I Remember Mama

Today would have been my mother’s eighty-fourth birthday, had she not succumbed to colon cancer at about the age I am now. (And before you ask, I get my screenings and all is well so far.) So today, I remember Mama.

She was the sixth child and third daughter born to my grandparents, who ended up with ten children, five of each. She was the tallest of the girls, getting her height and Roman nose from her father, her dark hair and eyes from her mother, and a gentle spirit from both of them. Annie Ellen was named for her maternal grandmother, and her father used to sing her the mournful Stephen Foster song, “Gentle Annie.”

Annie started first grade (there was no kindergarten in town then) when she was still 4 years old. I believe it was at Coombs School in the village, where she also graduated from high school in 1942. Here’s a photo of her as a child, age 7, with the family’s then-home in the background:

Growing up on a dairy farm, Annie had both indoor and outdoor chores. She helped deliver milk by bicycle and, after learning to drive, by pickup truck, and learned cooking and baking from her mother – she always had a light hand with pastry, and I recall her telling me about making a chocolate cream pie for Easter shortly after her youngest sister was born. She learned to sew, and also made a little money cleaning houses or doing child care for people in the village. But there was time for study and fun as well – she played basketball in high school (“just girls’ rules” she told me modestly) and was an excellent student. In fact, she was valedictorian of her high school class, but again being modest, she pointed out that by graduation, “There were only seven of us.” This school photo is a little confusing to me; is it a class photo or an all-high-school photo, and if the latter, why is neither of her brothers who were two years older and younger, respectively, in the picture? She is fourth from right in the third row.

Graduating in the early months of World War II, (here’s a photo dated 1940) , Annie went to work at the nearby shipyard. I don’t know exactly what she did or what her wages were, but I have a short-lived diary that my grandmother kept a few months earlier in which she marvels that two of Mama’s brothers were going to make 25 cents an hour doing shipyard work in Portland. It’s quite possible Mama made even less, but that it seemed like a lot of money then.

It was after the war, I think, that she met my father, whose stepfather lived up the road from my grandparents, but who had been away in the National Guard and then the Army since 1940. They were married June 27, 1947, she in a navy blue suit. We have no wedding photos. Their first home was an apartment in downtown Brunswick – the building is still there and the view wouldn’t be much different today if we could get passenger rail back to Brunswick again!

Although she had had some experience cooking, she had at least one “bride’s kitchen disaster,” when she mistakenly added vanilla to a beef stew instead of Gravymaster. She always claimed that they ate it anyway.

Shortly, Mama and Daddy moved to a rented house in Bowdoinham. Rural electrification was just getting going there, so shortly after my birth in the year after their marriage, my father paid someone $5.00 to install one electric light and one socket in the house.

A veteran’s bonus enabled my parents to buy land just north of my grandfather’s farm, where a previous dwelling had burned down. They began building a house there, and my father rejoined the National Guard for some extra money. The Korean War began in 1950, and his unit was called up for training in Georgia. Soon Mama and I were on a train to Georgia (Camp Stewart as it then was). Brother #1 was born in Savannah, and we then moved to Fort Hancock at Sandy Hook, NJ, where my father decided to transfer to the Regular Army. Based on later memories of hearing the murmur of my parents’ voices as they discussed everything after we children were in bed, I’m sure my mother had input into that decision, which was to be instrumental in giving her a very different life than she had probably expected.

Three more children (including twins) and several more moves (including two tours in Germany) would become part of Annie’s life before she and my father could return to Maine for good when he retired from the Army in 1965. I think that the way my mother approached all this had a huge beneficial effect on our own view of our childhood as Army brats.

Through the alumni group of the high school I attended in Germany, I get links to websites and descriptions of books and films about the children of military men (and now women). I usually find it difficult to relate to these items because they keep talking about all the sacrifices we made. That’s not the way I saw it at all, and in large part that’s due to my mother’s example. She, like me, was definitely an introvert. Very possibly she would have been perfectly happy to stay in her hometown, socializing mostly with family and a few old friends. Instead she got a life with frequent moves, long separations from family, wide differences in housing, and frequent husbandly absences. Yet she seemed to take it all in stride, never complaining or seeming put-upon and viewing each move cheerfully as a new opportunity. So by and large, we took our cue from her and enjoyed our peripatetic life.

It was hard work, I know, raising five children on a non-com’s pay. Mama made most of the clothes for herself, my sister and me, and I even remember her sewing striped t-shirts for my brothers. She often, if not always, starched and ironed my father’s uniforms to save the laundry fees. We seldom went out to eat, and nearly all meals were made from scratch – and whether it was steak and home-made French fries on payday, or corn pudding with hot dogs cut up in it at the end of the month, it was all delicious. Yet even when she was ‘right out straight’ she never acted the exhausted martyr. There always seemed to be time for coffee and a chat with a neighbor, reading one of her favorite historical novels, quizzing me on Words of the Champions, or teaching herself New Math so she could help us with our homework.

I haven’t come nearly to the end of all I could say about my mother, but lest this be so long no one will want to read it I’ll stop now. Here’s one of my favorite pictures of Mama enjoying a temporary rest. Maybe she’s resting now in heaven, but I have a feeling she might be rearranging the furniture.

Memories of Sartoriusstrasse

In Friday’s post I talked a little about our family’s sojourn on Sartoriusstrasse in Wiesbaden, Germany. Today I’m going to tell some more of what I remember; hoping that perhaps, through the magic of Google, someone else with memories of those days will be in touch.

We arrived, as I mentioned before, in late October or early November of 1955. The American, British and French occupation of West Germany had officially ended only in May of that year, and Germany was still rebuilding from the war. Probably because we had a large family of five children, we were assigned quarters in a requisitioned town house in the center of Wiesbaden, on Sartoriusstrasse. I did not realize until I looked at this map that we were only a few blocks from the main train station in Wiesbaden! In my researches, I’ve been hampered by not knowing the exact address where we lived; of course all our mail came to the APO address and was picked up by my father at work. A nearby hospital has been enlarged since we lived there, so it’s possible the building has been torn down; but I did find this photo of 29 Sartoriusstrasse, which looks very similar to what I remember. Our quarters, as best I recall, was the middle house of five. My parents later reminded me that the basement was common to all five houses, so that all the children could play there on rainy or cold days. The back yards had, I think, stone fences separating them, but that did not stop us either.

For the six months preceding our trip to Germany, my mother and we children had been living in our little house in Maine – four rooms and an attic, with an outdoor privy. I know that at one of the times we lived there,  we also got water from the neighbor’s well, but possibly we had some kind of running water, at least from a pump, by this time. In any case, living in this rather fancy house in Wiesbaden was a big difference. There were three floors, with a bathroom on each. At first, I had my own room on the third floor, but at 7 I was a little too young to appreciate that so I soon moved in with my 3-year-old sister on the second floor. In addition to a living room and dining room, we had a playroom, I think on the first floor, which must have saved my mother a few steps when we needed supervision.  The house came furnished with heavy, dark furniture and even china – Brother #1, I believe, has the slightly chipped gravy boat that we had to buy from the Army when we moved because we had chipped it. It’s white with a dark red stripe like some church dinnerware, but more delicate. My sister has a souvenir of the furniture – a tiny scar on her forehead where she slid under my parents’ bed during a chase.

Our previous homes had certainly had no more than three bedrooms or two stories, and there were still many Germans looking for work. So, for the first and only time in her life, my mother had household help. Our first maid was Magda, who was younger (well, under 40 anyway) and skinny. We children thought she was mean, too. I’m not sure if she quit or was fired, but then we got Hilda, who was stout and jolly. She taught my mother to make some German dishes, and was happy to help me with my school German although her dialect was not the Hochdeutsch we were being taught.

My father, who was a Master Sergeant at the time, was First Sergeant of A Battery, 63rd AAA Missile/Gun Battalion. (I’m not sure exactly when it changed from Gun to Missile.)  As a First Sergeant, he had some responsibilities for the men in his battery, beyond simply their work performance. I benefited from this responsibility when one of his men came to him for help – he had signed up to buy the Book of Knowledge for his infant child and couldn’t really afford the payments. My father bought this great children’s encyclopedia from him and I (and quite a few other family members) got years of enjoyment and education from it.  I remember too that we did a lot more entertaining of people from work than at any other time in my memory – extra people at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, for example. 

In the house two doors to the right of us lived the Larsens. Larsen Sr. was some kind of Naval officer (I don’t remember his rank but probably a Lt. Commander), who was most likely attached to the Rhine River Patrol. My memory is that he was actually from Norway, but I wasn’t then as knowledgeable about Scandinavian-Americans as I am now. His wife, however, was Swiss and was my Brownie leader. Their two elder daughters, Karen and Esther, were in the troop as well. There was one son, Larry (Lars or Lawrence?) and two smaller girls –- I think one was named Astrid.

Right next door to us were the Mellingers, an Air Force family. They had a lot of children – maybe as many as eight? More than five, anyway. The eldest, Yvonne, was about 14 and I think Butch, the oldest boy, was a couple of years older than I, but still young enough to join our play.

For some reason I can’t recall the name of the family who lived on the other side of us or really anything about them. Perhaps one of my siblings will remember. The last house was inhabited by the Toms family, and I think Mr. Toms was a civilian employee of one of the services. There were two older boys and a girl, Rae Liz, who was my age. She had a fantastic dollhouse. The other thing that I think I recall from the Toms household was that they put angel hair on their Christmas tree. Angel hair was, I think, made from fiberglass (ouch!) – it looked really pretty, though. (I’ve linked to a site where you can actually still buy it, which claims that the angel hair it sells is not like the rough, scratchy kind I remember. I still wouldn’t use it around pets or small children, though.)

For some reason we don’t seem to have any photographs of those years in Germany.  This seems odd to me, as we have photos and even slides from the years immediately preceding them. My hope is that photos were taken and sent home to Maine, and that perhaps there are some in an album or shoebox at the home of one of my relatives. Later this week, after a visit from SonShineIn’s inlaws, I’ll write a bit more about our time in Wiesbaden.

My Alphabet: B is for Berlin

After a very long hiatus, I'm finally returning to My Alphabet. I fear I may never get past the letter B! (And how many of us can say those words without hearing this:
)

But I digress. Today, meine Damen und Herren, we shall discuss Berlin -- or West Berlin, as it was known when I was stationed there 36 years ago.

Onkel Hankie Pants and I got married while I was already under orders to join the Transportation Division, Berlin Brigade, as a Russian interpreter on the "duty train," and after a short honeymoon, he returned to Fort Ord, California, and I went to McGuire AFB in New Jersey, thence to Rhein-Main AFB in Frankfurt, Germany, and from there to Berlin, landing at the now-disused Tempelhof Airport. As soon as I began attending orientation sessions, I started hearing "Berlin is unique." (Sometimes, alas, "very unique.")

From the end of World War II to the end of the Cold War, Berlin was an alert, colorful, claustrophobic, frenetic island of Western-ness in the grey sea of Communist East Germany (henceforth the DDR - Deutsche Demokratische Republik.) The Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, the building of the Wall in 1961, JFK's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, the heartbreaking escape attempts which usually ended badly, and finally the tearing down of the Wall -- Berlin was in the news a lot for those 40+ years. Now it's again the capital of a united Germany, taking its place with all the other European capitals. I wonder if it misses all the extra attention?

To explain my job and the reasons for its existence, here's a nice concise description -- much better than I could come up with. At the time I was there, there were four civilian interpreters (German nationals) and three military ones. The civilians were guaranteed a certain number of trips each month, and the other two Sp/4s and I filled in the gaps. Hence, there were many nights I didn't have to work at all. I had a lot of time to write and read letters! I lived in a barracks near the hospital off Unter den Eichen; most of the other women on my floor were medics (as were the other residents of the building) on split shifts, so there was a certain amount of disagreement about how loud one could play music when coming off shift if others were sleeping....But in general it wasn't bad, I could walk to work and there was a nice little library on the kaserne.

While we were stopped at Marienborn and the train commander and I were displaying the manifests, orders, passports and IDs to the Soviet officer, our MPs were carrying out some unofficial (and probably illegal) duties. They would exchange Ostmarks for uniform items with the Soviet soldiers on duty. The Russian guys were poorly paid in comparison and were only too willing to exchange their winter hats, uniform belts, etc. for money to spend at the Gasthaus. We could change money fairly easily in Berlin. So, the MPs would wrap the money around a cake of the truly horrible soap that was provided on the train, secure it with a rubber band, and toss it to the waiting Soviet on the platform. Back would come a Shapka (Russian fur hat) or a thick leather belt with a hammer-and-sickle buckle. I often wonder what the Soviets' quartermaster thought about all the "lost" or "worn-out" hats and belts. I used to have (actually OHP had) one of the belts, but no longer. Either SonShineIn or one of my nephews got it, I think.

Of course my best memories of Berlin are of the times when Onkel Hankie Pants joined me there, at Christmas and after he was discharged from the Army in June '73. Both times we stayed in Apartments-Hotel on Clayallee in the Dahlem district near the Grunewald. It was across the street from the PX, commissary and other U.S. facilities, but was German owned. We had a large living room, an alcove bed with German featherbed, a bathroom and a small kitchen. Here's the bill for our Christmas stay:
At this time the dollar was worth DM3.2018. We were about to receive a pay increase, retroactive to October, to $369.90 per month (each). It was well worth the cost to spend some time together and be able to have our first Christmas tree and Christmas dinner.

Some of the things I remember from our Christmas and summer in Berlin:

• visiting Schloss Charlottenburg and the Emperor's famous collection of snuffboxes;
  
• seeing Nefertiti;
• having Kaffee oder Tee at local cafes;
  
• going to movies at the Post Theater, one was Kidnapped with Michael Caine and Donald Pleasence;
  
• attending the Lutheran American Church in Berlin;
  
• seeing the Ku'damm and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche, eating at "Karoline's Danische Kase Kiste" (Caroline's Danish Cheesebox -- Onkel Hankie Pants thought this was pretty funny), and trying to cure my bronchitis with hot toddies
  
• visiting the Tiergarten (Zoo)
• meeting up with my cousin and his Berlin-born wife and her cousin (a Berlin cop) at the local Kneipe, where there were newspapers on sticks and old men playing cards
• drinking Berliner-Weisse -- a very pale beer with a shot of raspberry syrup -- don't knock it till you've tried it!

A couple of photos we took there:

Left: The Siegessaule
Right: The Soviet War Memorial






I also recall the painfully short days of winter -- when I would come home in the dark, go to sleep, and when I awoke it would be dark again -- and the very long days of summer, when dawn came about 3:30 am. The mysterious S-Bahn (streetcars) which we weren't allowed to ride on, and the posters reminding us to "Denk an die Bruder in der Zone" (think of those in the Communist Zone).

Ja, naturlich -- Ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin.


Viewing and reading suggestions (more welcomed, just post in comments): Cabaret, of course, or its dramatic and short story predecessors, I Am a Camera and Berlin Stories (Christopher Isherwood). Ariana Franklin's mystery, City of Shadows. Leon Uris's historical epic, Armageddon. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John LeCarre, and The Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall, are two spy stories set there.

I'm blogging a lot today because day after tomorrow we are heading for the Upper Midwest and my opportunities will be fewer there both for computer access and time, since we have lots of friends and family to see and not very long to do it. I'll try to be less verbose in future (but no promises!)

A Thanksgiving Memory

Here is a picture of me and my parents, Thanksgiving Day, 1952, Camp Stewart, Georgia. We may have eaten dinner in the mess hall that day, too, as I think my mother and I had only recently arrived in Georgia. Under Mama's peplum is my brother, who was born about 4 months later.

This Sunday our local paper ran a feature in which several Mainers reminisced about disastrous Thanksgiving dinners in their pasts -- the sort of thing that's very funny in retrospect but at the time -- not so much. I'm not sure whether my favorite was the one where the grandma broke the chandelier, sending shards of glass into every bit of the dinner, or the story about the college boys who tried cooking their turkey in beer. However, the article brought to mind a semi-disastrous Thanksgiving dinner in my childhood.

As far back as I can remember, our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners began with shrimp cocktail. Now, it's true that my father grew up "on the shore."

[Brief digression for an absolutely true remembered conversation:
Daddy, pontificating: "Yes, Knickers, your mother's people were all farmers, but your Father's people were fisherfolk."
Mama, with perfect timing: "SIMPLE fisherfolk."]

It was not in Cundy's Harbor that my father learned to begin a holiday meal with shrimp cocktail, but in the Army. Then as now, no matter what you may have heard about Army chow, the mess sergeants did their best to provide a special meal at holiday time for young men far from home. At least in the 40s and 50s, a shrimp cocktail starter was de rigueur for a festive meal. So that's what we had at home, too.

At Thanksgiving of 1957, we were about to leave Wiesbaden, Germany, for my father's new assignment in Connecticut. We weren't leaving until early December, but our household goods had already been packed and sent on ahead, including the more specialized pots and pans. So my parents decided we would have Thanksgiving dinner in the unit's mess hall. On the day, my parents herded the five of us, ranging from 9 down to 3 1/2 years old, into the hall and we sat down with the soldiers to await the feast. The first course arrived, shrimp cocktail, as expected. But there was something strange, and we were quickly warned by our parents not to eat the shrimp.

Evidently, the mess sergeant had assigned his rawest recruit to prepare the shrimp cocktail, one of the simplest dishes on the menu. And evidently, said recruit was from Kansas, or some other inland state. He did know that people eat clams and oysters raw, and must have thought one kind of seafood was much like another. Instead of the lovely, firm, pink shrimp we had been expecting, there before us sat, artfully arranged around the goblets of cocktail sauce, grey, translucent, raw shrimp. I hope they collected the shrimp and cooked them later, but I don't know. It was certainly an odd beginning to an otherwise good dinner. We never ate Thanksgiving dinner in the mess hall again, but for many years afterwards, as I helped my father taste-test the cocktail sauce, we would remember the infamous raw shrimp cocktail.

Here is a picture of my mother, many years later (perhaps in the early 1980s as it is a Polaroid photo) with two tables set for a family Thanksgiving. By this time I was living "in exile" in City of Lakes and going to Onkel Hankie Pants' parents' home for Thanksgiving. No shrimp cocktail, just green bean casserole, but good.

A is for Addendum

Here is a photo I located too late to scan for yesterday's post. In it, I'm wearing the WAC summer uniform with my Interpreter brassard (the black thing on my left arm) and the then-newly-authorized black beret. I have two ribbons. One is the National Defense Service Medal, which everyone who served during certain periods received (I had thought the Cold War, but in fact they stopped awarding it in 1974 and resumed in 1990) after a minimal time in service. The other is a bit more unusual for 1972-73. It is the Army of Occupation Medal (Germany), and the only way to get one after May 1955 was to be assigned to Berlin. As they kept reminding us, "Berlin is unique!" (Sometimes, alas, they would say "very unique.")

The reason I was in Berlin with an Interpreter brassard is that I was, for about 14 months in 1972-73, a Russian interpreter on a US Army train traveling overnight from West Berlin to West Germany. To hear more about this, you will have to stick around till I get to the letter "B".

A is for...

Celeste is doing this , and I thought I would too. If I have anything else to report or opine on, there will just be extra posts. And some letters may need more than one post, so it may take more than 26 days to finish!

A is for Army.

I am both an Army brat and an Army veteran. My father had joined the 240th Coast Artillery of the Maine National Guard at 16, and in 1940 President Roosevelt Federalized it along with a number of other units. Daddy served through the war, and was called up again in 1950, when we (my mother and I) accompanied him to Fort (then Camp) Stewart, Georgia . Here is a photo of him, taken September 1950 at Fort Gordon, GA (I think Camp Stewart was not ready yet, according to the history. I'm not sure, but I think Mama and I took the train down to Camp Stewart and joined him there).

Subsequent assignments took him to Fort Hancock, NJ, and unaccompanied to Japan and Korea. It was probably at about this time he decided to make the Army a career. We also lived at Fort Sill, OK; Fort Bliss, TX; Wiesbaden, Germany; and in Milford and Fairfield, CT, while he was a National Guard advisor in Bridgeport. His last assignment was with the VII Corps Engineers in Stuttgart, Germany.

Shortly after college graduation, I found myself back in Maine with no definite plans for the future. My sister, four years younger, was in the same boat. We decided to call the recruiter, and before we knew it we were on our way to WAC Basic Training at Fort McClellan, AL – she with a guarantee for medic training at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, and I with one for Russian language school at DLIWC. I’ve mentioned before the results of my Army experience (see June 25 blog post). I can also report that it’s really true that Basic Training will put you in the best shape of your life. Here is a photo of me upon completion of Basic Training. I might add that both The Medic and I were promoted to Private (E-2) at graduation, so we started out with a stripe on each of our sleeves. (Given that we were graded not only on paper tests, but physical training, marching skills, and keeping our bunks and lockers neat, I feel this is still one of my greatest achievements!)
How has this experience affected my worldview?

• I tend to bristle when anyone makes blanket statements about “the military mind.” The military is made up of a lot of different people with differing ideas and experiences.
  
• I firmly believe we should have some kind of National Service for young people, with the military as one possible option. The generation which is now in the 18-26 age group is actually doing a lot of national and international service on their own, but it would be nice if it could be recognized and rewarded. And no one should be exempt except the most profoundly disabled.
• I enjoy military history and historical fiction, probably more than most women. The Sharpe series is one of my favorites.
• I’m puzzled by the complaints of some military brats and wives. I had a fine childhood with many experiences and opportunities that I would not have had otherwise. Having to make new friends at each of the nine schools I attended from grades 1-12 helped me overcome enough of my natural introversion to function in society (see August 13 post).
• And where else would I have learned this song?

1)The biscuits in the army
They say are mighty fine,
But one rolled off the table
And killed a pal of mine.
(cho)OOOOh, I don't want no more of army life.
Gee, but I want to go home.
2)The coffee in the army
They say is mighty fine.
It's good for cuts and bruises
And tastes like iodine.
(cho)

3)The chicken in the army
They say is mighty fine,
But one jumped off the table
And started marking time.
(cho)
4)The uniforms they give you,
They say are mighty fine.
Me and my battalion
Can all fit into mine.
(cho)

(I got this from the Mudcat Café , from a person whose stepfather had learned it in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, so I suspect it goes back at least to WWI. I edited the last verse to reflect what I remember.)

Or these:

Duty - WAC Song
(Tune: Col. Bogey March words by Major Dorothy E. Nielsen, USAR)
Duty is calling you and me,
We have a date with destiny,
Ready, the WACs are ready,
Their pulse is steady,
A world to set free,
(it goes on but I don't recall singing the rest)

Song of the Women’s Army Corps
If the task at hand is an Army command
And the deadline is zero hour,
If the way is rough and the odds are tough
And the need is for all our power,
And if everyday brings a challenge your way,
No matter what the score,
Count the mission won, for the job will be done
By the WOMEN’S ARMY CORPS!

Pallas Athene, Goddess of Victory
History tells your story brave,
And our own Statue of Liberty,
Shows what we’ve sworn to save!

Shout the word around, let the echo resound
On every distant shore,
Whether peace or war, there’s a need evermore,
For the WOMEN’S ARMY CORPS!!

(For more songs, go here. Yes, we actually sang these in Basic Training.

I have a couple more “A” things to post about, but it's getting late, so more anon.