LIVE OR DIE DECADE

Dragged kicking and screaming out of isolation into our most unequivocal war, we shelved protest and did our best. Setting aside differences, we pulled together in the nation's interests. Still hungry from the thirties, we weathered crisis after crisis. How did we do this?   Communications   Good and bad news arrived neither immediately nor constantly. We heard Star Dust recorded live by Lionel Hampton; we heard storms brewing from a neighbor; we heard speeches from the backs of trains. Our laptops held needlework or children; our windows held glass panes. We placed a toll call as a treat or in a short-term emergency.   We read from paper -- cards, letters, telegrams, early or final editions and extras. We dipped into Black Boy, Cannery Row, The Lottery and The Power of Positive Thinking after finite exposure to Eleanor Roosevelt's column and Wartime Book Council promotions. On paper we recorded births, deaths, loves, hates, joys, sorrows and devotions. We consulted a paper dictionary, encyclopedia or atlas.   We yukked it up with Fred Allen, Baby Snooks, Fibber McGee and Henry Aldrich. We hummed "Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah" and mulled over Truth or Consequences, Lux Radio Theater and The FBI in Peace and War sponsored by L-A-V-A. We clustered around the same chat at the close of the same day. Admirals and Philcos simultaneously informed poor and rich.   Maybe we tuned in The March of Time and Edward R. Murrow for CBS. Maybe we fancied NBC with Drew Pearson or H. V. Kaltenborn who proved "to err is (not) only Truman" by mirroring the Chicago Tribune and announcing Harry's loss. Maybe we preferred Meet the Press on MBS and how Lowell Thomas put the story across. Buddy kits for our boys contained sets from the Armed Forces Radio Services.   We gawked at Gorgeous George, Pinky Lee and Princess Summerfall Winterspring. We watched Uncle Miltie and Betty Furness although we might wash miracle fabrics in a Bendix instead of a Westinghouse designed to perform How Dry I Am when the spin cycle ends. We graduated to Ed Sullivan, Your Show of Shows and Arthur Godfrey and Friends. Without dials, cables or satellites, we shared the same menu, the same programming.   Bombs, dim-outs and blackouts diminished ordinary gab and chitter-chatter. We expected "Fine; how are you?" in response to "How are you?" as we sat around the courthouse lawn, ptomaine domain or kitchen table where we planned and prayed. We talked less and slower when social networks were stubbornly retrograde. Iron Curtain, broadcast out of Fulton, Missouri, mattered and did not matter.   No telegrams after 10 p.m. and another daily permutation signed off nightly. Pearl Harbor effectively buried Father Coughlin and we turned to Arturo Toscanini for symphony until stations played God Bless America and gave it a rest. We had time to ruminate, time to consider and digest. Taking time outs seemed absolutely necessary.   Public spirit all though the nation laid the World War II victory foundation. Could we have survived the demands and duration with 24/7 information?   Community   We lived in shacks, manors, foxholes, berths, basements and attics as transient boarders. If poor, we were not trashy and looked to our manners; our neighbors saw to that and because we see what we want to see in spite of blinders and reminders, we believed they were justified. Do your part and be a better neighbor constituted more than empty slogans; we had pride. We subjugated the personal, agreed to 35 mph, took and gave orders.   On the home front four ounces of most red and white meat equaled the adult daily limit. If we didn't need it, we didn't buy it; embracing the golden rule of rationing, we scrimped on shoes, clothes, cars, trucks, tractors, gas, oil, wire hangers, appliances, typewriters, beverages and food. We donated pots, pans, rags, paper, rubber, old cooking grease and blood. We grew city vegetables; horsemeat was not rationed and we ate it.   Nothing was too much to ask of the home folks if it benefited those in khaki and blue. In the thirties many of us had neither jobs nor money to buy goods; in the first half of the forties we had the jobs but only US war bonds and stamps to buy as civilian commerce slammed into reverse. With a draft in effective force, shirkers were ostracized or worse. "Black or white, work or fight," we said when only servicemen flew.   We funded record R&D; we collaborated with the Brits to boost penicillin production. We knew our friends and we had some including China, North Africa, Turkey, Russia, Poland, France and the Pan American Union in the days when the right, just and honorable world loved the Yanks. We skimped on cans or toothpaste tubes and sanctioned armored tanks. We built iron lungs or weapons of destruction; one new deal after another one.   Opposition to big business flourished in the middle; labor nearly dictated all. Women gained Frances Perkins and then lost her; they lost Golda Meir to Israel but gained the Women's Armed Services Integration Act, Wonder Woman and Georgia O'Keeffe's show at MOMA. Still segregated at Radcliff, they were about to receive Harvard diplomas. Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial and Ted Williams returned to baseball.   All veterans were offered $20 a week for one year and loans for shelter and education. After Fat Man, Little Boy and Marguerite Bourke-White's concentration camp and Calcutta images, we resigned ourselves to truth is beauty while discrimination boomed so we got fair housing more or less. Harry said "blacks, yellows, reds and whites get the same treatment in the armed services." After victory celebrations, we planned and prayed harder during shaky demobilization.   We were tough on ourselves but loyal to buddies and girlfriends and slow to complain. We battled despised enemies for unconditional surrender while spotting aircraft and subs, sewing flags, harvesting milkweed and spending less to lend more to our beloved country, salvation of the day. Eventually Robert Mitchum did time for smoking weed and smog was born in LA. Don't get too big for your britches; if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.   Would we have seen victory without the trinity of production control, price caps and higher levies out of DC? With a free market and voluntary military would a vanguished destiny have been the greater probability?   Hollywood and Humor   Bette Davis called the 1942 ceremony organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unseemly. She resigned as president and opened the Hollywood Canteen with free food, coffee and entertainment medium on culture and heavy on mizpah; the Broadway Canteen constituted the New York counterpart. The Red Cross and USO sprinkled the allied world with theater from home and heart. After Pearl Harbor selflessness for those out of uniform came easy.   Bette was followed by Walter Wanger and less Academy ostentation for the war's duration. Bob Hope emceed the Oscar ceremonies but his larger role was to make the troops laugh in the face of death and this he did better than any before or after him in the recorded history of human wars. One intriguing item remains regarding the selection process for 1941 Oscars. The Academy votes in the fall, presents in the spring and has since its formation.   Did members regret choices after Pearl Harbor and the raw state of the union due to that event? Did stars wish roles strewn over the country's outraged screens could be retrieved; did studio writers, directors, producers, musicians and technicians wish earlier distribution plans could be undone? Barbara Stanwyk graced Meet John Doe and The Lady Eve released in 1941. One is funny; one is not; neither scored an Oscar; both are excellent.   Perhaps not surprisingly from 1940 to 1950 just one comedy received the Oscar for best picture. Going My Way, that gallant catholic long shot (pun intended and extended), won in 1945 as did Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Leo McCarey and other Hollywood men for best at what they do. Remaining best picture picks like the martyrdom of Dalton Trumbo merit a thesis or two. War humor like Elizabeth Taylor in Little Women is multifaceted and obscure.   The Academy might have stressed drama over humor but we laughed every chance we got. During the war Hare Meets Herr with Bugs Bunny or Donald, Daffy or Sylvester plus Vera Vague, Roscoe Karns, Harry von Zell or Joe McDoakes before the feature helped us shake off the newsreel taste. We laughed at the simple and sophisticated, at the bawdy and the chaste. We laughed at Jack Benny, James Thurber, Ogden Nash, Gracie Allen, Bud Abbott.   We laughed at Joe Btfsplk, Sarge, Private Snafu, Grundoon and Charles Coburn's repartee. We laughed at H. L. Mencken, Mortimer Snerd, Shemp Howard, Mary Wickes; at Spike Jones and his City Slickers; at alarmists, cartoonists, contortionists, illusionists, impressionists, ventriloquists. Our sense of humor sought journalists and protagonists with punchy twists. Our fun brought synthesis; we laughed at Windy City Kitty and Gypsy Rose Lee.   Are home theater audiences less easily influenced than group theater audiences? The Apprenticeship of Duddie Kravitz based on Mordecai Richler's 1959 novel and released in 1974 by Paramount Pictures is a splendid art piece on the forties filmed in Montreal. What replaces spooning after a night at the movies with your end all and be all? Are locations wrapped in celluloid detached from temporal consequences?   Imagine Imogene Coca portraying Donna Reed in later days as Linda Darnell strays from Yank Magazine into her Forever Amber phase while in small town Indiana Doris Day, Gordon McRae, Leon Ames, Rosemary DeCamp and Billy Gray sail On Moonlight Bay. Sounds convey what words say; satire sways; fishing matters; cleavage pays.   Leadership   Politicians were downright unpopular but again we knew our friends and we had some. Stirring words and brave deeds reported from Ethiopia, Dunkirk, Bataan, Stalingrad and Normandy jingled sweet tunes of patriotic understanding and overrode sour bombastic Dixiecrat chimes. The first lady of the world announced and denounced unspeakable crimes. At stake were speech, religion, right to work and be happy -- the four freedoms.   We trusted two Freemasons, exceedingly different men yet both liberal and community builders. FDR was sick and patronizing but charming and persuasive as he talked and guided; his powerful presence unified us, give or take local bigotry and camps where loyal Americans were detained. Old and small with get-up-and-go Harry drove, walked and maintained. "It's a very lonely thing being a child," he later would tell biographers.   We acted together and alone; we bounced balls and sang aloud 1-2-3-a-Larry. We threw, caught, hit, kicked and dodged balls or crafted what was wanted from broomsticks, spools, gunpowder, strings, rocks and ropes; no manufacturer put safety warnings on our toys. We played "boys chase the girls" and less often, "girls chase the boys." When it rained we squatted in hallways for triple deck Canasta or Monopoly.   Dad and Mom played bridge; Dad, Winston Churchill and the presidents played poker. It wasn't all play for kids; in elementary school we practiced Palmer penmanship, memorized multiplication tables, mastered long division problems with no erasures, named planets and hemispheres. We recited "by the shores of Gitche Gumee" or "listen, my children, and you shall hear." Science meant general, applications meant advanced physics, duck and cover was no joke.   Reaching high school and with firm provisos we operated the family landline and car. We plunked change into pinball machines or into payphones in booths and spun-dialed numbers like JEfferson 4200; any Well of Loneliness was submerged in national demands for able personnel. Solemnly we conjugated Latin verbs and pounded Royal uprights with carriage bells. We wore bobbysox, swapped shoes and played chicken without fear of radar.   V-E Day came in 19 and 45 on his 61st birthday; three months later came V-J Day. Harry didn't pussyfoot in his two-toned oxfords when the buck stopped there; he sold the Marshall Plan and the United Nations where the first lady of the world wrote the universal bill of human rights. The man who at the end of World War I had written home from France that "most of us don't give a whoop (to put it mildly) whether Russia has a Red Government or no Government and if the King of the Lollipops wants to slaughter his subjects or his Prime Minister it's all the same to us" pledged support to "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures", thereby leveraging the offer of democracy as well as excess verbiage to new heights. About his Greek statue,"you never know when you have to tear it down" is what he had to say.   In 1947 he quit moaning he never wanted the job, waged a whistle-stop war and got re-elected. He juggled strikes, special interests and generalissimos, honchoed the North Atlantic Treaty ratification and when the Berlin Blockade lifted, ended the humanitarian aid he himself had launched and defended. Israel and the People's Republic of China began; the Greek civil war ended. McCarthyism continued to fester; the first lady of the world inspected and corrected.   What would the decade have been without Eleanor Roosevelt and these two men? Were we more serious as children back then than our children or grandchildren?   Sauce and Smokes   Drinking was legal and we drank heavily, heartily and with no apologies throughout the decade. We drank to the tinkle of music boxes in Going My Way and to a better life tomorrow always God willing, as thirsty as Horace in Mrs. Miniver or Preacher Gruffydd in How Green Was My Valley. We drank to lovers, mothers, sons, fathers who live on, writers who fake legitimacy. We drank to where we came from when we advanced and to fears allayed.   Unlike other current and past civilized armies during wartime and peace, we had no liquor rations. We flirted, jitterbugged and ate at the dry stateside canteens but in the mud and trenches we supplied ourselves with libations concocted with constant trial and error from local residue. We swilled 24 hour French cognac and boiled juice on radiators into an Asian brew. Doing our bit but under control, we drank away miseries and deprivations.   Under control and toting the load, we drank away commissions, claims and conditions. Under control and facing the worst and trusting in the powers that be without hesitation or reservation, we kept our powder dry while we drank away bone-chilling cold and sweltering heat. Under control and primed, we drank away incipient loyalty oaths, monotony and rotten feet. Stateside bourbon and rye were scarce as we drank away dark decisions.   Martini cocktails shored up FDR; Russian vodka sustained the world's first lady. Harry greeted each day with a shot of bourbon at the Little White House in Key West; he sipped Old Grand-Dad on the Williamsburg and Old Crow at Sam Rayburn's Board of Education meetings. We drank with friends; you depend more on friends in times of fierce reckonings. For tonight we'll merry, merry be; tomorrow we'll be sober is best sung in harmony.   Loose lips sink ships and yet we drank on and we wanted our drink strong. Coffee, the only acceptable substitute for booze, was also scarce at home and future teenagers would be the fortunate ones to savor the flavor of vanilla phosphates and chocolate shakes. Influenced by Lost Weekend, Nightmare Alley and Smash-Up, some adults applied brakes. Tinseltown captured the essence of demon rum and brought a few adults along.   Everyone over 15 and under 60 smoked; plenty of stuff seemed more terrible. Chocolate bars, gum and cigarettes in K-rations were standard and little enough to provide those risking their lives for the cause of freedom on the beaches and oceans and in the jungles and sky. Stored in helmet liners or oilskins, a pack of smokes might keep dry. The chance to inhale and exhale might make the next mission bearable.   Luckie Strike, Camels and Old Gold traveled anywhere and everywhere on a bet. To offer a dying buddy a cigarette and a light seemed the only decent thing to do and it was to Candy Kings, Stallions, chewing tobacco and snuff that the home front willingly if briefly turned. A smoke after any job of work was universally considered earned. "Cigareets and Whuskey ..." or Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)!   It's A Wonderful Life and The Best Years Of Our Lives were a halfway intrusion into the drinking profusion; we were all about reassessing delusions and life's intrinsic values at the decade's conclusion. Were FDR's holder and Susan Hayward's lit Chesterfield requisite? Greater concerns were infinite; we knew no better; so be it.   Sex and Sound   Initially nylons and silks abandoned legs and bodies for tents and parachutes. With the backing of men and Uncle Sam, women went beyond that fashion statement and power performed on farms and in factories; for stockings they drew on lines or did without seams. Bulky shoulder pads matched manly mores and military themes. Armored heifer sweetened Rosie's Joe on her break of minutes.   Benny, early integrator, said "to know what swing is, you have to feel it inside". Miss Peggy Lee, The Wang Wang Blues, Count Basie and the Duke's Black, Brown and Beige offered touchtone sorbets and rum and coke rhythms in an irresistible lineup of choices. Artie and Glenn issued calls and responses for torsos and voices. Pennsylvania 6-5-0-0-0 and we were on a piano roll a mile wide.   Our jitterbugging hips broke free and swiveled with ease and elegance. While we persisted in mistreating the Other, we not only listened but heard the instrumental beat of humanity that opened the common gate and shepherded the conga line through. "Sonny Boy" Williamson wrote and chanted Win the War Blues. We boogied and bopped to mainline vocals and big band resonance.   Betty Grable's legs and smile helped us see daylight and move on. Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, the Ink Spots, Andrews Sisters, Mills Brothers, Nicholas Brothers, Martha Graham and Margaret Whiting helped us move harmoniously and synchronically. The Bombshell from Brazil charmed; Havana was the place to party. Harry bravely blew I'll Get By and When Your Lover Has Gone.   Sex between men and women grew sexier during abstinence. When the boys returned, the girls demanded less masculinity and more feminity in design thereby launching the mixed talents of Diana Vreeland, Valentino, Christian Dior and Elsa Schiaparelli. There is nothing like a dame and baby makes three. Men were boys; women were girls; hooray for the difference.   Permanent waves wound and bound S-curls into peek-a-boo hair. While planes and ships were refitted for civilian trips and old home appliances were traded in for new, Bachelor's Carnation reddened lips and shellacked long, tapered, real as rain nails. See-through blouses advertised lacy lingerie details. Bikini tops and bottoms came about after midriffs went bare.   Skintight strapless dresses swirled at the calves as women hobbled. Rubber girdles, an improvement on boned corsets, squeezing and squashing flesh into exaggerations of the female form, might be hung with rosette garters suspending green or black fishnet hose. Pumps sported spike heels, slingbacks or ankle straps and peep toes. Jeweled hatpins stilled peacock and egret feathers that dared to wobble.   Dotted veils dripped from endless hats to add noir interest and mystery. Inexplicably over the course of the decade, contemplating beret, cowl, cloche, combination cap, Dixie cup, fedora, helmet, Panama, snood, tam, toque, turban, zoot, one constancy for either sex is the hat. Women wrapped in every fur from mink, ermine, sable and cat to muskrat. Women only pierced for hoops or wore earbobs clipped on mercilessly.   We emulated Marilyn Maxwell in white satin evening gloves and smoldered. Men switched from Burma-Shave to Barbasol or Mennens, showered and shaved twice daily, used deoderant and cologne, swept back barbered locks under tilted pinched brims and wide bands. The omnipresent hats of women and men were equally plain and grand. Smoking with equanimity, we romanced by rail while ambience purred.   We rendezvoused in diners made to look like rail-cars, streetcars and backyards. We shook off winter snow in hallways and sat on brocaded couches in basement rec rooms drinking punch from glass cups; we held hands or locked arms and took our partnership as fate. We went on hayrides and to cocktail parties where you had to have a date. Pairing had pre-eminence and sharing was not the cultural standard.   Stirring in homes, offices and city hall were suspicions about role performances. Behind amber and frosted glass silly heiresses clung to posh gigolos who were rotten to the core while turtle-necked peroxide blondes routinely victimized good family men in beaded doorways. Still, Dad went to work and came home, mostly on the weekdays. Mom cooked, cuddled, did the shopping and asked for advances.   Constancy brewed; women cooed: hey, there, big boy, my guy, handsome. We gloried in the filmed physical realities of Yellow Sky where images stump louder than words and music about a new hat for a grand-daughter who is seductive, sensitive, proud and dutiful. Men pursued and wooed: hey, there, baby, toots, sugar, angel, beautiful. We forsook the filmed delicacy of Rebecca for a less emotive continuum.   Was sweat more honorable when platinum cost twice as much as gold? In our dreams we coasted in air conditioned Lincoln Continentals and smoked Cuban cigars wearing Arrow Collar angles and diamond studs in starched cuffs complementing double-breasted sharkskin suits. We toasted in perfumed chiffon robes, marabou mules or piped boots. We saw daylight by the time rice was thrown and family took hold.   We grasped virtuous movie villainy in Richard Widmark and Steve Cochran. Barring two weeks for post-natal recovery Mom stayed home encouraged by Dr. Benjamin Spock who wrote she knew more than she thought she did and letting baby cry (or picking baby up) was just fine. We became dispassionate romantics with preservation to enshrine. Divorces doubled in ten years but Rita Hayworth married Prince Aly Kahn.   A trillion dollars or so is a lot to owe; we spent our dough on a new chapeau. Is fertility ruled by libido or do we want to know and where in this tableau did the small fry go?   We have never been between wars meaning we had no nominal peace then. The Cold War or war of nerves chilled our marrow before the European victory. North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950. That is never all she wrote and good evening, ladies and gentlemen.   Credits: Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman Merle Miller 1974 Truman David McCullough 1992 Up Front Bill Mauldin 1945   Google Images Communications is from The Forties, 2011 chapbook of the Marshall Writers' Guild.

s1dneycom from www.sullivansfarms.net © 2001-2012 | webmaster