My Aunt Florence—A Young Woman in Wartime

Recently I was looking through my Aunt Florence’s photo album. My mother’s much younger sister, Florence, was like a big sister to me.

One of the first photos in her album is of her high school glee club taken in 1935 when they presented an operetta called “Maid in Japan.” The girls are dressed in kimonos, most of them carrying fans or parasols. The boys who played the part of Japanese appear to be somewhat confused about what a male counterpart of the girls might wear. But they seem to have settled on  tent hats  worn at a rakish angle, and a few Fu Manchu moustaches.

Lansing (Kansas) High School Glee Club, “Maid in Japan,” December 19, 1935. These are members of the greatest generation when they were still  kids.

When the picture was taken in 1935, Florence (center of photo in white kimono) was 16 years old, as I assume the others were—more or less.  Six years later, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they were  21-22 years old. They would give up  a good chunk of their young lives—perhaps even  life itself— in a war involving an enemy they had so recently found interesting and charming . If  you  tried to incorporate this bit of irony in a work of fiction, you’d probably be criticized for trying too hard. Because of their determination, bravery and sacrifice in defense of the nation, history has come to call them “the greatest generation.”

Unless they were exempt for medical reasons, every one of the boys in the picture was probably drafted.  More than 11 million  able bodied men between the ages of 18-45  were conscripted into military service in the World War II draft.

Government poster featuring Rosie the Riveter

And the women did their part. There were, of course, female branches of the armed forces: the WACS, the WAVES, and the SPARS, and then there were the WASPS, over a thousand civilian women aviators who already had pilot licenses and were recruited to fly non-combat missions freeing male pilots for combat.

Women on the home front  stepped forward to do the jobs that men would traditionally be hired to do. They worked in shifts  around the clock,welding, “manning” assembly lines, manufacturing the weapons of war. Rosie the Riveter was the iconic image representing these women.

Typists and stenographers played a crucial part in wartime.

But there was another army of women whose skills were essential to the war effort and who are not often acknowledged because their jobs did not challenge gender expectations.  They were the typists and stenographers who were recruited by the thousands to produce the incredible amount of paperwork necessary for the prosecution of a war. Florence was one of these. She worked at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where Army majors came to learn to be Colonels and Generals. She and her compatriots  could take dictation in shorthand, type a gazillion words a minute on clunky manual typewriters, while making multiple copies with carbon paper. That was the way Florence  helped win the war.

Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1944

Florence Leffel at her desk in the Command and General Staff College, 1944

One day in April of 1945, Florence was at work when she received a telegram with the news that her husband, Lt. Danny Leffel, had died in a Hawaiian hospital from wounds received three days earlier on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Five months later, the war ended with the surrender of Japan.

Post Script to E-Books vs. Tree Books: “Introducing the Book”

This has got to be one of the funniest videos on You Tube. The language, incidentally, is Norwegian.

 MY LOCATION: Coming to you today from Lake Peekskill, New York.

Beautiful Lake Peekskill

Why I ‘d Much Rather Read a Tree Book Than an E-Book

Tree book and E-book(s)

I appreciate the digital revolution; I really do. For starters,  Amazon has changed my life because shopping—for everything —is so simple. I don’t tweet, but I do have Facebook friends. My cell phone is so dumb all it knows how to do is to make and receive phone calls; however I do own the latest model of the Kindle e-reader.

But after six months or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that reading a tree book—or a real book,  if you will—offers subtle satisfactions that reading the same book on an e-reader simply does not, and I much prefer the real thing.

My objections to the Kindle stem mainly from the fact that you have to deal with it one page at a time. I hadn’t realized until I got the Kindle how often I fan the pages of a book, looking for information I’ve forgotten or to see what’s coming, or to see if I have time to finish the chapter before I have to struggle with the slotted spoon. I like to feel the weight of the pages on the left increasing as I read. in other words, I like to relate to the whole book at once.

Also, I like to write in my books. I figured out long ago that it’s okay. God doesn’t care. They are, after all, my books. Of course I would never write in someone else’s book or a library book (curses on those who do) but I love to scribble in mine. I like to pick up a book I’ve already read, fan the pages looking for the stars, the underlines, and the marginal notes I’ve made in my own handwriting and read those best parts again.

I like the fact that the real books have different personalities quite apart from their content. Some of them are fat, some thin. They are different colors. Some of them are friendly; some are not. As far as I’m concerned a really friendly book lies flat when it’s open, and has pages with ample margins. If there are notes, they’re in the margin or at the foot of the page, not at the end. If there are illustrations, I like them near the related text, not stuffed in the middle together. If, in addition the book is well written and tells me something I don’t already know, then it’s a good friend indeed. All e-books look more or less the same. That’s boring

I like to know where my books are—and I do. They’re on the bookshelves and I can identify them just by looking at the spines; I don’t want them dancing off into the atmosphere when I’m not looking. Finally, I love bookmarks. I collect them—and like to use them.

To be fair I should say there are advantages to the Kindle that I appreciate: you can make the type bigger, it’s easier to read lying down (something I like to do) because the book literally weighs nothing. All you have to hold is the reader itself. You can read in the dark (good if the person next to you is trying to sleep), there are lots of free books available from various sources, including the library. And if you read on the go—on the bus, in the line at the grocery store, or on an airplane or train, then I suppose an e-book is preferable to a real book. But when all is said and done, for me it’s no contest.

The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park

MY LOCATION As I write this, I’m sitting on a bench next to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park. When it was built in 1862, it provided water for the city. Today it is maintained as a scenic attraction and wildlife refuge. A 1.58-mile track encircles it, and waterfowl make it their home.

Behind me is an allee of cherry trees, now in bloom. Their beauty is breathtaking. And somewhere there is something fragrant blooming. Herb is here too, reading— on his Kindle.

A perfect day.

The Cherry Trees Behind Me and a Runner in Hot Pink Shoes

The Immigrant, An American Musical, Tells the Story of How One Family Became Americans

Rita Markova and Sarah Knapp performing in The Immigrant, Seven Angels Theater, Waterbury Connecticutt

Last weekend found us on the train to see a musical, The Immigrant, at the Seven Angels Theater in Waterbury, Connecticut. Based on a play by Mark Harelik, it is the story of his grandfather, a Russian Jew who fled the pogroms of Czarist Russia in 1909, immigrated through Galveston, and made his way to Hamilton, Texas, where he was befriended by a Baptist banker and his wife.

In 2000, Harelik asked Steven and Sarah to transform his play into a musical. Steven wrote the music and Sarah wrote the lyrics. Since then it  has been performed off Broadway in New York and in regional theaters throughout the United States.  This particular production was special for us because Sarah plays the banker’s wife, and Steven is the musical director, conducting and playing the piano.  Reviews have been fantastic and no wonder; it is a  beautiful piece and a superb production. Am I proud mom? Yes.

Looking through the program as I  waited for the performance to begin, I read the following program note by Harelik:

This is the story of my grandparents, young Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms of eastern Europe in 1909.

Having come to America’s southern shores on the wave of the Galveston Plan, my grandparents Harelik (originally pronounced Gorehlik) settled in a small town in central Texas where full religious observance was difficult. Through the years, they raised three sons and entered the American community. All outward sins of the shtetl life they left behind were gone.

For the family, however, the experiences of my grandparents’ past lives were daily stories that were passed around the dinner table. And for me, the hero of this quotidian legend was my grandfather Haskell. I could almost picture him—the young Jew forced to carry his life in his pocket—his religion, his aspirations, his search for safety and stability, and (strangely, the most vivid image of all) me. I could picture myself in his pocket. He was bringing my life to this space—this great open space, this unimaginable future that I live in now.

The day I sat down to write this story, I had been on the phone with my dad. He’d taken my elderly grandfather Haskell on their weekly drive around town, which took all of 20 minutes maybe. They drove by the clothing store founded in 1911 on the town square. “There’s your store, Pop.” “My what?” “Your store—Look, see that sign up there? Haskell Harelik—it’s your name.” “My name?”

He had forgotten his name. He had forgotten his journey, his life, his story. Now I reach into my own pocket, and there he is—my great American hero, who traveled so far to live a simple life, raise a family, plant the seeds of my future. We bear these seeds from the faded pockets of our fathers and mothers. We are them, in an unseeable, ungraspable way. And by our single, potent glance back, their invisible lives are made worthy and meaningful and immortal. And in the end, when even memory is gone, that which remains lives only in the telling. I must tell you this story, for it’s all that remains of a good man’s life, and all that’s immortal in me.

I got to thinking that except for the very few of us who are of pure native American descent, there are immigrant stories in all of our lives. But I suspect not many of us know those stories. Young people are not always interested in the distant past and by the time they are, it is too late to ask anyone who might know.  Neither of my grandmothers nor the grandfather I knew told me anything at all about their childhoods, much less about their parents or grandparents or how they came to be Americans.

Even genealogical research usually reveals only factual fragments. Except for the recent arrivals or the lucky ones with a long line of talkative grandparents or a stash of letters or diaries, the stories remain  untold. That’s another reason The Immigrant  is so special.

More Harbingers of Spring and Another Poem

A host of golden daffodils

Anthony has written  that for him, it’s the happy daffodil that heralds the arrival of spring. Did anyone else grow up calling these beautiful flowers “jonquils”?  Whatever you call them, they are indeed a happy sight after this long winter.

Daffodils

I wander’d lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils,

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company!

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

The Forsythia is in Bloom!

My fifth grade teacher was a bitter old woman who didn’t like children—especially me. Now why anyone would not like me at that stage is  a mystery; I was a very compliant child. Nevertheless Miss Braden ruined my ten-year-old life. However, she introduced me to Forsythia, and for that I owe her. I remember clearly the morning she brought some branches to school and put them in a vase.

Forsythia, 86th Street Transverse, Central Park

 

Since that day so many springs ago, except for the 19 years that I lived in the tropics, I have noticed and loved the blooming of the Forsythia. Nineteen  years, incidentally, is a long time to go without Forsythia.

The first spring after I moved to New York, I was thrilled to discover that the ledges of the 86th Street sunken transverse road through Central Park are lined with Forsythia! As you pass through the Park, for a few lovely days in spring you see burst after burst of glorious gold that tells you the long dark winter is finally over.

For Housman, it was the cherry tree:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come agin,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs is little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

For Whitman, it was the lilac.

When lilacs last in the dooyard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O ever returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring

Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love.

For me it is the Forsythia.

“I’d Like to Kiss You, But I Just Washed My Hair.”

Bette Davis in “Cabin in the Cotton.”

The Bette Davis movie, Cabin in the Cotton,  is long forgotten, but this famous line lives on,  puzzling though it may be for those of you who can’t remember a time when we didn’t enjoy the convenience of hand-held electric hair dryers.

In the dim past before the 1950s, “Sorry, I can’t; I just washed my hair” was a common and convenient excuse that enabled us to turn down an unwelcome last-minute invitation.

You see, washing your hair then was a very big deal. Well, actually it was the drying that was the big deal. On a warm summer day you could sit in the back yard and let the sun do its work. In the winter you could toss your locks before the hot air register if you happened to have a forced hot air furnace. And those of us not blessed with curly hair had to “set it” in pin curls. Certainly no one washed her hair every day.

So the line is really very funny. Bette Davis said that of all the lines she spoke in the movies, this was her favorite.

But think what hair washing must have meant for women in the 19th century before running water, much less hot water, was available, and when all women had long hair.

Julia Tredwell in a studio portrait probably taken to commemorate her performance in a tableau or parlor theatrical in which she portrayed the Biblical Ruth. Usually she wore her hair in braids that wound round. . .and round the back of her head.

Now I’ll admit that not all women had hair as long as Julia Tredwell, but still. . .

The following is from An Old Merchant’s House: Life at Home in New York City, 1835-65

Hair care relied heavily on the hairbrush. Lola Montez, author of a widely read 1858 advice book and herself a great beauty, recommended ten minutes brushing two,three, or even four times a day. Washing long hair was a major undertaking, particularly before the availability of running water. However, it was generally felt that it was not so much the hair that needed frequent washing as the scalp, which may have made the job somewhat easier, even if it did not make the hair cleaner. Alcohol-based hair washes were sometimes relied upon to remove the perfumed pomades or hair oils that were then popular. Godey’s Lady’s Book offered a recipe for one such pomade, which was said to ward off gray hair. It consisted of four ounces of hog’s lard, four drams of spermaceti (the oil from the sperm whale), and four drams of bismuth (an alkaline metallic powder) to which perfume could be added if desired.

To see Cabin in the Cotton, go here. Start around 28:58 to catch the run-up to the line.