Feeling Nostalgic

Guess it's because I just sent some old family pictures to my cousin. I started looking at still others and thinking about my family. They are all gone now. I am the last of the older generation.



I was very much the youngest. My sister, Margaretta, was fourteen years older than I. My brother, Bill, was eleven years older. So when these earliest pictures were taken, I hadn't even been thought of. Weren't they adorable?









Even in the sad looking swimwear of the era, they were cute. This was taken in the surf at Ocean City, NJ.







As they grew up, this was taken in front of the house where I was born - considerably later.










This is my sister and me in the sandbox. She must have been about sixteen.
She looks so much older.






Gee. I was kind of cute too in 1936








In 1939 they were still pretty smart looking.






And a year or so later, World War II had begun. Bill was in the Signal Corps. He was in the Battle of the Buldge. He was Army. His two best friends were, one in the Navy and one in the Marines at Iwo Jima.










I graduated high school in 1950. And just the other day, the mail brought me a notice of our sixtieth class reunion. Can you believe - sixty years!?

I can't.



OK. Enough of this. Back to the future.

A Christmas Sled

As I mentioned in a recent post, my brother was a member of the Army Signal Corps during World War II. His two best buddies were, one in the Navy and the other in the Marine Corps. Thankfully, all three came home in one piece. Just having them all home again was Christmas present enough that year.

I must have been eleven or twelve that Christmas. Some years earlier, my mother, brother and I had moved into a second floor apartment. Mother and I had twin beds and shared the big master bedroom, and Bill had his own room - briefly. We had only been there about a year when the war began, and Bill was on his way to a four year stint in the armed service. That meant that I had my own room for four years. I was so happy to see him come home that I didn't really mind too much giving it up again for a while, until he was married.

I'm not sure how it happened that on Christmas Eve I was sleeping alone in the back bedroom again, but that's how it happened. Mother and Bill did much whispering together all day. Apparently there was something special for me in the works! And that is how it happened that I saw their surprise. I did not go to sleep as early as they thought. When my brother went down to the basement of the apartment house and carried the new sled up the fire escape, he had to pass the back bedroom window, and I saw it. This was a very big deal to me at the time! I had wanted this particular sled for ages, and there was plenty of snow that year. There were still shortages of one thing or another because of the war. I guess the metal runners made it hard to get or something. It was all I could do not to bounce out of bed, but I managed to wait until morning and to act surprised when I saw it under the tree. What's more, there was also a pair of ice skates to go with it! They were another still-hard-to-get item. That was a really, really good Christmas!

War

The violence in Mumbai, in Iraq, Afghanistan and several other parts of our world today has me thinking, how little we in the U.S. truly understand what such things really mean. Yes, there was 9-11. It was horrendous. And there is violence on a small scale going on every day. But I really believe that we have come to a point at which, unless it happens to one of us individually, we view it almost as if it happened on TV or in a movie. We think of that as entertainment, and when we read or hear it on the news, it is not real to us.

I recall the start of World War II. I was eight years old. My big brother put on a uniform and went off to the Signal Corps. My mother hung a little banner with a blue star, in the front window. We received photos of Bill during basic training, and later from England, then Belgium, then Germany. By that time we had black out curtains on the windows at night. Any time we went to the movies, as the lights were dimming, we stood up and sung the National Anthem as loudly as we could. The newsreels were almost as exciting as the weekly serial on Saturday afternoon. We had scrap rubber and scrap metal drives at school.

And what did all of this mean to an eight year old? It was fun! My brother was in the Army. His best friends were Frank, in the Navy, and Bill, in the Marines. Before being shipped overseas, they came home on furlough, and had exciting and sometimes funny stories to tell. It was fun. Later there were V-mail letters to write and receive. All fun. Lots of the letters from them had been censored, and it was fun to imagine what those black spaces might mean.

Those three all came home safe, thank God. Although when friend Bill came home, having survived Iwo Jima, he couldn't be discharged right away because he came down with measles. My brother Bill had been through the Battle of the Bulge. He never talked much about his overseas service. We had a cousin who never came back.

But it was all fun. It wasn't here. It was "over there". My brother only told his eight- then nine, ten, eleven year old sister about the nurses he dated in England, and the children he had met in Belgium. He was only nineteen himself when he left.

I had a lot of growing up to do before I could wrap my mind around what war is really all about. I don't think I'll ever understand what terrorism is all about.

I wonder if any of us - with the exception of the men and women who actually fought in World War II, or Korea, Viet Nam, the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan - if any of the rest of us really understands. I don't. I don't want to either - but I feel the need to understand.

The 40's

When I began this blog I did not intend for it to become autobiographical. Apparently that is what old ladies do. At least this old lady. Surely I can go on to other things eventually. But meantime...

The 1940's meant the war. My brother joined the Signal Corps and was gone for four years. Back home it meant ration books for sugar and bakery products - and for gas of course, but Mom and I did not have a car - and blackout curtains, and a star in the window - a blue star, and a prayer that it would never have to be replaced by a gold one. And V-mail. My brother's letters were designed to reassure us. During basic training he wrote of amusing incidents. He told us he woke one morning to find he was not alone in his sleeping bag. He sent a photo of himself holding up the 6' long snake that had crawled in with him. I thought that was hilarious. After he shipped out he sent photos of himself with pretty English nurses, and he complained about the rain. V-mail. I practiced writing very small so I could cram in as much as possible in the little space allowed. We got used to seeing his letters come with blacked out spaces where the censors had decided he was telling us too much about his location. He sent pictures of cute little Belgian children sitting on an army jeep, then told us that shortly after the picture was taken, a bomb had demolished the jeep. He sent a picture of himself high on a pole, stringing wire, and mentioned that it wasn't much fun up there when bullets were flying. To me, it just sounded like an exciting adventure.

We saw newsreels and heard radio reports. But it wasn't real to me then. I was nine - then 10 - 11 - 12. It only became a little more real when my cousin, Arthur, was killed in action. Still, the rationing, the blackout curtains, the V-mail all seemed more like a game. How fortunate we have been in the U.S. Even the horror and loss of 9-11 was contained in one section of our country. I do not mean to diminish in any way the enormity of that event, but imagine if you can, or if you dare, an entire country destroyed in that way. Imagine what others have endured. And wonder - why? - whose mind conceived this? - who was the force behind it?

Yes, well. I digress.

Perhaps it was because I was so young. Or perhaps because I lived with my mother, who never seemed particularly worried or alarmed by anything - partly due to her deafness, partly because of her sheltered upbringing and lack of education, and probably most because of her own nature. My mother was always quite sure that everyone had good intentions and everything would always come right in the end. She would wish it, and it would become so.

Everyone was very patriotic, evidenced by the singing of the National Anthem with great gusto before they turned down the lights for the Saturday matinee. We collected scrap metal and turned it in at school, for the war effort. One little boy in my class caused a bit of a flurry when he turned in a huge ring full of keys. It seems he had helped himself to them while his father was sleeping.

My school roster included a subject with the impressive title of Problems of Democracy. It never touched on foreign affairs, and I don't recall ever having my attention drawn to newspaper head-
lines at that age. And frankly, I don't believe those headlines would have given much insight. Our government saw to it that the public should not be led to any unpatriotic thought. It was very simple: The U.S. was right. The enemy was wrong. We would win the war. God was on our side. Would that life could be so simple.


Meantime my biggest concern was that I was entering Jr.High School. But that's another story. Enough for today.