To the editor:

Jim Freeman’s column of last Saturday about war personalities and poets was charming and nostalgic. But I question his venues — the places where he writes his material. Are his coffee shops places of impartial opinion, or places where the body pierced and neck tattooed are screened at the door for explosives?

As a merchant seaman of the same era, I would like to have been present in the company of World War II veterans telling yarns, but I know I wouldn’t fit in. I have sat in the Freeland Café and places like the café at the Texaco station, places I consider political and a bit right-wing, and felt not quite accepted. We do wear the marks, and like Woody Guthrie, a great mover in the days of Merchant Marine leftist liberals, we are loners, not joiners. We get recognition but not the full GI veterans rights. I know I wear the marks — the possible anarchist — a challenger of laws. I would be stopped at the door of the Eagles.

Now, though Jim appears to be all things to all men, I wonder about the places he writes from. Does Jim keep the American flag in the closet of his caboose? I must sneak by someday and check.

Peter Lawlor

Clinton