)()()(

     Ouiji Needs & The Teddy Devil
Ouiji Needs & The Angel Bear

***


*

Once Upon A Time, When The World Was Almost Young,
When Boys & Girls had not yet Grown,
Into Woman & Man
...Children Ruled, and it was always Spring.
  Always Sun.

Enter The Moon.
__  ___
.



Ouiji Needs
[on his fifth birthday]
______

When Ouiji turned four years old on The Tenth Of June,
the year was 1951 and his parents had just volunteered
to attend The Korean War for the special
enlistment period of one year.

The soldiers needed Doctors & Nursed,
and this Mr. & Mrs. Needs were.

Ouiji was sure to miss them dearly;
 but he had the company of his teddy bears;
     a large library of kids books;
  and the neat going away gift of a 1946 version of
 
          The New Winston Dictionary for Children

The dark green tome had
                         1100 Pictorial Illustrations
    and was published by
                      The John C. Winston Company
                       Chicago       Philadelphia       Toronto

The dictionary was to be a one year primer, 630 pages of
  learning to be paced over the 364 days 'til his parents return.

***
  As they locked the last door of their real home, The Needs
  promised to return to their only child, and their lovely
Landover, Maryland home by birthday number five.
 
     It was intimated that that celebration would be enormous;
             candles lit, cakes and accouterments.

  Until then, Ouiji was to reside in South Baltimore,
to be cared for by his only relative,
Mrs. Needs' much older half-sister Zara LaBroome.

.

[And so, on his birthday eve morn, they set off to the place
he would live:  Aunt Zara & her gabled two story home,
on the inner edge of downtown.]

(Two days would be enough for Mr. & Mrs Needs to make a boy
at home; before they must fly to Korea on the 11th.)
...

It turned out that Zara did not believe in Celebrating
Birthdays; & she never would approve of Teddy Bears.
His Aunt cared little for Winston Dictionaries, & less
  for A Youth who might wish to learn Their Words.

.
<> End Of Prelude

~
:::::

: Tail Penny :
_______

Ouiji has no more Teddy Bears so he imagines & draws a few more:
Ice Cream Valentines     Tesserae    Superheroes Spacegun    Dumpling Hunchback
Natty Rumple    Beveled Moments     Each Midnight    Tether Nightspoon
Corner Chips     Angel Knives    West Porcheve     Shadow Beautymark
Freckles Oerderve    Wolfgang Poem
Comet Jupiter (Who had been Chinese, but was now Korean)
:::::::::::
~
_____________

___