Fictional accounts of life in the Upper Delaware River Valley

By Tom Kane

Danny O'Neill can be found most late afternoons down at Meehan's Bar and Grille. He's a regular there. Everybody around Meehan's knows his story because he tells it all the time to anyone who wants to listen. And even though it's a poignant story, it looses a lot in the frequent telling.

By the time 8 o'clock rolls around, Danny's already "in his cups" as they say. But that doesn't impede his keen mind and uncommon perception about the world around him.

He comes from a military family-regular Army-with a proud ancestry that goes back to the Civil War. The O'Neill men were officers, not enlistees, who were leaders of men. Danny's grandfather won a Distinguished Service Cross at Verdun in the First World War and his father and two uncles served with distinction in WWII and Korea, all three of them earning purple hearts and numerous other decorations.

The family calls Sullivan County home even though they were shipped around the country a lot. They always come back here.

When Danny graduated from high school in the late 60's, he enlisted to serve in Vietnam to fight for his country, as all O'Neills should. The only problem was that Vietnam was not your noble type of war that evoked strong national pride from its fighting men. It was a dirty war and Dan was right in the midst of the dirtiness, serving two tours of duty for two years each, the first time as a foot soldier and the second as a helicopter gunner. I think the dirtiness has never washed off of him.

I guess maybe that's why he drinks so much.

Danny has a partial disability and the government gives him a small allowance to make up for his pain. What little he gets he tends to drink away.

I ran into him about a month ago. He was sitting on a rock along the Delaware River fishing. I sat down beside him to chat for a while. He's always interesting and full of opinions that force a person to think.

"You see what's happening in Russia today," he began, without giving me a chance to sit down.

"No, what?" I said.

"The country's falling apart. The people work but don't get paid and they're running out of food and the essentials of life. What if that happened here? It could happen here, you know. What would people here do?"

"I never thought of it," I said.

"That's the trouble. Nobody thinks about it. I know what I'd do. I could make it. I've developed survival skills over the years. I can hunt, I can grow vegetables, I can can vegetables, I can live off the woods and the fields. How many people today can do that? Could you do that?"

He didn't even let me answer.

"People today are dependent on supermarkets and stores for their subsistence. What if they didn't have those things? What if what's happening in Russian happened here? What would they do? Young women today don't know the first thing about canning and preserving. They wouldn't know how to survive."

All this he spoke while facing the river. Then he turned around and said, "People today are too soft. They need to return to nature and the simpler way of life."

What he said hit home. I am a child of the Great Depression. I know how things can suddenly fall apart. I've experienced it. I've seen it. Danny's right. I felt like I was talking to the prophet of the river-a man who gets no respect from his own people. I think it was Jesus who said, " A prophet goes without honor in his own country." I hope Danny's wrong, but nobody can fault his logic-nor his perception.