The Clipboard

The twenty-three year-old American girl pulled the lever on the heavy machine. A mundane job, but the able-bodied males were all at war and someone was needed to produce goods while they were gone. To keep focused, the young lady's eyes followed the process in front of her from beginning to end. The hard-board strips marched down the assembly line on cast-iron rollers. From above, patterned plastic stripping was pushed like reluctant paratroopers on their first jump. When the board and strips met they walked together along a belt that stretched twelve feet from left to right. The automatic timer clicked and a sharp blade dropped from above like a merciless guillotine. Another click and two rivets attached a metal clip onto the top of the board. The newly assembled clip board rolled on, buffed along the way so its user wouldn't acquire any splinters from rough sides. That was Jo Ann's life for the past eleven months. She didn't know how many boards had passed under her sharp-weary eyes though she could have had she looked at the small counter at the end of the belt. All she knew was that the boring work required considerable concentration to keep her from falling asleep.

As Jo Ann cracked the knuckle on her left index finger, a technique she'd invented a month ago to break the tedium, she let her eyes roam back to the beginning of the process. This was a deadly thing to do because whenever her eyes roamed her mind followed spontaneously. But she reached for anything to keep from focusing on the totally thoughtless job in

front of her. Her mind proposed the notion, "I wonder in whose hands that board will fall?" She was awakened by the click of the automatic timer and she went back to watching the two materials bond, the cutter chop, and the rivets pop. Had Jo Ann been able to see beyond the tight confines of her piece-job she might have told the story of the clipboard in front of her, X-39-7521. Where it would go, whose hands and what action it would experience. Had she been clairvoyance this is what she would have seen.

All the clipboards the Federal Assembly Corporation made that day were boxed and sent to Army Supply Headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina. From there they passed to the rear echelon in southern France. The Quarter Master then issued the prescribed number to each army company going to the front lines. Issue X-39-7521 landed in the anxious hands of Sergeant Harry I. Thompson, who dutifully relayed it to his Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Howard Poland. Had Jo Ann known where the board that bored her so went, she, too, would have been anxious, for it then headed straight for the German lines. Deadly barrages of mortar welcomed it. After he'd removed the laminated surface, Lt. Poland marked on the paper as if he was playing Hangman back home.

"Another barrage. How many more can those Krauts send? The bombers must have missed and let the ammo train through. Ah, here comes another volley."

A shriek tore through the air, more metal shrapnel flew helter skelter among the troops, more dust clouded the trenches, and one more slash went on the clipboard. The soldiers knew they'd be shredded if they remained where they were, so on signal they scurried down the trench like rats along a sewer pipe. Lt. Poland, shielding his eyes with his clipboard

whenever dirt slid from the trench walls, led the men away from the barrage. He didn't know until too late that they scrambled directly in the line of machine gun fire that awaited them at the end of the escape route. Poland and Thompson were mowed down like sweet clover by a John Deere side sickle.

After the Germans knew their attack had been successful, they scurried through the limp American bodies. Scavenging, common to both sides, was more rewarding than pulling triggers since the U.S. GI's carried such interesting things into battle. On the last raid Konrad Schmid recovered a pair of ivory dice inlaid with chipped marble numbers. Ammo carrier Hauptmann became the proud owner of a deck of cards decorated by nude models which instantly became the envy of the entire bunker. Today the most interesting find was the very clipboard, X-39-7521, that twenty-three year-old Jo Ann Mitchell had wondered about on the assembly line. The board aroused interest for two reasons: because of the detailed notes of the battle and because of its construction.

The board was not destined to be owned by the commander of the Klauzner Regiment for long. Ordered to march West, closer to the Belgium boarder, scavenger and board soon found themselves in the hands of an eleven-year-old message boy who rode his bike like the wind. Hans was scared to death every time he had to make the run along the Strasborg Road, but every time he arrived safely he would get a jelly-filled roll from the cook of the Allied Command. Today young Hans felt lucky because he found X-39-7521 along the roadside next to a dead German. The board had important-looking numbers and maps under its clip. He knew the tablet was made in America because it said USA on the back, but the writing was straight from Deutschland.

The cook took one look at the clipboard and marched to Major-General

Winthrop Sutherland, Commander-in-Chief at the rear guard. The cook, Joseph Klinder, was overjoyed that he'd acquired such a useful souvenir as an American-made clipboard; he could use it daily to keep track of ingredients he used in the Staff Kitchen. Naturally he didn't surrender it along with the papers the messenger had found on the road among the bodies.

As it turned out, General Sutherland was happy to receive both American and German notes. While the Chiefs-of-Staff studied the troop movements , Joseph Klinder made good use of the salvaged board by posting the quantities of ingredients he would use in his next batch of bread and rolls.

How could Jo Ann Mitchell, secure in the North Carolina assembly plant where she fought to keep focused, ever imagine in whose hands and under what circumstances X-39-7521 would be passed next? She couldn't, but fate would have it that it then sailed across the North Sea to Bristol, then onto Edinburgh, Scotland. In only three and a half months the world-traveling clipboard had already been in the U.S., France, Germany, Belgium, England, and Scotland. It would appear that the handy helper would spend years in the land of the kilt since Elizabeth McDonald now owned it, a distant cousin of Mary Anne Sutherland, niece of the Major-General who commanded the Eastern Front in the European campaign. Elizabeth was a first-year student at the university. She was firm in her convictions and determined to see her four years out so she could attend architecture school in Canada. X-39-7521 spent those four years dutifully following its head-strong student-owner and, if it had feelings, was most pleased when both the war ended and she traveled to Canada with her professional maker of blueprints. And, if the clipboard could register any degree of fulfillment now, it would have been ecstatic at already having

held war messages, cook's ingredients, a General's memoranda, and a student's notes. A long voyage from Raleigh, but almost making a full circle since it now accompanied a full-time architect to Ontario.

Sometimes the vicissitudes of peace are as surprising as the vagaries of war, for not long after the owner of X-39-7521 had reached the status of Architect's Assistant than the board was substituted for by no less than a mahogany-backed, bronze-clipped version. Much more appropriate for a late-40's lady architect catering to wealthy clients than the utilitarian needs of the war years. So the Marco Polo of clipboards sat idly, spending six months in a Heinz 57 cardboard box giving support to old class notes, unused drafting equipment, and blueprints of early dreams. X-39-7521 had spent its first years at a blistering, hand-to-hand pace, then settled into a daily routine of balancing on a knee while accepting class notes atop a wobbly knee, and now, as if in sweet retirement, rested calmly in a clammy basement. But the wartime clipboard was not destined for such inactivity. Its owner, a strong believer in usefulness, had a garage sale and the Raleigh-made board found itself atop a folding card table in Ottawa with a round sticker on its backside. Bought for a quarter, Beverly Baxter, secretary, from the state of Georgia, used the quaint board to jot grocery lists on and hold cans of Vernor's Ginger Ale during TV commercials. It wasn't long before the Atlanta-housed board sat next to the owner's cousin, the very Jo Ann who had given it birth less than two decades before.

One might think that such a meeting would bring wild cheers with good ole American 4th of July fireworks. Unfortunately X-39-7521 had no feelings so couldn't register surprise, and Jo Ann was far too busy with her four children even to recognize the board, let alone register nostalgic over her boring assembly years. But just as she turned off the Steve Allen

Tonight Show, Jo Ann did notice the board. Casually she said, "You know, Bev, this vaguely looks like the stuff I turned out during the war. But it couldn't be. You say you got it in Canada."

It has been said that sometimes a friend can stare us in the face and we won't recognize him. Also, that there is no such thing as a coincidence. A third truism is that everything has its time and place in the Divine Plan. Whether these are true in every circumstance or in none, on that warm summer Atlanta evening they seemed to have joined hands to meet an emergency. For no sooner had Jo Ann remembered her monotonous years at the assembly line than the word focus shot through her mind. And at that exact instant her youngest daughter began to stick a hairpin in a live light socket. Jo Ann leaped, not even noticing that she spilled her half-bottle of aged Vernors on the lap of her cousin. She thanked God that the leap saved her daughter's life.

Were the long string of events and time from Raleigh-France-Germany-Belgium-England-Scotland-Canada-Atlanta-Raleigh part of the Divine Plan just to save Mary-Beth Wentworth from a most shocking event? The Mary-Beth who would later take notes on the very X-39-7521 for the North Carolina Secretary of State during a conference on structuring a plan for world peace?

The Lord works in mysterious ways. And whether the string of events was by fate or by chance, an awful lot of good has already been through that iddy biddy clipboard.