he leaves her home as a man, he learns a secret about her that stays with him all his life.
I heard a sound like the Devil laughing – nasty, but stupid, like a mean drunk.
I didn’t recognize the sound at first, I guess because Miz Clay was diving towards it rather than backing away, but then she came up, swinging a rattler . . . by its tail. She swung it fast, and hard, so it couldn’t turn back to bite her, swung it so its head must have been going a mile a minute when it smacked into a fence post about a foot from me.
Frankie
An incident in a little corner store in the 1930s. Why doesn't Frankie listen to The Romance of Helen Trent? Did she really shoot Johnny? Will colored people one day fly airplanes? This story answers none of these questions.
Letty liked Frankie’s shop. Frankie sold cigars and cigarettes, but it didn’t stink of tobacco the way a cigar store did. She sold candy, and it was good candy, but it wasn’t a candy store, full of tiny little kids making noise.
Best of all, Frankie sold magazines, and when Letty came in and bought Air Wonder Stories or Zeppelin, Frankie didn’t give her a dirty look while taking her money.