MY HOMETOWN IS LITTLE more than a bump in the road between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in the hard-coal country of eastern Pennsylvania. At the time of the 1929 stock market crash inaugurating the Great Depression, Minooka had already been in its own depression for five years. The lack of work meant that most of the town's young people were reading want ads for jobs in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington.
I was in high school in December 1940 when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his famous "Arsenal of Democracy" radio address to the nation. In that speech, the president committed the industrial might of the United States to defeating fascism in Europe. Because of that commitment, factories that had been idled during the Depression were now running three shifts in an attempt to supply Great Britain with the planes, tanks, artillery, and other war materiel needed to defeat Nazi Germany. It seemed as if every company in America was hiring, and the biggest employer of them all was the United States government.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war, what had been a steady stream of job seekers to the nation's capital became a deluge. After graduating from business college in Scranton in June 1944, I headed to Washington to join my two older sisters who had been working in the District since early 1941. Without any experience, I was hired as a clerk typist with the Treasury Department for the princely sum of $1,440 a year. With three paychecks coming in, my sisters and I were able to rent an apartment in a row house near Dupont Circle.
On June 6, 1944, the long-awaited invasion of France had begun, and with the news of the successful landings came the realization that the Allies would win. Finally, on May 8, 1945, America and the world learned that the Germans had officially surrendered. After nearly six years of bloodshed, the war in Europe was over. Now, all resources were being diverted to the Pacific and the defeat of the Empire of Japan.
In August 1945, when the newspapers reported that a B-29 bomber, the "Enola Gay," had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, no one understood exactly what an atomic bomb was. Then another was dropped on Nagasaki with casualties reported as being in the tens of thousands from just one bomb. Suddenly, the possibility that the fighting might soon end was very real. On a personal level, this meant I might soon be unemployed.
I need not have worried; my job was never in jeopardy. But with the war over, both of my sisters had decided to return to Minooka, which meant I would have to find a place to live. Although I posted a notice on the bulletin board in the lunchroom advertising for a room or roommate, my heart wasnt in it. I was ready for a change, and memories of the heat and humidity of a Washington summer provided the motivation.
A co-worker mentioned that the Army Exchange Service, the agency responsible for providing goods and services to American service personnel, was hiring for positions in Germany because of the large number of servicemen who were stationed in the American occupation zone. I was not ready to go back home, but if avoiding a return to my hometown meant going to Germany, I didn't see how that was much of an improvement
The war in Europe had been over for more than a year, but the newspapers were full of stories and pictures of a defeated Germany with many cities pounded into powder. The aerial bombing and the fighting on the ground had left many of the structures without windows or walls and with their interiors exposed to passersby. Their occupants, often hungry children, looked out at the photographer with faces full of want and despair. I was depressed from reading about it; how would I feel if I actually lived there?
Notwithstanding all the drawbacks, I went on an interview with the Army Exchange Service. Because AES was so short staffed in Germany, the personnel manager told me that if I agreed to a year's employment in Frankfurt, he would try to get me six months in London. Two weeks later, I sailed for Hamburg and arrived in the former Third Reich in August 1946. As the train pulled into the Frankfurt station, I was met by a scene straight out of Dante's Inferno. A huge black hulk of twisted metal was all that was left of the once grand railway station. My first inclination was to get the hell out of Dodge, but instead, I took the bus to the Rhein-Main Air Base, my home for the next year.
The following morning, after breakfast, Beth told me Jack wanted to talk to me. I found him at the rear of his property next to the chicken coops, with his foot up on a fence rail, watching a border collie moving a flock of sheep from one pasture to another. It was this very scene that had inspired so many of Reed Lacey's drawings.
"When I was a lad, I could easily spend a part of an afternoon watching those dogs work. They're remarkable animals, incred ibly intelligent." After a few minutes, he finally said, "Beth told me you and Rob have hit a rough patch."
I told him about what had happened in London and asked him what he thought.
"To tell you the truth, Maggie, it's more about me than Rob." Looking off into the distance, Jack said, "Beth told you that when I found out that Michael had orders for Burma, I had a panic attack, right?" I simply nodded. "Well, I didn't have a pan attack. I had a nervous breakdown." Switching legs on the fencerail, he continued. "All I could do was sit in my bedroom and look out the window while volunteers from the village worked in our Victory garden. I was supposed to be in Cherbourg working on repairing the harbor facilities, so the Allies could get war materiel to the boys fighting in France. Instead, I was crying on and off all day long with either my mother or Beth wiping my nose.
"It had been building up for quite a while. I knew from news reports that James's regiment was in the thick of it in Italy, but I thought at least my younger son was safe. And then came the call from Michael. After Beth told me about his new orders, I was convinced my boy was going to die in the Burmese jungles.
"Nightmares from the war that I hadnt had in ten, fiftee years came back. Jesus, they all came back," he said, massaging his temples as if that act would block out any unwanted images. "Picking up bodies and having them fall apart in my hands. Stepping on limbs. Being scared shitless during barrages."
Although I could see him only in profile, I knew Jack was fighting back tears. "I would never have believed I could fall apart like that, but I did. Michael came home on leave, and instead of me reassuring him everything would be all right, he reassured me. We went for long walks and talked about everything under the sun. He told me he wanted to be an engineer. He didn't say it, but what he really meant was, if he became an engineer, I would pay more attention to him. After Michael left, I realized that I couldn't help my own boys, but I could help someone else's by getting them what they needed to defeat those Nazi bastards."
Mom stopped peeling potatoes and looked at me and shook her head. "Maggie, you and Michael are so different, just like your father and I were different. He was so smart, and I always hoped it wouldnt matter, but it did. I'm afraid the same thing igoing to happen to you. Look at where you come from, and then look at his mother. She grew up in that big house with servants. I left school at sixteen to go to work, and I changed linen at the Heidelberg Inn during the summer. I was a servant."
"Mom, Michael's grandparents were servants, too, and yo don't know Beth. She's had so much heartache in her life. The reasons were different, but Jack kept her at a distance, just like Dad did to you. Her baby daughter died, just like Bridgit did. She lost two brothers in the war, and a third nearly went insane.
I'ts true Beth and you are from very different backgrounds but your values are exactly the same. There is nothing more important to Beth than her family. She has raised two fine sons, pretty much on her own, and she is the moral center of her family, just like you are for ours. Mom, you've always been myguiding light, and that's not going to change, no matter whereI live."
"I hope for your sake you're right, Maggie." After squeezing my hand, she went back to peeling potatoes.
THE EVENING BEFORE THE engagement party, Michael presented me with a beautiful diamond ring in an antique setting. "It has a bit of history to go along with it. A friend of my mother's who was killed in the First War, left it in her care, and knowing how sentimental you are, she thought you might like it. If not, there are plenty of jewelry stores in New York and London."
I told him that I would gladly wear it. Colin Matheson's ringhad finally found a home.
At the party, while Beth mingled comfortably among all of my family and friends, Jack sat down with Father Shea and my father. He wanted to get to know Dad, and by "chatting him up," it also cut down on the number of trips he took to the bar.
Despite her reservations, Mom was a gracious host to her British visitors. I didn't want to get my hopes up, but she was wearing her navy blue dress with the tiny red flowers. I could only hope that was a small step toward reconciliation. One of the best sights of the evening was my Aunt Agatha wearing a brand new, store-bought dress. Where on earth had she gotten the money to buy a new frock? And I looked at Geoff, and he gave me a sly smile.
Geoff was absolutely captivated by Sadie. When she asked him what it was like to work for the Foreign Legion, he answered in typical Geoff fashion: "I have not offered my services to the Foreign Legion. I am, however, a civil servant of the British Government working in the Foreign Office, and I would be more than happy to explain the differences to you."
Having the party with an open bar turned out to be a stroke of genius. By the end of the evening, everyone was toasting the Crowells' health, and some broke into an unintelligible "Knee Up Mother Brown," a popular WWII song in Britain.
I danced until I could no longer keep my shoes on, and it was nearly 1:00 when the lead singer announced that there would be one more dance. We had requested "Always." It was that song that Michael and I had been dancing to when we had fallen in love at Montclair. Everyone looked for their best girl or guy. Patrick danced cheek to cheek with Anna while Bobby and Teresa kept some space between them because Mamie was watching their every move.
As Michael and I danced, I thought about the long journey that I had traveled to arrive at this place and the people I had met along the way. With the exception of my family, it was Jack and Beth who had the greatest impact on my life, and I was looking forward to becoming a part of their family. In order to do that, I had to leave behind family and friends and the town that had helped to shape the person I had become.