Steel Town
by John P. Matsis
Steel
Town, a city of proud immigrant men and
women awakens to the call of a distant war.
Bessemer converters, open hearths, and steel
workers gear for the machinery of a war they
don’t understand. Night is no longer dark as
the horizon glows from the nonstop flow of
molten steel; the evenings no longer
tranquil as eighteen-wheelers roar, fully
loaded with steel to make tanks that spit
fire and for destroyers that patrol the Sea
of Saigon.
In a place as alien as a far off planet, two
boys, the best of friends, come to age and
find themselves catapulted into the horror
of war—where the enemy, like moles, tunnel
beneath the damp earth and into the
hillsides, where booby trapped bombs and
punjii stakes await the unwary American
soldiers as they step through tall grasses
and beneath the canopy of dense vegetation
in search of the enemy. It is a place where
a cunning and determined enemy calls home, a
jungle arena where boyhood dreams and bonds
of friendship are tested. The motto, "till
death do us part," becomes a sudden reality
when a enemy grenade explodes, and the once
"pretty boy" must come to grip with a
terrible reality—he has only half a face. He
is no longer the boy with a face that girls
die for, no longer the vision of a Greek god
born of proud immigrant parents.
As the war escalates, Steel Town, Gary,
Indiana, must come to grip with the changing
times. The old ways are strained, tradition
no longer to be taken for granted—the war
has changed everything. Like the war afar,
lives totter and bend in the gust of
controversy. A Greek coffeehouse
keeper, an ex-middleweight champion of the
world, and a young girl face difficult
decisions. A priest struggles with his own
demons. Parents look at each with
apprehension, uncertain of the future of
their sons. Two soldiers, their lives
forever changed, struggle in a chess match
of life and death. Even the enemy must face
the inevitable…that life is indeed fragile.
