A Sentimental Journey

Last week, I visited a dear college friend, Josephine, in Phoenix. She and her friend David took me to a “Night in the 40's Big Band Hangar Dance” at Falcon Field in Mesa, Arizona. The event flyers said, “Take a Sentimental Journey back to 1943 with ‘A Night in the 40s’ Big Band Dance. This glamorous event is one of the largest big band dances in the country. The ‘Night in the 40s’ features a WW II 1940’s musical show followed by a big band orchestra playing sounds of the era to dancing men and women dressed in period styles – all in the shadow of the vintage B-17 WW II Flying Fortress bomber ‘Sentimental Journey’!”

Of course, doing this blog has fueled my obsession with the 1940s and World War II so I was game to go along with them because my parents loved this kind of music (select Glen Miller at http://www.pandora.com). While riding out to Mesa, I drove Josephine and David nuts talking about all my parents’ stories that I want to put in this blog.

Once when I was about nine years old, we took a car trip across the country to California. On the way home, we stopped in Las Vegas and the first thing my parents did was make a reservation for a big band show, starring Russ Morgan (I couldn’t believe it’s still in existence: http://www.russmorganorchestra.com/). I remember my sister and I dying of boredom as my parents danced and listened so excitedly. We wanted to see real movie stars. The band droned on and on, and we tried to get into the gambling room. We’d been playing slot machines for a long time because, in the 1960s, children could play slots in Hot Springs, Ark. Of course, we couldn’t understand why we were quickly removed from the gambling area. Back home, my parents bought a little stereo record player, and the first record they bought was Glen Miller, which they played all the time. The stereo was amazing technology for the time, and I sneaked a lot of rock and roll records in.

So back to the “Night in the 40s.” There was a costume contest and an amazing dance contest. It was sentimental to watch. Several women dressed as Rosie the Riveter, Norman Rockwell’s painting (http://www.rosietheriveter.org/painting.htm ) that symbolized how many women helped the World War II effort. Now Crystal Bridges, the new art museum being built in Bentonville, Ark., owns “Rosie” so I was excited to see these women, especially a little three-year old girl named Quinn dressed as Rosie. Quinn went on the win the costume contest.

Several times I “teared” up during the night, thinking about my parents and their lives during the time the music was so popular. I was especially emotional looking at some of the World War II memorabilia around the hangar. There was one display with a replica of one of those, “Your loved one is missing in action . . .” telegrams. That got me as I have a real one exactly like it.
I believe the 1940s will always be with us. I hope that people start having 1940s parties (I have a costume ready) and they become as popular as 1960s parties.

From San Antonio to Other Places

We last left my parents’ interview as they were discussing my mother’s trip to see my father in San Antonio. She was only able to stay one weekend in San Antonio, but I imagine they had a good time at that tea dance. My father was sent to what seemed like a lot of different places to get his training; I guess the Army Air Corps (now the Air Force) knew what they were doing. She visited or went with him when she could and lived in some unbelievable places by today’s standards. We have it so easy. She sometimes fixed up her friends with his buddies. One of these buddies my father got to know because their last names started with a “T” (Terrell and Teal) and they always had to line up together. And in 1946, I received my middle name (which I don’t often reveal) from Frank Teal’s eventual wife, Carol. Here is another part of the interview with my parents:

Nita: From there (San Antonio) Dick went to Muskogee. He and Frank Teal rode the bus from Muskogee down to Hot Springs in the baggage compartment at Christmas.

Dick: You know the hat rack above the seat. We did okay when you get stretched out.

Anita: After Christmas was when Ruthie (Aunt Ruthie Ardman, my sister’s ex-husband’s aunt, used to own the Pancake Shop in Hot Springs and now her daughter and son-in-law own it) and I went to Muskogee in my little green Ford. She had a date with Frank Teal. It had snowed, and we got stuck. The roads were so narrow back then, and I slipped off and got stuck. And I had all that rum in the back end. Rum and coke was what everybody drank back then. Oklahoma was a dry state. Your daddy paid for our trip by selling most of it. A man stopped to help and wanted to see if I had a chain in the back in. We wouldn't let him look in the trunk. (Growing up, my sister Nitalynn [You’ll be interested to know how she got her name too.] and I loved to hear this story; we could just see our mother standing firm by the trunk.)

Dick: We had some scotch whiskey for one of them old boys.

Nita: He had taken the orders and sent them home, and we had Dane Harris (local nightclub and liquor store owner who played a big part in Hot Spring’s colorful past) pack it in the back.

Dick: We made a buck or two on it. We went on to Coffeyville, Kansas. Nita came up there for a while. When we left there, we went to Altus, Oklahoma, and she came with me there.

Anita: We had a room with a woman whose son graduated when you (me) did. Dick had moved every six or nine weeks. He graduated in Altus in June of 1943.

Dick: When we left Altus, we drove out to my granddaddy's (Major Charles Roberson) house in Elk City, Oklahoma. We went out there and stayed overnight. They had a big picnic for us. They had everybody come. This was my mother's daddy. Aunt Bernice, Aunt Pearl, and Aunt Maude (these were my great grandmother’s sisters – their mother, great, great grandmother was named Dixie, my first name) were there.

Anita: I went with him to Fort Worth from Altus. Frank and Carol Teal were at Altus and that's the last that they were together in the service. Your daddy had met Frank Teal in the service. You know Teal and Terrell.

Dick: Our serial number were just one number apart. When they moved us out of that tent city into those barracks, he had to bunk next to me. He was from Detroit, Michigan, but he had spent a lot of time in New Mexico. He was kind of a cowboy type. He liked the open range. His family was in the plumbing business as well as I can remember. Evidently they were uptown. They had made lots of money.

Nita: They were about the same height. You could always spot them in parade because they were the tallest ones. Then he married Carol, and her daddy was an executive with the 3M company. They had money, but both of them were real nice.

Nita: We were in Fort Worth at Tarrant Field. We lived in a motel out Camp Bowie Boulevard. When he left there, he went to Tucson, and I went home. I didn't get to go.

Dick: After we left Tucson, we went to Alamogordo, and she came out there.

Nita: Lynn McCrocklin (Dick’s bombardier Red’s wife) and Nita stayed in what was damn near a pig-pen. It had an old stove in the middle, and we'd build a fire because we were cold, and then it would smoke us out. We'd have to raise the windows, and there'd be chickens and goats. It was quite a place.

Dick: She was in the ladies' restroom one night at a place we were at and she heard one woman talking about leaving so the next morning Nita went over there about daylight and rented that place.

Nita: It was an old garage. The woman who owned it didn't even know the other woman was moving. I made a deal with her, and we got it. You had to go outside to go the bathroom. Then Red and Lynn got a place inside the house. When you left Alamogordo, we came home, and then went to Charleston, South Carolina.

As I sit here in a warm and comfortable home, I think about all the places they had to live. From this distance, it sounds maybe like camping, but I’m sure it wasn’t even that comfortable. Knowing my parents, they probably managed to have a little fun. Without television or other kinds of entertainment, they must have talked a lot and made firm friends as the war pulled people together. Stay tuned. My father will be leaving for Europe soon.