Cooking with Joy for 85 Years

In a December 1962 article from the Post, New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne reviewed a selection of classic and new cookbooks. He led with the mainstay of every cook’s kitchen, Joy of Cooking. This year is the 85th anniversary of Joy’s continuous publication. Claiborne called this classic by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker “a masterpiece of clarity and also a book with a sentimental history.”

Claiborne reviewed Joy at a time when Americans’ perspectives on home cooking were slowly evolving. Long before the precious recipes of the 1980s-era Silver Palate or the modernist cuisine of Grant Achatz, Claiborne was one of the first editors to introduce new foods and techniques to Americans, who were just learning that the French hadn’t cornered the market on cuisine and that cooking could be elevated from kitchen drudgery to practiced craft.

Most of the books on Claiborne’s 1962 list have stood the test of time, including The James Beard Cookbook and Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child et al., which had just been published. (Claiborne judged it “brilliant.”) But Claiborne had a soft spot for Joy. He recommended the book “for anyone with a limited knowledge of pots and pans but with an earnest desire to cook for pleasure.”

He noted that earlier editions of Joy were filled with humorous anecdotes, such as this one:

Madame Schumann-Heink, the great opera singer, was sitting in front of an enormous steak. Caruso passed her table and, seeing the huge portion of meat before the singer, he said: “Stina, you are not going to eat that alone!” “No,” Schumann-Heink said, shaking her fine old head. “No, not alone. With potatoes.”

In 1962, Joy had sold 6 million copies; today that number stands at more than 18 million.

I have a copy of Joy of Cooking on my kitchen shelf, and go to it regularly for can’t-miss basics like pancakes and banana bread. If you don’t have a copy of this classic, you should.

How to Cook by the Book
How to Cook by the Book
by Craig Claiborne
December 22, 1962

World War II Romance

Dating is complicated, and this is never truer than in wartime! We have strung together a selection of sentimental cartoons from the Second World War. Going steady was different for soldiers and civilians in the ’40s.

 

 

 

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John Ruge; May 16, 1942

 

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“Well, frankly, if he’s in the armed forces, you don’t need anything at all!”

 

Bill King; June 13, 1942

 

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“This is Mr. Thompson — c’est la guerre!”

 

Barbara Shermund; June 13, 1942

 

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Dave Gerard; September 12, 1942

 

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“Her fiance is getting a four-day furlough and they don’t want to waste any time.”

 

George Shellhase; September 12, 1942

 

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“Oh, no, I couldn’t let you take me to 222 Elm Street, the big white house three blocks from here, where I live. It’s against the rules.”

 

Merrylen Townsend; April 3, 1943

 

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“This is what we always dreamed of, dear, being alone together on a South Sea island.”

 

Elmer Atkins; July 17, 1943

 

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“Aren’t you overestimating the power of a uniform?”

 

Al Ross; November 6, 1943

 

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“She’s very good!”

 

George Reckas; November 25, 1944

 

 

Classic Covers: Gridiron Grit

America is in love with football, and if these Post covers are indication, they always have been. Glimpse into the hilarity and heartbreak of life on (and off) the field.

 

 

Football Huddle
Alan Foster
November 12, 1927

Not much is known about illustrator Alan Foster, who created more than 30 covers for the Post. His narrative style is reminiscent of Norman Rockwell’s, and his paintings often capture the silly and joyful moments in life.

 

 

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Touchdown

E. M. Jackson

November 21, 1931

An artistic specialty of E.M. Jackson’s was painting women in poses that made them appear seductive and glamorous amidst architecturally authentic backgrounds. Usually, he illustrated for manuscripts involving romance and high society. However, he also illustrated for a wide variety of genres, including murder mystery and (as illustrated in this cover) masculine adventure.

 

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Football Hero

Eugene Iverd

November 17, 1934

Eugene Iverd lived in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he often used children there as his models. Iverd produced 30 covers for TheSaturday Evening Post between 1926 and 1936.

 

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But Ref!

Lonie Bee

October 22, 1938

Lonie Bee illustrated 6 covers for the Post, all focused on sports, and most depicting a moment of consternation, whether it was cheerleaders mourning a losing game or a football player trying to sway the ref.

 

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Team on Bench

Emery Clarke

November 23, 1940

Emery Clarke was an illustrator of magazine and pulp novel covers, one of the most well-known being the Doc Savage series. He also collaborated with Russell Stamm on the comic strip, The Invisible Scarlet O’Neal.

 

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Onto the Field

John Falter

November 1, 1947

It seems to John Falter that one of the best moments in football is that curtain-going-up moment when the squads trot out on the field. For one thing, the team in which your hopes are invested always looks pretty good at that stage; even an outfit that is going to take a terrific lacing when the whistle blows can look like champions executing this maneuver. The politic artist said the squad might be that of any school whose colors are orange and black. That takes in a fine range of educational institutions and makes it almost impossible that Falter should have picked a loser. He chose the Princeton stadium for background, and Falter Hypothetical Institute, taking the field, seems to be based on Princeton, without the Tigers’ stripes. (Reprinted from the November 1, 1947 Post)

 

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Coin Toss

Norman Rockwell

October 21, 1950

With baseball temporarily out of their systems, sport lovers now are concentrating on the gridiron in their constant search for nervous tension. The spotlights of fame play on the collisions of 200-pound colossi in great stadia. But Norman Rockwell reminds us that the super crises are suffered back-country, where Bill Jones, of Mapleville High, strives for the honor of a town where everybody has known him since he was knee-high to a tackling dummy. If Bill wins the game, he’ll not be just a remote newspaper hero, but the idol of the gals in his algebra class and of the mayor he meets walking down the street. If he loses it, the gals will go home teary-eyed, and so may the mayor. “Heads or tails?” grunts Joe Fate, the referee. (Reprinted from the October 21, 1950 Post)

 

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Home Football

George Hughes

November 17, 1951

This ferocious young grid star, magnified by the terrifying man-from-Mars armor peculiar to football and inflamed by imagination, is about to crunch the enemy’s forward wall, snare a forward pass with his fingertips and weave 70 years down the field for a TD as thousands cheer. Actually, the first play in which he exposes that new uniform to the stark realities of life may see him land on his neck and become a door mat, while some other guy does the crunching. But Artist Hughes says that if this does happen, we can be confident that any lad he would paint will find biting the dust distasteful and will react with such vigor that within a few years he will he offered athletic scholarships to fifteen colleges. (Reprinted from the November 17, 1951 Post)

 

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Picking Poindexter

Richard Sargent

October 17, 1959

What strange switch on traditional romance have we here? Those two peaches can’t just be asking for a bite of apple; no, they are applying to a man some seductive apple-polishing with intent to captivate, then capture him. Well, how come that they are chinning themselves on the bony shoulders of H. Arthur Jet and leaving Big M over there looking as if he might break down and cry? Artist Dick Sargent’s theme is that in the fall a young maid’s fancy seriously turns—in these serious days—to thoughts of eventual matrimony, and that H. Arthur is not only a good guy but, being enamored of technology, a potentially good provider. So be it; but let’s not sell Big M short. There is no law against a football star’s becoming another kind of star, too, and lots of them have done so. (Reprinted from the October 17, 1959 Post)

 

 

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Yale vs. Harvard

George Hughes

November 19, 1960

The Harvard chap in the foreground is searching for a receiver in the open, but his view is blocked by an exultant pack of Yale Bulldogs. It would seem that while the Crimson was successful at a hot-dog stand, Yale spoiled the attempt at a goalline stand. “Bull-dog! bull-dog! Bow, wow, wow!” shriek the Yale fans, as portrayed by artist George Hughes. (Hughes is neutral. His father-in-law is a Yale graduate, but both his sons-in-law are Harvard.) The Harvard-Yale rivalry commenced in 1875, and Eli Yale has a seventeen-game edge. This week’s combat will be staged at Harvard Stadium — not that the field of battle is likely to affect the outcome. The Bulldogs took a drubbing in 1914, the year the Yale Bowl was dedicated. Yale had the bowl, we read somewhere; Harvard supplied the punch. (Reprinted from the November 19, 1960 Post)

A Political Animal

Originally published on September 7, 1968

Franco shivered. His study was cold. Through the smear of his window, the Tuscan landscape was pulpy after months of rain. His eye ranged over it; then he turned back to his desk and took a mirror from an inner pocket. He propped it against his telephone and began to consider himself. He had a broad, fine face with predominantly horizontal lines. His teeth were all right. So was his hair, which was a lightish brown. True Tuscan. He put away the mirror and let his eye slide back to its practiced orbit: cabinet, window … Waiting days. Carla was more than a week overdue. And fat as a fool! Tearful and smelling of talc, she sat about, concealing the box of enormous chocolate kisses her mother had sent by the maid who was to stay with them until after the delivery. Meanwhile, here was Franco, stuck in this damn town when he might have been considerably more useful elsewhere.

Carla’s other two pregnancies had thrilled him, for he was an affectionate father, a family man. But this time his enthusiasm had waned. “I’m getting on her nerves. It’ll make the baby crazy or something. I’d do better to stay off the premises.”

He got up, turned on the television, then turned it off, then on again. Gray shapes curdled the screen. A few miles away, the city of Florence — his and Carla’s city until their exile to this mountaintop — was attempting to recover from the ravages of one of the worst floods in history. Incessant rains had swollen the Arno beyond its banks, and now the TV showed the Florentines struggling through tons of muck and mud to salvage their city and themselves. Franco’s throat was dry as he watched women in boots filling jugs from the Fountain of Neptune. There was no typhoid-free drinking water. The next image was of a woman being rescued by boat from the upstairs window of an unsteady building in Piazza Ghiberti. Franco’s mind rushed to friends who lived in that part of the city. Carla’s family was on the fourth floor — an advantage, for once. Anyway, they’d have got out. They had a nice sense of self-protection. As their kind had always done, they would take to the hills, enjoy a house party in someone’s villa.

Franco was concerned about the libraries and museums. He hadn’t revised his last book, and some documents he needed to consult were in the vaults of the State Archives of Florence. Not that he was so self-centered as to care mainly about that, but it did come to mind. Tanks containing fuel oil, the commentator reminded listeners, had exploded, and the black, viscous stuff had contaminated the waters, clung to statues, drawn a black line across frescoes, and sealed the pages of unread documents from the earliest years of the city. Next came shots of people who had taken refuge on the rooftops in areas where the waters had not yet receded. Huddled against the cold, they were yelling jokes from roof to roof, livening themselves with the bitter wit of their kind. No villa invitations for them.

Franco began to cry. This was his city, his old, proud, beautiful, misgoverned city. Another unnecessary calamity had afflicted it. (Only last year Franco had been reading about governmental neglect of soil erosion.) Thirty people, said the reporter, were known to have perished so far. Franco turned him off. No telephone lines. He must get to Florence. Not only for personal reasons — Joan — but . . . and anyway Joan would be all right. Her uncle, Mr. Herman Adelaide, would invite her to stay in his villa. No, it was a need for activity that was tormenting Franco, a need to dispense the energies that had been accumulating while he sat slowing his pace to the broody Carla’s. Waiting. He had an absurd sensation that his presence must make a difference to the city where officials who had bungled everything up to now were surely bungling things again. “Corrupt, inept, time-serving… ”

Disgusted and impatient, he got up and walked down the hall to the apartment he and Carla had rented in the Archives. Carla was sitting in her room, knitting yet another white woolen jacket.

“Everything the same?” he asked her.

“I’m afraid so.” A slack face smiled ashamedly up at him, blurry features dissolving into one another. Franco sat beside her and attempted to caress her. She had put on much too much weight. She’d never get rid of it. The doctor had refused to back up Franco in his efforts to make her diet.

“Franco! No!”

“What? You’re not shy, are you?” Teasing.

“Not now, Franco!”

“Do you know that in France husbands learn to deliver their babies themselves? So they can feel as involved as the mothers!”

She shrugged. He rose and returned to his study. Wearily he flopped into his armchair and began to think of Joan, wondering if she were still in Florence. Headlines had described stink and screams in the unlit city and the outlandish wail of motor horns set off by the rising waters. But it was not Joan’s safety he was worried about. She would land on her feet. Joan was American, nineteen years old and one of the appalling Pop generation. She would not have appealed to him some years ago, but the cinema had made the type familiar: the Hepburn girl, loose of tibia and thighbone, with the free-swinging ease that comes from liquid assets and unhampered mind. For some months now, Franco had been engaged, on the three days a week he spent working for a publisher in Florence, in furnishing the fine vacancy of this mind with notions of his own. She was — when bared of the Pop clothes — surprisingly docile. With sad security, Franco thought of his efforts to dislodge the grids of conventional belief that had been pressed down on poor Carla before he married her. Carla had defended her virginity through a six-year engagement, whereas Joan — hah! — but her pliancy bothered him. Where was the spoor of earlier loves? Would his own one day be as effectively rubbed out?

There was no question of her writing, now that the telephone lines were down. Before the flood it had seemed unwise to give her his address. He had been in the habit of telephoning her frequently from booths and racing up her stairs, suspicion titillating him, her great iron door key ready in his hand.

And now? He picked a typescript off his desk and managed to read two paragraphs.

The telephone rang. It was his brother-in-law.

“Aldo!” Franco was excited. “I thought the lines were down. Where are you?”

“In Florence. They hooked one up for us. A sort of field telephone. How’s Carla? Has she had the baby?”

“Still waiting. But, tell me — ”

“Mamma’s going to stay with you. It’s better for her to be out of Florence. I suppose you read all about the flood?”

“Indeed. I saw you on TV.”

Aldo’s appeal for help to salvage manuscripts from the mud had reminded Franco of another emergency: the Resistance and his childhood misery at being cut off from it. While partisans fought in the Florentine hills, Franco had been obliged to concern himself with soccer. He had since put down his frustration to growing pains, yet songs and stories from that time released a sour, seductive nostalgia in him. The Resistance had now been debased by official piety, but for him, who had experienced it as a void, it retained appeal.

Aldo, a bit older than Franco, had been a partisan. Connections from those days had pushed him ahead at top speed in the civil service.

“I saw you — ” Franco said again to his brother-in-law.

“Listen!” Aldo cut in. “I’m going to send you several truckloads of damaged documents. We’re farming them out to provincial archives for restoration. I don’t know when we’ll get our hands on the trucks, but I’ll let you know. We’re up to our necks here. The army is using what they’ve got to help flood victims, and most local transport is fouled up. We may get some from Bologna, we — ”

“Listen !” Franco crushed his fingers excitedly about the receiver. “I’ll come for the stuff. Right now. I can get trucks here, and I’ll come.”

“Absolutely not!” Aldo’s voice was imperious. “You stand by. We’ll take care of things at this end.”

“But — ”

“Nobody could expect you to leave your wife at a time like this.”

“But if la mamma is coming!” Franco’s voice was shrill. “And the doctor’s here on call. It’s her third child. Carla has babies as easily as a cat.”

“No!” said Carla’s brother. His voice snapped like a lid, and Franco remembered the small rodent teeth and Aldo’s bullying of him when they had been students. “I understand,” said Aldo — and his unctuous Tuscan accent reminded Franco of his table manners and of his provincial obsequiousness with superiors — “your anxiety about the National Patrimony . . .” Franco made a face and pulled the receiver away from his ear. The fluid sounds ceased at the end of his wrist, and he pulled the receiver back.

“Of course,” he told it.

“I wouldn’t wish to butt in,” said Aldo.

“Huh?”

“I just wanted to tip you off. Mr. Adelaide is the American representative of the Fund for Saving Italian Archival Treasures, so she is down here with him every day. People might get a bad impression.”

“What’s that?” Franco screwed the receiver into his ear. “I’m afraid I missed something you said about, ah, Mr. Adelaide and –”

“Your little friend?”

The vulgarity, my God! What did one expect? Left-wing puritans — worse than the bloody Catholics. No wonder there was not and never would be divorce in this country. “How — ” began Franco.

” — did we know? Gossip. You don’t think that, in a city trained through twenty years of fascism, the doorkeepers don’t know their business? Anyway, it’s another reason why you’d better not come. She was asking about you around the Archives. They told her about Carla’s expecting a baby, Luckily, with all that’s happening, your little scandal will be forgotten if you stay put. Wouldn’t do either of us any good if it weren’t. Listen, I’m running out of time. You can expect la mamma on tonight’s train. I’ll telephone again before sending the documents. Ciao.”

Franco put down the receiver. So it was common knowledge. Aldo was worried about reports to the Ministry. Meanwhile, Franco was stuck here because Aldo had pulled rank. Franco rubbed his cheek. But why should he let himself be dictated to? What right had Aldo to give him orders? And was Franco to be a bloody yes man? Absolute lunacy! Manuscripts were macerating in muck. Mold was threatening, and time — Aldo himself had said so —  was vital. Franco was an Italian, and Italians — he had once written an essay on the subject — had for centuries relied on subversive individuals (Galileo, Giordano Bruno, the partisans, alternatively Mussolini) to keep the national vessel afloat at all. Vested myopia had to be swept periodically aside. Franco picked up the receiver, then set it down. He would see to this in person. Action. He stood up, took his mackintosh from a hook in the hall and raced downstairs. Carla, hearing his Fiat 600 the civil service pays stingily — thunder through the fourteenth-century gullies of the little town, smiled: “Poor Franco! He gets restless!”

He was back in three hours. At eleven o’clock. He had been promised twelve trucks, eleven drivers: eight from one firm, three from another. One was from the local grocer. Franco was to have that back in time for tomorrow morning’s market. An archivist could drive it. Franco would close the Archives and take all the staff with him. No. Perhaps one man had better stay to caretake and keep an eye on Carla. She might need to send him to the pharmacy.

Bounding up the stairs, Franco grinned. He liked himself as the scurrying Franco: vigorous, always on the move.

Then he paused a moment. What, now, would it be best to tell Carla?

“Darling.” He strode with an anxious face into her room. “That brother of yours has been on the telephone. He wants me to go to Florence.”

“Aldo? Now?”

“They’re understaffed,” he explained. “They want me to bring back some of the damaged documents and dry them out here. It is an emergency.”

“Oh,” fluttered Carla. “He always was one for giving orders! The tyrant! I hope you didn’t let him take advantage of you! After all, he’ll get all the credit with the Ministry! You’re such a pushover,” she scolded.

“I told him I couldn’t possibly go until the child was born.”

“And what did he say?”

“Oh, he huffed and puffed a bit. He couldn’t see why you needed me. He’s sending mamma by the rapido tonight. But I insisted.”

“La mamma? Was he annoyed?”

“How do I know?”

“But, Franco, we’ll never hear the end of it if you don’t go! They’ll say that while volunteers were pouring in from all over, you were too busy with your private affairs to even drive into Florence to pick up a load of documents! Can you imagine how it sounds! You might even lose your job! Franco! Aldo knows what he’s talking about! You must go. Anyway, I’ve got Doctor Pietri. I don’t need you. This isn’t France, where you tell me men deliver their own babies! And if la mamma is coming — ”

“But I’ll be worrying about you! I’d be miserable if — ”

“Go!” Carla spoke with the vigor of a Roman matron.

She is playacting too, he thought, but remembered: She is absorbed in me and the children. Poor Carla! And I’m robbing her of her great moment when the baby is produced, the pink or blue ribbon on the door, telephone calls to aunts…. For a moment Franco regretted going. He kissed Carla warmly. “Darling . . .”

“You will go, Franco?”

“Yes.”

He rushed off with shameful alacrity. Well, he’d probably be back before the baby was born, after all. Carla yelled after him, “Don’t forget to take your high boots.”

“I won’t.”

They were off! The truck rattled as it rounded bends. Franco opened a window. Freezing cold, but the air was crisp with country smells: decaying leaves, wet undergrowth, churned earth. The rain had stopped, and Franco could see sunlight on the headlamps of the trucks behind. A little convoy, that’s what they were. Hurtling down the ravines! Ambush hour! Boom! Shut up, Franco! You’re a civil servant. Distinguished. He slid an eye toward the driver, but the man’s face was vacant. The truck raced through groves of olive trees. In a cleft, a mountain stream hurtled downhill, curling and corkscrewing like a reddish fleece. Like Joan’s hair. She, Franco was suddenly sure, would not care about his deceptions. They met as free spirits. Careless, she evaded the conventional prejudices of his own people.

Franco was drenched in mud. His arms were sore, his hands numb inside his rubber gloves. He had raced straight to the Florentine State Archives and work, eager to escape the filth and misery of Florence’s streets. Aldo was not to be found. “He’s been on the job for seventy-two hours,” Franco was told. “He’ll surely be back in an hour or two.” Franco, who was well known at the Archives, made a quick survey and chose some of the damaged registers that had already been brought up from the ruined vaults — it was thought that they must be court records from the fourteenth century. He then pressed some volunteers into loading them onto his trucks. He let his drivers go, telling them to be back at seven. They would return home tonight. Meanwhile, he stacked the soggy objects handed him by the volunteers. When he got them home, he would have to see about having them scraped, sponged, dried, perhaps with the help of machines. Tobacco barns, he knew, were being used. Someone had suggested freezing. He kept his mind on salvaging techniques, for the state of the ruined registers — over half a millennium old and intact until last week — made him ready to roar with rage. What good would that do? None. Get on with the job, he told himself. And anyway — he had reached the last truck — look how much we have managed to move in a few hours. The city authorities knew of the flood eight hours in advance and gave no warning! How much of this stuff could have been saved if . . . Forget it. And the petty bickering goes on. Look at bloody Aldo! Hoping to advance his career on the flood tide. What will he say when he comes back? Stop me? No. Fear of scandal. Make it work for me. Shall I see Joan? Too tired to think. Aldo was on the job seventy-two hours. I never denied he cares about the Archives. Wonder will he let me have any funds for this lot? Well, that’s the last of it now.

He was moving off, having committed his trucks to a couple of his own archivists, and thinking of a washup and sandwich when he saw Aldo.

Pink-eyed from lack of sleep, his face pushed forward in a snout of aggression, his shoulders hunched within his tawny mackintosh, Aldo had the look of a charging hamster. As he raced toward Franco across the Loggiato degli Uffizi, his glasses glittered. He was wearing high boots, and his balding, gourd-shaped head was greatly at odds with this fisherman’s outfit.

“Are you out of your mind?” he cried, clutching Franco by the shoulder and pushing him backward into one of the trucks. “What’s all this?” He climbed in after him and began poking at the soggy manuscripts. “Who gave you permission? This is state property. I’m responsible for it. You can’t just hijack this stuff out of the city to suit your own whim! And what about Carla and Mamma? I suppose that little American whore has turned your head. What are you up to, Franco? This is insubordination!” He had closed the truck door to keep the quarrel concealed from all eyes, and now his voice rose shrilly out of the darkness.

Franco opened the door.

“Close it. Close it.” Aldo’s spectacles danced in the streak of light. “I want all this stuff unloaded at once.”

“Back into the mud?” asked Franco.

“It doesn’t leave here without my permission. I’ll call the police.”

“You were going to send this stuff to me anyway.”

“Not this. You’ve taken some of the most valuable sources. Very precious material. It shouldn’t leave Florence. And after the way you’ve come in looting state property behind my back, I don’t think — ”

“I got this in the regular way in broad daylight with the cooperation of your own staff,” Franco said.

“Because they know you’re my brother-in-law! You took advantage of that to associate me with your piracy.”

“Aldo! Can’t you see I’m just here to help? Like all these other people who are trying to save the damaged documents? That I’m just following up your own suggestion to me on the phone?”

“I told you not to come.”

“Because of Carla. And that’s my own business.”

“You’re unreliable. What are you after? Publicity? Promotion? I’ll put a stop to your caper! I’ll telephone Rome.”

“I’ll telephone Rome myself. I’ll write to the papers.”

“Do.”

Franco jumped out of the truck and strode away from the Loggiato. He was halfway across the Piazza della Signoria before it occurred to him that, even if he could find a telephone — only a few had been hooked up for official use — all the ministries in Rome would be closed at this hour. Besides, the idea was absurd: “Please, Mr. Secretary, my brother-in-law’s picking on me!” Absurd. His rage snapped like a bubble. Stopping to light a cigarette, it struck him as funny that the load he was trying to save should consist of court records: the work of the Florentine bureaucrats, the Aldos of five hundred years ago. Aldo must be sick with fatigue. Give him time to pull himself together.

Franco waded up mud-befouled streets to Piazza San Giovanni, where Joan had her apartment. He had a key and he climbed the stairs, tracking mud and sawdust after him. He had little expectation of finding her, and he was too tired to care.

As he had guessed, the apartment was deserted. He flopped down on Joan’s divan. Then the cold began to nip him. He got up and traced the cold currents to their source in the bathroom, where a window had come unlatched. Its glass had shattered and the frame swung loose. He used a towel to patch it up. Joan had probably not been here since the morning of the flood. He squatted on his hunkers and closed his eyes. Seeking. Joan was gone. Not just from her apartment but from him. Her memory had left him. Gone. He tried to summon her: Joan, elastic skin, bloomy, pinkish, young, the taste of her ear — it all fell apart. Nothing. She was gone from his nerve ends. He groped for her image, as a mud creature in a well might ponder about the brief blur of a butterfly on the surface.

He was depressed by his failure of imagination. It was weariness, worry. Yes, but a dimension was being withdrawn from him. Before long, he knew — it had happened before — his passion would seem spurious; his senses would dull; the grasping clarity of the man in love would leave him, and it would be with an indulgent amusement that he would remember “the little American girl” he had run around with one autumn.

Buttoning his coat, Franco paused at Joan’s dressing table, a slab of heavy glass under which she had stuck a hodgepodge of snapshots: all of herself except when some other face, male or female, had been caught by the camera click in a chance proximity too close for later discarding. None but Joan under the two yards of defensive glass, as though, traveling light, she carried no memories but of her different selves in the ski clothes, Mary Quant clothes, slicker coats of fashion. Franco fetched his wallet out of an inner pocket and, tearing a photograph of himself from an outdated identity card, slipped it beneath the plate glass. He laid the key on top of it and walked out of the apartment, pulling the door behind him.

Heavy in his boots, he clumped downstairs as quickly as he could. Outside, he waved his arms in an effort to warm himself. “Goddam and goddamn!” He cursed some medium-weight curses to himself as he squelched back toward the Archives. The cold had reached his marrow. The mission was a failure on all fronts. Another brief folly consummated. Aldo smirks. Carla hides her head. Manuscripts will have to be unloaded because Aldo will not permit me to remove them. I’ll be a laughingstock. What’ll I tell the truck owners? No noble exploit to report to Rome in the hope of being commended by the Minister for services rendered in time of crisis! No, no! Merely opprobrium. A provincial oaf. Butting in. Leaving his wife on her bed of pain. abandoning their unborn child. What will be said? A lot. Count on that. No guts. Home with tail between legs. What time is it? Seven? Oh God, the drivers! I will have to tell them!

They were standing in a group under the arcades, their coat collars up, smoking. They saluted him.

“All set, Dottore?”

“Better be hitting the road.”

So Aldo had said nothing! Where was he now? Franco waved a limp salute to the drivers. “Be with you in a second.” He sidled down toward the door of the Archives. A television van was stationed outside it. No sign of Aldo. A man was fixing a spotlight. Another had a portable camera and a microphone. He spoke to Franco.

“These your trucks, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Taking stuff out of town to some recovery point?”

“Um, yes.”

“We’d like to get a few shots. Do you mind telling us where you’re going? Our listeners would be interested to hear about the work that’s being done. May I ask your name?” He handed Franco the microphone.

“Doctor Soperchio,” Franco told him. “I’m Director of Archives at U — ”

“At U– ! That’s quite a drive with the state of the roads. Did you come in this morning, Dottore?”

“Yes,” Franco told him. He hesitated, but the man was giving him encouraging nods. Franco grasped the microphone tightly. “We, ah, brought in twelve empty trucks. I’m afraid the Florentines who saw us were disappointed when they saw our trucks were empty, but — ”

“But you’re not taking them back empty?”

Franco took a deep breath. “No!” he said. “No. We have filled them with damaged court records from the fourteenth century. We” — and here he had a feeling of abandon — “we have excellent facilities at U —  . We may even return for a second consignment.”

His voice, thinned and bouncy from nerves and weariness, leaped like a pea in the whistle of his throat. “A second,” he repeated more firmly. He would, too. And a third and a fourth. Suddenly he knew it and was determined. If he had to, he’d fight. Write to the papers. Telephone Mr. Adelaide. He might even enlist the microphone that was rearing before him this minute. Denounce Aldo. Why not? And the hordes of bureaucrats whose swaddling, strangling red tape did more damage than the flood. To hell with caution! A pox on them all. Tell! Show them all up! If there was one thing Franco knew and cared about, it was archives; and the city of Florence held the richest archives in the world. Careful, clerkly and cautious, the old Florentines had been remarkable recorders. Neither the French nor English nor anyone else in their heyday had kept records as they had, and, as a result, the “Athens of the fifteenth century,” intact among the fossils of its bones, could still be reconstructed as the fifth-century Athens never could. There might never be another. Scarcely scratched by modern scholarship, the voluminous image of the society that had elaborated the moral and aesthetic norms to which the West still held had escaped destruction by wars, tax riots, and earlier floods to succumb perhaps now to mold and the delays of an idiotic bureaucracy. Franco seized the microphone and waved it angrily. Tell, he reminded himself, but in his agitation was not sure how to begin. Tell! He jerked his chin toward the Uffizi Gallery next door. “The paintings in there,” he said, “whose possible loss has agitated the world of women’s clubs, are the product of a certain society. They are, of course, priceless but cannot be compared in value to the chart and image of that society’s living organism.” He was shouting. “Here modern man,” he roared, “evolved into a political animal, and here, if history means anything at all, he can be assessed and understood.”

The television man asked, “Are you taking the documents back to U — tonight?” “Definitely,” said Franco more gently, but he had lost his thread. “The parchment,” he accused, “is waterlogged. Mold is the great danger. I would have been here sooner, but it happens that my wife is having a baby right now. As a matter of fact, I left just before the delivery. Time is vital.”

“So you actually left your wife in labor?”

“Yes.”

The glare of the spotlight was blinding Franco. It was only when the television man turned away from him to talk into his microphone of “just another of the thousands whose unstinting zeal and selflessness have come to be accepted as a matter of course in these days of …” that Franco stepped out of the glare and saw Aldo. He was in the doorway, just behind the television spot and only a few feet away from Franco, whom he was observing with an air of alarm. Beside him was a little man in a hat who, Franco made sure from Aldo’s little bobs and grins, must be from the Ministry. He too was looking at Franco. Aldo now beckoned him over.

“My brother-in-law, Doctor Soperchio, Director of Archives at U — ,” said Aldo, with intense anxiety. He mentioned the name of the other man, who was indeed from the Ministry and important.

“My dear Doctor Soperchio!” The important man embraced Franco. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance. We just overheard you speak for the television. Most moving, I must say! Your feeling was contagious. I nearly broke down myself. Be assured that your outstanding devotion to the National Patrimony will not go unrecognized.”

Over his shoulder, Franco perceived in Aldo’s face, beneath the layers of relief, a faint oscillation of the flesh tantamount to a collusive wink.

“You are too good,” Franco muttered to the important man. “I was merely doing my duty as a public servant.” Then he rubbed a handkerchief over his eyelid, which was beginning to twitch uncontrollably.

Why Did American Troops in 1941 Have the Blues?

In 1940, America instituted a peacetime draft for the first time. All American men between the ages of 21 and 36 were required to register for service that September.

One year later, a million men were in uniform and being trained in Army boot camps. The danger of war still existed, but there was no immediate need for such a large standing army. The draftees looked forward to going back to their regular lives when their terms of service expired in October 1941.

But the Army, still expecting trouble, wasn’t ready to let the men go. It maintained that only two divisions — less than 80,000 men — of the million-man force was combat ready. They persuaded President Roosevelt to extend the term of service from one year to two-and-a-half years. Congress approved the extension in August.

When the draftees heard they couldn’t go home, there was widespread unrest. Rumors circulated of mutiny, mass desertions, or at least passive resistance. October passed with no serious disruption, however, and the men stayed in uniform, on base, and under orders. But they weren’t happy about it, and the Army reported “low morale” among its conscripts.

Edgar Snow reported on the causes of unrest, which was only partly due to the extended service date. Shortages of both equipment and good leadership were also discouraging to the troops. And, of course, there was the natural civilian resistance to military discipline, which seemed even more pointless in peacetime.

“They Don’t Want to Play Soldier” offers an interesting look into the nascent American fighting force on the eve of World War II. It reflects the grumbling, dissatisfaction, and obstinate resistance to service that was part of the American character — before it was roused by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and by the German declaration of war four days later.

They Don't Want to Play Soldier
Read “They Don’t Want to Play Soldier,” from the October 25, 1941, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Photos by Philippe Halsman.

Fidel Castro: The Last Cold Warrior

With the death of Fidel Castro, the Cold War truly passes into history.

All of the other protagonists in the mid-century conflict between communism and democracy are long gone — Kennedy, Khrushchev, Johnson, Brezhnev, Nixon, Mao. Only Castro remained, holding onto life and, until 2006, power over Cuba.

When Castro took control of the Cuban government in 1959, many in the U.S. hoped he would end the decades of corruption by his predecessors. That hope is reflected in Harold Martin’s 1959 article, “Can Castro Save Cuba?,” which was written at a time when Castro was still asserting he was not a communist.

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Can Castro Save Cuba?
August 1, 1959

But by December of ’59, the tide had shifted away from the sentiment that “anyone who opposes a dictatorship must be our man.” Castro’s animosity toward the U.S. and close ties to Communism rose to the fore, and a Post editorial declared “Fidel Looks Less Like a Friend of the U.S.A. All the Time.”

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Fidel Looks Less Like a Friend of the U.S.A. All the Time.
December 19, 1959

By 1960, Castro had extended recognition to several Marxist-Leninist governments, entered into trade agreements with the Soviets, and nationalized Cuba’s oil refineries, which had been under U.S. control.

In January, the U.S. cut its diplomatic ties to Cuba and began to fund anti-Castro groups. In 1961, it backed an invasion by Cuban exiles. The swift defeat of the U.S.-funded forces at The Bay of Pigs boosted Castro’s reputation in Central and South America, where he was seen as a champion of Latin American nations against the powerful U.S.

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The Lessons of the Cuban Disaster
June 24, 1961

In 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev obtained Castro’s permission to install Soviet-made missiles in Cuba. The move was intended to counterbalance the NATO forces pointed at the Soviet Union. The U.S. demanded the missiles be withdrawn and set up a blockade around the island. It was the closest that the U.S. and Russia came to going to war. Ultimately, the Russians negotiated a withdrawal with the Americans. Stewart Alsop and Charles Bartlett wrote a detailed account in their 1962 article, “In Time of Crisis,” which focuses on lesser-known but ultimately critical episodes. While there were many players, decisions ultimately fell to President Kennedy. The authors note the evident strain on the president:

John F. Kennedy is not an outwardly emotional man, and in the bad days there were few signs that he was passing through the loneliest moments of his lonely job. Once he astonished his wife when he called her at midday and asked her to join him for a walk. Another time he insisted, uncharacteristically, that the children be brought back from Virginia to join him in the White House. But he never lost his sense of humor. On the Sunday of Khrushchev’s big blink, he made a wry remark to his brother Bobby: “Perhaps this is the night I should go to the theater.” No doubt he had Ford’s Theater in mind.

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In Time of Crisis 
December 8, 1962


Castro was left out of the negotiations, but he was still regarded by many Americans as a significant threat to the U.S. His policies earned him enemies not only in America but also in Cuba itself. Edward Behr’s article “Chaos in Castro’s Cuba,” presented the Marxist-Leninist government as failing to solve chronic problems of food and employment.

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Chaos in Castro’s Cuba 
June 8, 1963

Many expected Castro’s government would eventually collapse under the combined pressure of America’s embargo, the moribund economy, and the discontent of Cubans. Of all the surprises of the Cold War, none could match the unexpectedly long life of Castro’s regime, or of Castro himself.

Featured image: Library of Congress

5-Minute Fitness: Tone Your Triceps

Leslie Sansone
Leslie Sansone
Courtesy Hilmar Meyer-Bosse

Strengthen the large muscle at the back of the upper arm that’s involved in every pushing motion you can think of in minutes a day. “Triceps show results quickly! While this move can be done with light hand weights, I prefer a resistance band that I can take anywhere and adjust so the level of tension is just right for any given day,” says Leslie Sansone, star of the Just Walk DVD fitness series.

Triceps kickbacks
1 Place center of band under forward foot as shown. Grasp and hold band in each hand, at least 6 inches from ends.
2 Bend forward from hips so shoulders are over forward foot. With back flat, bend elbows so band is taut but not stretched.
3 Without moving elbows or upper arms, extend forearms back until arms are straight. Hold for a moment, then return forearms to bent position. Repeat 15 to 20 times, as able.
Reps: Gradually work up to 3 sets per day.
Challenge: Hold band farther from ends to increase resistance and difficulty.

News of the Week: Dick Van Dyke, Digital Clothes, and the Debate Over Pie vs. Cake 

Dick Van Dkye Show
CBS. ©Calvada Productions

Ohhhhhh Rob! (In Color)

I’m not usually a fan of the colorization of movies and TV shows. I believe they should all be shown in their original, glorious black and white. But CBS has been doing something the past few Christmases that I think is fun: They’ve been colorizing episodes of I Love Lucy. They’re not replacements for the original black-and-white episodes, but they are interesting little curios that make you see the show in a different light.

The episodes always get great ratings, too, which is probably one of the reasons CBS is doing the same thing withThe Dick Van Dyke Show. I’ve seen color photos from the set, but this will be the first time that entire episodes from the classic sitcom will be shown in color. The two classic episodes will be “That’s My Boy,” where Rob thinks that he and Laura have brought the wrong baby home from the hospital, and “Coast to Coast Big Mouth,” where Laura accidentally tells a national TV audience that her husband’s boss is really bald.

Sometimes the colors on these things seem really off, but creator Carl Reiner oversaw the colorization process, and that gives me hope. The special airs on December 11 at 8 p.m.

If You’ve Been Waiting for Digital Clothing, You’re in Luck

Our clothing is now going to be connected to the web. While I applaud the use of this technology to, say, create overalls that prevent utility workers from being electrocuted, I know that it’s also going to be used in more ridiculous ways. The technology was showcased last week at the General Electric’s Mind + Machines conference, part of the “internet of things” we’ve heard so much about, where everything we have will be connected to each other, from our televisions and computers to our refrigerators and lightbulbs.

Someday soon we’ll be able to update our Facebook status via our Wi-Fi-enabled shoelaces. And we’ll post to our friends, “Hey, I’m updating my Facebook status via my Wi-Fi-enabled shoelaces!

RIP Florence Henderson and Sharon Jones

When I was a kid, my sister and I used to go down to the corner store on Friday nights and get a giant bag filled with candy and other snacks to eat while watching The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. It’s one of my favorite childhood memories, so it’s sad to hear that the woman who played Carol Brady, Florence Henderson, has died at the age of 82.

Besides the iconic role on that sitcom (and it’s many spinoffs and TV movies), Henderson was a singer and appeared in starring roles on Broadway, including the original Fanny. She appeared in shows like The Love BoatFantasy Island30 RockAlly McBealMurder, She Wrote, I Spy, and…well, too many others to list. She had her own talk shows, was a “Today Girl” on The Today Show in the 60’s (doing weather and some news), co-hosted Later Today in 1999-2000, and appeared on many game shows and in tons of commercials. She hosted a couple of cooking shows as well, including Country Cooking and later Who’s Cooking with Florence Henderson, and was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.

***

You may know the song “100 Days, 100 Nights” from its use in a FitBit commercial last year. The singer of that song, Sharon Jones of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, passed away from pancreatic cancer last Friday at the age of 60. She also suffered two strokes earlier this month.

Jones was the subject of a 2016 documentary titled Miss Sharon Jones.

Believe It or Not, Marilyn Monroe’s Dress Sells for $4.8M

Lots of old celebrity clothing in the news lately. A few weeks ago we told you about the restoration of Dorothy’s shoes from The Wizard of Oz, and this week we saw the auction of a famous dress worn by a sex symbol while she sang “Happy Birthday” to the president.

The crystal-embossed dress that Marilyn Monroe wore when she serenaded President Kennedy at his 45th birthday party in 1962 sold for a record $4.8 million this week at an auction in Los Angeles, the highest amount for a dress at auction. The buyer? Ripley’s Believe It or Not. It will be shown at their Odditorium museums during a worldwide tour.

By the way, this dress is the old-fashioned, nondigital kind.

This Week in History

President John F. Kennedy Killed (November 22, 1963)

CBS’s Walter Cronkite broke into As The World Turns to give viewers the news that Kennedy had been shot in Dallas:

President Franklin Pierce Born (November 23, 1804)

2016 wasn’t the only year we heard insults and crude language during a presidential campaign.

Howard Carter Enters King Tut’s Tomb (November 26, 1922)

Was there a curse that plagued Carter and others who opened the tomb?

Cake
Shutterstock

National Cake Day

There are many food arguments: tea vs. coffee, McDonald’s vs. Burger King, chicken vs. fish, Coke vs. Pepsi, and of course cake vs. pie. It’s a battle for the ages. Cooks from CNN and The New York Times debated it a few years ago, and it was even discussed by several celebrities during the Mark Twain Prize for Humor ceremonies. For the record, Jon Hamm is a pie man, while Tina Fey doesn’t even understand why it’s a debate because cake is clearly superior.

I don’t know where I stand. If you’d asked me a couple weeks ago, I would have said cake. If you ask me this week, I’ll say pie because Thanksgiving and Christmas are all about pie. But since tomorrow is National Cake Day, how about making this Black & Blue Berry Cake, this Irish Apple Cake, or this Peach Johnnycake.

By sheer coincidence, “Peach Johnnycake” was the name I used when I was an exotic dancer.

Next Week’s Holidays and Events

Stockbridge’s “Main Street at Christmas” Norman Rockwell Celebration (December 24)

The Massachusetts town has lights and decorations and a concert to celebrate the iconic “Home For Christmas” painting Norman Rockwell created for McCall’s.

Advent begins (December 3)

Advent is “a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas.” It’s also a time to eat a lot of chocolate.

The House Will Be Rubble

Dennis read a lot of stay-at-home-mom blogs. After the university fired him — or, rather, in the parlance of the academy, “found that its staffing needs had changed,” meaning an adjunct could do what he did cheaper — he tried to load up on as much info as he could, printing out the long blog entries and highlighting relevant portions in colorcoded ink. The mom blogs made stay-at-home parenting out to be some sort of warzone, part Vietnam, part Wild West, part Lord of the Flies. Dennis readied himself for this war, armed with highlighted pages and de-escalation techniques fit for hostage situations.

But his son was deflatingly facile. Simon was 6 now. He took care of himself, even wiped his own ass after using the bathroom. This was nothing compared to Dennis’ memories of life at home with Simon as a baby, a time that glowered in his memory as a series of panicky, joyful snapshots: admonishing in-laws, diapers piled like munitions, tiny fingers finding trouble in objects as innocent as an untied shoelace, a packet of fish food, a half-full cup of water resting on the table beside Dennis’ cell phone.

Now Simon was easy to keep occupied. He had kindergarten in the morning, then a single coloring book or Disney film could take him through the whole afternoon. Add to that all the other pastimes in Dennis’ arsenal (building blocks, plastic figurines, trips to the park, pretending to be action heroes out in the yard) and the boy was simply never bored. When his son was otherwise occupied Dennis filled his time with household chores: sweeping, mopping, cooking, scrubbing, cleaning gutters, trimming trees, washing laundry. It was a novel thrill to take care of his son and his home so closely, so personally. It felt almost spiritual, to commune this deeply with the life he’d chosen, like the couples on reality TV who moved to some sustainable farm somewhere to live off the land.

Still, his wife insisted he shouldn’t have fired the maid, and the look on her face told him he was foolish to think of this arrangement as anything but temporary. No, they didn’t need the second income, not when they factored in the saved costs of childcare, cleaning, handymen, etc. But he would be bored, he was bound to be bored.

“How could I be bored?” he asked her. There was so much to do, so much that needed to be done, that he now considered it a wonder he had ever held down a full-time job.

“I thought we paid people to do those things because we didn’t like doing them,” she said.

“How would we know when we’ve never tried?” He was annoyed that she seemed intent on puncturing his optimism. In his long hours at home, he’d begun to wonder if people weren’t ultimately indifferent about how their energy was spent, as long as it was spent. Put a man in a room with an arbitrary task, maybe some complicated knot to untie or a jigsaw puzzle to assemble, and wouldn’t any reasonable person be happy at the end of eight hours as long as he’d made reasonable progress?

When she suggested gently he might be rationalizing in order to avoid some sort of anxiety, maybe insecurity at being a man stuck at home, maybe just old-fashioned anger at the university that fired him, he got short with her. “I told you,” he said, “they didn’t fire me, their staffing needs changed.”

“You’re getting defensive.”

“I am not.”

“Are so, she said, and stuck out her tongue. He tried not to laugh but failed. She was herself quite skilled at de-escalation.

*

The internet held countless descriptions of ways for him to fill his time, to be a better stay-at-home mom. (Though calling himself this had started as a joke, he read enough mom blogs that it became natural for him to think of himself this way.) There were new recipes to try, new kids’ shows to DVR, new timeout methods, better parks further away with greener grass and safer swings.

One day when Dennis couldn’t sleep, he lay beside his wife, thumbing through the web page bookmarks on his phone. One of his favorite mom blogs had an entry called “Yes Day,” an activity designed to build trust. It came from some kids’ book. You were supposed to set aside 12 hours, scheduled in advance with your child, where you would say yes to everything they asked for.

“You’re crazy,” his wife said the next morning. “Out of your head. You need to get out more. The house will be left in rubble. I’ll be at the morgue, identifying bodies.”

“Give Simon some credit,” he said.

“He’s 6.”

“He’s very mature for his age.”

She made a face. “I wouldn’t trust you with a yes day.”

*

So he didn’t try the yes day, not at first. He wanted to be the best stay-at-home mom he could, and that meant keeping the go-to-work mom happy. But soon he was running out of ideas of how to improve the household. The gutters could not be cleaner, the floors more spotless, the light fixtures less dusty.

And then there was Simon. Dennis loved Simon deeply, of course, but he was the docile type of boy he had never understood, not even as a child himself. His eyes scanned the world the bored way someone else’s might scan a take-out menu. Dennis had the sense that he could tell Simon to do pretty much anything and he would comply, as long as Dennis framed it as a question. “Why don’t you go watch TV? Why don’t you color for a bit? Why don’t you go sit quietly in a room with the lights off until Daddy thinks of something better to do?”

The upshot was a constant feeling that every time Dennis sat his son down in front of a movie or went to the same old park one more time he was letting him down. If there was ever a point at which it was novel to have Dad at home, exciting even, that point was past. Dad was a feature of the house now, his fussy fingers at his son’s shoelaces, always double-knotted so they wouldn’t come apart. A feature like the scented candles in the bathroom, or that rattling sound the dryer made that Dennis couldn’t figure out how to fix.

He told himself it was silly to expect anything else of the boy: He was 6, and of course he accepted the world as it was presented. Little to no questioning or reflection. This was something to admire, not admonish. And like he had told his wife, there was so much to be done, he should take good simple comfort in the fact that he now had the time to do it.

He sometimes wished his boy would throw tantrums, the way kids on TV did. Then, he thought, he’d really have something to show; he could think up some bit of fatherly wisdom to impart that would settle his son’s temper. But instead he increasingly spent his afternoons flipping through an app on his phone, pinning recipes while his son watched TV.

“What’s this one about?” he’d occasionally ask as some smiling cartoon flitted across the screen.

“Shhh,” his son would say.

So one day after his wife went to work, Dennis sat Simon down at the kitchen table and explained the exercise. That’s what he called it, an exercise. He could tell from the look on the boy’s face that Simon did not understand. He was probably thinking about sports at first, or jumping jacks. But once he started to understand his eyes went wide.

Anything?” he asked.

“Almost,” Dennis said. He explained the ground rules. Nothing illegal, nothing that would endanger either of them, no asking for more “yes days,” no asking to overturn the above ground rules. Dennis had read on the blog that ground rules were good, and these were the four he’d settled on.

Simon looked at him suspiciously, like Dennis was playing some sort of trick. “Why?” he said.

“Why ground rules?”

“Why yes day?”

Dennis bit his lip. He wasn’t sure what to say. He was fairly sure Simon would not understand the word ennui. So instead he said, “My mommy blogs said I should.”

“I want tacos for breakfast.”

“Ask it like a question.”

“Can I have tacos for breakfast?”

*

Dennis realized almost immediately he should have set a spending limit. First thing after taco breakfast (with a side of gummy worms), Simon asked if they could go to Disney World. Numbers started spinning in Dennis’ head. Florida was on the opposite coast. Plane tickets, admission fees, a hotel room, his wife’s ire — the costs were too high.

And anyway, it was a logistical impossibility. They’d never make it there before closing time, not with the time difference. Dennis explained this to Simon. “You don’t really want to spend your whole yes day cramped on a plane, do you? And then not even get there in time?”

“We could ride the plane today, and go to Disney tomorrow.”

“But tomorrow’s not yes day, remember?”

Simon frowned. “You’re saying no.”

Dennis put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Listen,” he said, “I’d say yes if I could, but I can’t. You can ask me if you can flap your arms fast enough to fly, and I have to say no. But it’s not because you don’t have my permission. Sometimes, Simon, the world says no.”

There. Fatherly wisdom. This was working already.

Simon shoveled a handful of gummy worms and loose taco meat into his mouth and crossed his arms, chewing thoughtfully.

“I want to stay home from school.”

Dennis felt relief spread up from his toes, like stepping into a warm bath. He’d seen that one coming, skipping school was a given. “Ask it like a question,” Dennis said.

*

By mid-afternoon, Dennis was thoroughly disappointed. “Anything,” he kept telling Simon. “Anything at all, anything possible.” But all the things Simon asked for were food-related. Can I eat ice cream and watch cartoons? Can I have another soda? Can I eat doughnuts for lunch?

Dennis sat beside him with a pile of bills that needed to be paid. He went through and verified the amounts, made sure there were no price increases or overage fees. The cartoons droned on in the background. He felt the day slipping away. He’d hoped this would be a day Simon might remember forever, like a fairy tale but better, Simon the king of all things household, and his father to thank.

He looked over at his son, wet pupils pinned to the TV screen.

“Simon,” he said, “It’s almost two. Isn’t there anything else you’d rather do?”

“Like what?”

Dennis shook his head. He looked down at the bills scattered across his lap. “You don’t know how special a day like this is. These days don’t come much once you get older. A day where you get everything you want.”

“I want to watch cartoons,” Simon said.

“I just think you should think about all the possibilities.”

“Can you be quiet?” Simon said.

*

After nearly an hour of silence — an hour Dennis watched his son spend wandering from one end of the house to the other, going out to the yard to poke the ground with a yardstick, practicing finger paints on the bill stubs Dennis had left on the kitchen table, gnawing on the eraser end of every pencil in the house one by one, staring under the fridge for a long while after he thought he saw a spider crawl under, then eventually deciding it was a food crumb or piece of leaf caught in some draft of air from the vent — Simon finally spoke. “What’s for dinner?” he asked.

Dennis made the universal choking sign, because didn’t know how to communicate he wasn’t able to speak. He figured that was close enough.

“You can talk now,” Simon said. Then, remembering: “Can you talk now?”

Dennis said dinner was whatever Simon wanted, and Simon just shrugged. Dennis looked at his watch. Two fifty-four. Three and a half hours until his wife got home, nearly nine until bedtime.

Soon his son was on the floor, cross-legged, yawning. “What do you want to do?” Simon asked.

Dennis laughed dejectedly. He rubbed his eyes and said, “I don’t know. This isn’t supposed to be so hard. I want to go outside, I guess. I want to go to the movies. I want to remember the last time your mother asked me that, and I want to be the type of person who’ll eat gummy-worm tacos with his son instead of being too embarrassed.”

Simon shook his head. “They weren’t gummy-worm tacos,” he said. But he stood up and stretched, looking mildly interested.

“Ask it like a question,” he said.

Dennis smiled. “Okay. Can we go outside?”

*

Out on the front porch there was sun on Dennis’ face, and it felt good. He should have been used to sun on his face, he was always taking Simon somewhere and it was always sunny, but this sun felt extra good. He took his shoes and socks off and walked onto the lawn. He squeezed his toes like a fist.

“What now?” Simon said.

But Dennis was at a loss. It was hard to remember what to ask for, when life said no so often. He found himself wondering what his wife would do. What her yes day would be, and would he be in it. He suspected he would, but maybe, like him, she wouldn’t know what to ask for either.

“Can we go to the movies?” Dennis said. “No, wait, can we watch a movie? No, wait —”

*

When his wife got home, the house was not in rubble, but it was somewhat altered. She first noticed it when she opened the garage, which was now littered with Christmas decorations, though it was the middle of August. A tree in the center prevented her from pulling all the way in. There was tinsel strewn about, and instead of a star on top was an upside-down plastic jack-o’-lantern bucket designed for holding Halloween candy. There were boxes under the tree, but they looked like things from their attic — boxes of old clothes, photo frames, one of the exercise machines they’d bought and never used. Were these meant to be presents?

Inside, Simon was watching cartoons. Candy wrappers littered the floor around him. The white walls were covered with tic-tac-toe boards, mostly cats’ games, drawn in permanent pen. There were also toys on the ground, but they predated Simon — things from his father’s childhood, old Power Ranger toys, a Stretch Armstong that appeared to be bleeding some dark liquid from a punctured arm.

“Where’s your father?” she said.

Simon shrugged. “He kept asking questions, and I kept saying yes.”

She found him in the bedroom, in her pink bathrobe, eating ice cream in front of the TV. She hovered in the doorway. She had been ready to yell, but he looked too downtrodden. There was a grayness to his face that seemed to stretch beyond the stubble of his 6 o’ clock shadow, pooling in the space around his eyes.

“I ran out of things to ask for,” he said, without looking up at her. “Now I’m eating ice cream.”

“You wrecked the walls,” she said.

“I’ll put a fresh coat of paint on tomorrow. We’ve got extra white in the garage.”

She nodded warily. “What’s with the decorations?”

“I was trying to invent a new holiday. I’m still hammering out the details.”

She sat down beside him and took the spoon. She scooped some ice cream into her mouth and tried to taste everything that was there. It made her think of their first date, when they ate orange sherbet for dessert at a French restaurant. She didn’t like sherbet but had been afraid to say. Now, she wanted to think, she would have said.

“You can find a new job,” she suggested. “Do you want to find a new job?”

Dennis shrugged sullenly. When they went to collect Simon, he was curled up, asleep on a chair. Dennis shook the boy awake, and hated himself for the pleasure he took in disrupting the silent contentment that had been on the boy’s face a moment before.

Pearl Harbor Remembered: I Fly for Vengeance

Excerpted from a serialized article originally published October 10–24, 1942

This feature is included in Pearl Harbor: 75th Anniversary Special, a print publication highlighting articles, picture galleries, and editorials that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post before, during, and after December 7, 1941. This special edition is available for sale a shoptthepost.com

You would damn well remember Pearl Harbor if you had seen the great naval base ablaze as we of Scouting Squadron 6 saw it from the air, skimming in ahead of our homeward-bound carrier. The shock was especially heavy for us because this was our first knowledge that the Japs had attacked on that morning of December 7. We came upon it stone cold, each of us looking forward to a long leave that was due him.

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Sitting Ducks: Left to right, USS West Virginia, severely damaged; USS Tennessee, damaged; and USS Arizona, sunk.

It wasn’t that we pilots didn’t sense the tension that gripped the Pacific. You could feel it everywhere, all the time. Certainly the mission from which we were returning had the flavor of impending action. We had been delivering a batch of 12 Grumman Wildcats of Marine Fighting Squadron 211 to Wake Island, where they were badly needed. On this cruise, we had sailed from Pearl Harbor on November 28 under absolute war orders. Vice Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., the commander of the Aircraft Battle Force, had given instructions that the secrecy of our mission was to be protected at all costs. We were to shoot down anything we saw in the sky and bomb anything we saw on the sea. In that way, there could be no leak to the Japs.

There was no trouble at all, and we headed back from the Wake errand with a feeling of anticlimax — all of us, that is, except one young ensign. The Wildcats had taken off for Wake at a point about 200 miles at sea, escorted by six scout dive bombers, and this ensign was in the escort. The mist was heavy, and once, looking down through it, he saw three ghostlike shapes that resembled ships. Immediately the scouting line closed in for a search, but found nothing. However, the ensign, rightly or wrongly, was convinced to the end of his life — not many days away — that what he had seen was Japanese warships. If he did, and if mist hadn’t hampered the search, the course of history might have been changed. As we steamed back toward Pearl Harbor, the rest of us gradually came to look upon the incident as just another scare.

Bad weather delayed us and we were getting home on Sunday instead of on Saturday, as planned. While the engines were being warmed up on the flight deck early on Sunday morning, my rear-seat gunner and radioman, W.C. Miller, a lad of 21 or 22, had a word for me as he stood on the wing and helped adjust my radio cord. He said that his four-year tour of duty was to end in a few days and that there was “something funny” about it.

“Mr. Dickinson,” he went on, “out of 21 of us fellows that went through radio school together, I’m the only one that hasn’t crashed in the water. Hope you won’t get me wet today, sir.”

“Miller,” I replied, “next Saturday we all go home for five months, so probably this will be our last flight together. Just stick with me, and the first thing you know we’ll be on the Ford Island runway. That’s all we’ve got to get by — this morning’s flight.”

Miller and I were both North Carolinians and had been flying together since I joined the squadron in April 1941. He was dependable and cool, the kind of man I like to have at my back when I’m in the air.

He climbed into the rear cockpit, faced the tail in his regular position, and the squadron was off; 18 planes flying in nine 2-plane sections; 72 eyes to scrutinize a 100-mile-wide corridor of ocean through which our carrier and its accompanying destroyers could follow safely. It was 6:30 a.m. When the squadron reached 1,000 feet, the prows of the vessels seemed to be making chalk-white V’s on slate. As we took off, the task force was 210 miles off Barber’s Point, which is at the southwest tip of the island of Oahu. Barber’s Point is about 10 miles west of Pearl Harbor.

Flying Straight into History

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American Hero: From the air, flight officer Dickinson saw Pearl Harbor ablaze and attempted to engage the enemy.

Several times on the way in I had Miller take a bearing with his direction finder on a Honolulu radio station, to be sure we were on the prescribed course. The last time he did it, it was about five minutes past eight and we were 25 miles or so off Barber’s Point. It seems amazing now, but they were still broadcasting Hawaiian music from Honolulu.

I noticed a big smoke cloud near my goal, then saw that it was two distinct columns of smoke swelling into enormous cloud shapes. But I paid little attention. Smoke clouds are familiar parts of the Hawaiian landscape around that season, when they burn over vast fields after harvest.

Four ships lay at the entrance to Pearl Harbor, one cruiser and three destroyers. I could tell they were ours by their silhouettes. Ahead, well off to my right, I saw something unusual — a rain of big shell splashes in the water, recklessly close to shore. It couldn’t be target practice. This was Sunday, and anyway the design they made was a ragged one. I guessed some coast-artillery batteries had gone stark mad and were shooting wildly.

I remarked to Miller, through my microphone, “Just wait! Tomorrow the Army will certainly catch hell for that.”

When we were scarcely three minutes from land I noticed something that gave a significant and terrible pattern to everything I had been seeing. The base of the biggest smoke cloud was in Pearl Harbor itself. I looked up higher and saw black balls of smoke, thousands and thousands of them, changing into ragged fleecy shapes. This was the explanation of the splashing in the water. Those smoke balls were antiaircraft bursts. Now there could be no mistake. Pearl Harbor was under air attack.

I told Miller and gave him the order, “Stand by.” Ensign McCarthy’s plane was 300 or 400 yards to my right. As Mac closed in, I was charging my fixed guns. I gestured, and he charged his. Mac signified, by pointing above and below, that he understood the situation.

When we were probably three miles from land, we saw a four-engined patrol bomber that we knew was not an American type. It was a good 10 or 12 miles away. Mac and I started for him as fast as we could go, climbing. We were at 1,500 feet, he was at about 6,000 feet. He ducked into the smoke cloud which loomed like a greasy battlement.

We darted in after him and found ourselves in such blackness we couldn’t see a thing. Not even then were we aware that the source of the smoke in which we hunted was the battleship Arizona.

Mac and I came out and headed back for Barber’s Point for another look. In a few minutes we were over it at 4,000 feet, flying wing to wing. A glance to the right at McCarthy’s plane was almost like seeing Miller and myself in a mirror — there they were, in yellow rubber life jackets and parachute harnesses, and almost faceless behind black goggles and radio gear fixed on white helmets. Mac’s gunner, like mine, was on his seat in his cockpit, alert to swing his twin machine guns on the ring of steel track that encircled him.

Things began happening in split-second sequences. Two fighters popped out of the smoke cloud in a dive and made a run on us. Mac dipped his plane under me to get on my left side, so as to give his gunner an easier shot. But the bullets they were shooting at me were passing beneath my plane. Unlucky Mac ran right into them. I put my plane into a left-hand turn to give my gunner a better shot, and saw Mac’s plane below, smoking and losing altitude. Then it burst into yellow flame. The fighter who had got Mac zipped past me to the left, and I rolled to get a shot at him with my fixed guns. As he pulled up in front of me and to the left, I saw painted on his fuselage a telltale insigne, a disk suggesting, with its white background, a big fried egg with a red yolk. For the first time I confirmed what my common sense had told me; these were Jap fighters, Zeros.

I missed him, I’m afraid.

Heroic rescue: Sailors in a motor launch pluck a survivor from the water alongside the burning USS West Virginia during the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor.
Heroic rescue: Sailors in a motor launch pluck a survivor from the water alongside the burning USS West Virginia during the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor.

A Casualty of the Zeros

Those Zeros had so much more speed than I did that they could afford to go rapidly out of range before turning to swoop back after McCarthy. Four or five more Zeros dived out of the smoke cloud and sat on my tail. Miller was firing away and was giving me a running report on what was happening behind me.

It was possibly half a minute after I had seen the Jap insigne for the first time that Miller, in a calm voice, said, “Mr. Dickinson, I have been hit once, but I think I have got one of them.”

He had, all right. I looked back and saw with immense satisfaction that one of the Zeros was falling in flames. In that interval, watching the Jap go down, I saw McCarthy’s flaming plane again, making a slow turn to the right. Then I saw a parachute open just above the ground. I found out later it was Mac’s. As he jumped he was thrown against the tail surface of his plane and his leg was broken. But he landed safely.

Jap fighters were behind us again. There were five, I should say, the nearest less than 100 feet away. They were putting bullets into the tail of my plane, but I was causing them to miss a lot by making hard turns. They were having a field day — no formation whatever, all of them in a scramble to get me, each one wildly eager for the credit.

One or more of them got on the target with cannon. They were using explosive and incendiary bullets that clattered on my metal wing like hail on a tin roof. I was fascinated by a line of big holes creeping across my wing, closer and closer. A tongue of yellow flame spurted from the gasoline tank in my left wing and began spreading.

“Are you all right, Miller?” I yelled.

“Mr. Dickinson, I’ve expended all six cans of ammunition,” he replied.

Then he screamed. It was as if he opened his lungs wide and just let go. I have never heard any comparable human sound. It was a shriek of agony. When I called again, there was no reply. I’m sure poor Miller was already dead. I was alone and in a sweet fix. I had to go from a left-hand into a right-hand turn because the fast Japanese fighters had pulled up ahead of me on the left. I was still surprised at the amazing maneuverability of those Zeros. I kicked my right rudder and tried to put my right wing down, but the plane did not respond. The controls had been shot away. With the left wing down and the right rudder on and only eight or nine hundred feet altitude, I went into a spin.

I yelled again for Miller on the long chance that he was still alive. Still no reply. Then I started to get out. It was my first jump, but I found myself behaving as if I were using a check-off list. I was automatically responding to training. I remember that I started to unbutton my radio cord with my right hand and unbuckle my belt with my left. But I couldn’t unfasten my radio cord with one hand. So, using both hands, I broke it. Then I unbuckled my belt, pulled my feet underneath me, put my hands on the sides of the cockpit, leaned out on the right-hand side, and shoved clear. The rush of wind was peeling my goggles off.

I had shoved out on the right side, because that was the inside of the spin. Then I was tumbling over in the air, grabbing and feeling for the rip cord’s handle. Pulling it, I flung my arm wide.

There was a savage jerk. From where I dangled, my eyes followed the shroud lines up to what I felt was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen — the stiff-bellied shape of my white silk parachute. I heard a tremendous thud. My plane had struck the ground nose first, exploding. Then I struck the ground; feet first, seat next, head last. My feet were in the air and the wind had been jarred out of me. Fortunately, I had jumped so low that neither the Japs overhead nor the Marines defending Ewa Field had time to get a shot at me.

I had come to earth on the freshly graded dirt of a new road, a narrow aisle through the brush to the west of Ewa Field, and had had the luck to hit the only road bisecting that brush area for five miles. Except for a thorn in my scalp, my only injury was a slight nick on the anklebone, where machine-gun bullets had made horizontal cuts in my sock.

My main worry was to get out of the parachute tangle and on to Pearl Harbor to stand by for orders. Afterward, I walked and ran for about a quarter of a mile to the main road, bordered by cane fields. I knew this was the way to Pearl Harbor. There were curious tremors underfoot. Those were the bombs. It seemed, too, as if many carpets were being beaten. That was machine-gun fire. Heavier overtones came from ­antiaircraft batteries not far off. I could orient myself by the smoke obscuring much of the sky. The nearer and smaller column tapered to earth nearby. So I knew that there on my right hand, possibly two miles away, was Ewa Field, the Marine air base. But five miles ahead, everything was blackly curtained by smoke.

The first automobile that came along, a blue sedan about two years old, was headed my way. I stepped out and signaled by waving my white helmet. The car rolled to a stop where I stood. A nice-looking gray-haired man was driving. The woman beside him, wearing a blue-and-white polka-dot dress, was stout, cheerful, and comfortable looking. They smiled cordially.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, “but I must have a lift to Pearl Harbor. I’ve just been shot down.”

The man accepted the urgency in my voice without, I think, really grasping the significance of what I had said. He reached behind him and opened a door. I got into a backseat crowded with picnic things — a wicker basket brim-full of wax-paper packages; a vacuum bottle, and a brown paper bag of bananas. On the floor was a bottle wrapped in a clean dish towel. The woman half turned her head and said that it was too bad they wouldn’t have time to take me to my destination, because they were going on a picnic.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, “but you have got to take me to Pearl Harbor.”

“But our friends are waiting for us. We are bringing the potato salad and they have the chicken.”

Japanese planes droned overhead. Taking a hand myself, I told her to look.

“Japanese planes? Those?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Suddenly she became tender and solicitous. Had I really been shot down? Was I hurt? Would I like something to eat? I told her I was thirsty. That was true enough. My mouth was so dry it was an effort for me to speak. But all they had was a bottle of whisky — it was what was wrapped in that dish towel. I didn’t take any because I figured I would have to fly again that day. By this time we were approaching a few houses and a general store in the cane fields. As far as I was concerned, the war was going to have to wait until I had a Coke.

As we started off again, Jap planes were strafing the road with machine guns and cannon. Through the rear window I could see a low-flying Jap, his guns winking like malefic jewels. He missed us, but hit a sedan 50 feet in front of us, in which another couple were riding. Riddled with tiny holes and jagged cannon slashes, the sedan careened, turned over, and landed in a ditch in a cloud of yellow dust. As we sped on, we saw other bullet-torn automobiles that had either rolled or been pushed into ditches and fields along the way.

We got to Pearl Harbor just in time to see the big dive-bombing attack that was going on about 9:00 in the morning.

It was just 55 minutes since Miller had taken that final bearing by tuning in on the Honolulu radio station. The leaning column of smoke I had seen then was now close enough for us really to see its source.

There was so much smoke the sun was obscured and lemon-yellow gun flashes pierced the somber backdrop. Except for the fiercely burning Arizona, all the ships were letting go with everything they had — battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and little boats. The whole system of shore defenses was in action. From Fort Weaver, clear on the other side — where this couple with me had planned to spend a lazy day — the Army had angry guns shooting at the darkened sky. But where were all our planes, Navy and Army?

When we reached the southeast segment of the harbor, at the entrance of Hickam Field, I left the blue sedan and that admirable couple. I hope I thanked them adequately in my hurry. All over Hickam Field there were fires — answers to the questions in my mind about our planes. Rows of planes were blazing on the field. So were hangars, barracks, and other buildings. Guns were rattling and pounding around the field. Men were fighting fires.

Hitchhiking to War

I got another hop in a station wagon from a Filipino clad in sailor whites. Apparently he was a steward for some captain and had been sent ashore the day before to do some marketing. The floor of the station wagon was loaded with vegetables, and piled on top of them were about as many men as could squeeze in. All of us jumped out at Hospital Landing, except the driver, and joined a throng of a hundred or so soldiers, sailors, Marines, and civilian employees on the channel edge. What we saw then was so overwhelming that I felt as if something had me by the throat.

Thirty yards out in the channel, and seeming to tower over us, moved the vast gray bulk of an old-type battleship. She was traveling slowly, and on her deck, stretcher bearers were rushing to carry away the wounded, while steel was roaring skyward from her 5-inch antiaircraft weapons, her lesser cannon, and machine guns. Beyond her, at the far end of Battleship Row, lay the Arizona, the blackest sort of smoke belching from her broken, twisted wreckage amidships and forming fantastic, ominous shapes in the sky. One fighting top and tripod mast canted out of this incredible shambles. On all the ships in that double two-mile lane, guns were blasting at the planes. Yet all the terrific power of the biggest guns on those battleships was ineffective now. They were made to fight monsters like themselves, not a swarm of gadflies.

The ship near us was trying to get out to sea, and the Japs were trying to sink her in the channel, where her 29,000 tons of steel hull, machinery, and guns would choke Pearl Harbor and bottle up the fleet. There was a tremendous ear-splitting explosion. A bomb had struck on her deck close to one of her antiaircraft guns. Thirteen hundred men, I guess, were aboard the ship. Some were killed, more were hurt, but only one antiaircraft gun stopped firing. Everywhere I could see, the crew was well under control. For the first time in my life I was seeing a naval vessel in action, and I was just watching in that helplessness in which you find yourself caught sometimes in dreams. But this was real enough, and what was striking at the battleship was a newer weapon, my kind of weapon. Dive bombers.

All the time I was watching the attack I was trying to evaluate the ability of the Japanese as dive bombers. They had concentrated at least the equivalent of one of our own dive bomber squadrons in an effort to knock out the ship. Eighteen, possibly 20, planes took part, going at it one by one. They were so eager that bombs fell first on one side of the old battle wagon and then on the other. We on the landing had to throw ourselves flat before each explosion because the concussion was terrific. If caught standing, you would be knocked flat. Lying down on the concrete or on rocky earth, I had a frantic impulse to claw myself into the ground.

Dodging Death

The battleship got clear of the channel all right, and grounded on a point of land opposite the hospital. Just at that time I had turned about to watch the bombing attack on the destroyer Shaw, which was going on behind us. As I watched, a bomb tipped her bow, and after the explosion, fire broke out.

Just then a motor launch picked us all up and shuttled us across to Ford Island. A lot of damage had been done there. Three or four squadrons of PBYs, which are big patrol planes sometimes called Catalinas, had been massed on the point of the island. Only charred remains were left. I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. Hangars were afire, and their glass-wall fronts were black with holes. In front of the nearest hangar was the appalling wreckage of those Catalinas. There was nothing shipshape anywhere in sight. As we watched from the concrete ramp, there was a great flare across the channel, and a tremendous blast. The destroyer Shaw had blown up. Fire had reached her magazine. I saw a big ball of red fire erupt from her. It shot up like a rocket to about 400 or 500 feet. Spellbound, I saw it burst open from the middle. It was like a rotten orange exploding. The concussion knocked me on my face.

Someone yelled, “Here comes a Jap plane!” We swarmed into the undamaged hangar. Not one but a number of planes roared across Ford Island with their guns going. I was behind a steel column in that hangar.

In a few minutes I was on my way again, to the other side of the air field, where the carrier planes are based. The island is a little more than a mile long, and in places about three quarters of a mile wide. Right down its middle is a runway. Sprinting on that stretch of concrete, I saw that it was strewn with pieces of shrapnel, misshapen bullets from Jap machine guns, and empty cartridges that had fallen from their planes. I could guess, from the quantity of this stuff, that they had done a lot of systematic strafing here to keep our fliers on the ground. They love to strafe. It seems to be characteristic of them, a thing that has been noticed in many of the battle areas.

Marines at Ewa Field told me they saw a Jap gunner quit firing long enough to thumb his nose at them. Another Jap, while strafing the Marines, was moved to let go the handles of his gun, clasp his hands high above his head and shake them in that greeting with which American prize fighters salute their fans. Then he grabbed his guns and shot some more. This will help to explain why the United States Marines could hardly wait.

The Ties of Conflict

When I reached the other side of the air field, I could find only 3 of the 18 pilots with whom I had left the carrier about three hours before. Communications were pouring into the command center. I went to find out if the Japanese carriers had been located. My commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. H.L. Hopping, was there. He had been able to get in with just a couple of bullet holes in his plane. Others of our squadron trickled in until we had about half our planes and pilots on the ground.

We were all so glad to see one another alive that it was a deeply touching scene. With a whoop of delight, I saw Earl Gallaher walk into the command center to report for instructions. Lieutenant Gallaher was the executive officer of Scouting Squadron 6. As flight officer, I was third in the squadron — that is, next to Gallaher, who was second in command. We shook hands in an effusive greeting and then just stood there for a few seconds, grinning at each other. There wasn’t time to say much. We were expecting to be sent after those Jap carriers as soon as they were located. So we went back to see what planes we could find, and managed to get together nine planes that we could man. We had bombs put on them and the rear guns manned.

Those of Scouting Squadron 6 who were present and accounted for finally decided to get a little sleep. We had our orders — to be up and standing by at 4:00 the next morning. We went to sleep on cots. The next thing I knew, it was 4 a.m., and I was dressing in the dark.

We got orders to take off immediately and fly out to the carrier. We didn’t think much of that idea. We thought considerably less of it as somewhere a gunner began shooting red-hot pin points into the overcast sky. He was directing his tracer bullets at the only point of light he could see overhead. Then it seemed as if every gun within a 10-mile radius was being fired. That lasted about 10 minutes, until, one by one, they discovered they were shooting at a star.

Commander Hopping was impatient to take off. Happily for us, it was daybreak by the time we started down the runway, and men on the destroyers down that way could see who was aloft. After flying in absolute radio silence some 80 miles to a rendezvous at sea, we found our carrier. She was out there with the task force, of course, and she was flying the biggest American flag that I had ever seen on a ship. It was her battle flag, flown only in battle. Seeing her out of sight of land, in fighting trim, we were more than ever grateful for the bad weather that had delayed our return from Wake.

Under normal conditions she would have been at her dock by 6:00 on Saturday night — and so would another carrier, the Lexington. On the maps of the harbor carried by the Japs, the data were so nearly up to the minute that the two carriers were shown where we ourselves had expected them to be — until that bad weather delayed us.

I have been attached to one ship or another for about a fourth of my life. Almost invariably, you develop a warm feeling for your ship, but for a carrier the feeling is deeper. When you fly as one of the air group of a carrier, no matter how confident you are of your ability as navigator, each time you actually find your carrier on an otherwise empty sea, your heart sings a little.

Everyone on the carrier was wild with curiosity, and the experiences of each of us were heard over and over, with flattering attention. We got a few scraps of information on what had happened to other ­members of our squadron. One had jumped a Jap fighter about the same time I was shot down and in the same area, near Barber’s Point. The Marines at Ewa Field had witnessed the action. Apparently, our man was doing a fine job and was getting the best of the Jap — a real test of his skill, because our scout bombers weren’t designed to outmaneuver fighters. He was so intent on keeping his fixed guns pouring bullets into the rear of his adversary that when the Jap pulled up the nose of his plane — possibly there was a dead pilot at the stick — and it lost forward speed, our man’s plane collided with it. Pilot and rear-seat man both jumped. But there wasn’t sufficient altitude, and their parachutes failed to open in time.

As we listened to stories like this one, a pattern of understanding soon formed, and we realized that revenge was going to be our job. We would have to get those Jap carriers somehow, somewhere, someday, and not waste time and hurt our personal efficiency by brooding over the deaths of our friends.

By Tuesday morning, after the task force had dropped into Pearl Harbor for oil and provisions, the hunt started again. The task force was in charge of Vice Admiral Halsey, who believes in action, and we knew we would do some real punching. We didn’t catch the carriers on this jaunt, but the area was infested with long-range Jap submarines and we potted plenty of them.

The Wednesday-morning scouting flight turned up several subs, and we were sent out to get them. I took off after one of them around noon, when our carrier was 200 miles north of Pearl Harbor. As my rear-seat man, I took along a lad named Merritt, who was about 21 years old. He turned out to be an extremely reliable radioman and gunner.

The sub had been 75 miles to the south when seen at 6 a.m., and naturally had had time to move elsewhere in the interim. I flew a big rectangle over the probable area. After about an hour I spotted her, lying on the surface, about 15 to 18 miles distant.

I headed for her, meanwhile radioing the carrier: “This is Sail Four. Have sighted submarine. Am attacking.”

I was about 800 feet off the water, and to make a good dive-bombing attack I would have to start from 5,000 to 6,000 feet, at least. So I began climbing, too, desperately hoping the sub wouldn’t submerge before I could unload. She didn’t, and as soon as I was within range, her deck guns began throwing shells at me.

“Is the bomb armed, Mr. Dickinson?” Merritt kept asking me. He was referring to the removal of the arming wires, which prepare the bomb to explode on contact. It is the pilot’s job to do this and the gunner’s job to remind him, lest the bomb fall a dud. This kid Merritt was getting his first chance for revenge and he was determined not to have a failure on his hands.

“Look here,” I finally said. “The bomb is armed. For God’s sake, relax. Maybe we can get this sub. Take my word for it, the bomb is armed.” At the same time, the carrier was calling me for a progress report. I replied that I would call in after dropping my bomb.

The Jap’s two deck guns fired at least 25 antiaircraft shells at me. I had had him in sight for almost eight minutes. Yet he had made no attempt to submerge. All he was doing was turning to the right a few degrees. Obviously, there was something wrong with him. Probably he was unable to submerge.

Now the Japs were firing a couple of machine guns too. The explosions from the antiaircraft guns occasionally washed a slight tremor into the plane.

I was getting nicely set when my gunner spoke again, “Is the bomb armed, Mr. Dickinson?” I dived.

All the way down I could see those heathens still shooting. When I was about 30 stories higher than the Empire State Building, I yanked the bomb-release handle. By the time I was able to pull out of the dive and turn so as to get my plane’s tail out of my line of vision, it was probably 15 seconds after the bomb struck. It dropped right beside the submarine, amidships. In about three quarters of a minute after my bomb struck, the sub had gone under.

Right after she disappeared, from her amidships, as near as I could tell, there was an eruption of oil and foamy water, like the bursting of a big bubble. Seconds later there was a second disturbance. Another bubblelike eruption of foam and oil churned to the whitecapped surface of the sea.

This time I saw some debris. I reported to the carrier what I had done and what I had seen. But I was careful to say that “possibly” the submarine had been sunk. You simply can’t be sure on such evidence.

“Looks like we got him, Mr. Dickinson,” chirped Merritt.

“Yes, I think we did.”

“That’s certainly pretty nice, huh?”

I said it sure was.

Attack on Kwajalein Atoll

We had one fairly uneventful cruise of 10 days, and then our carrier went out from Pearl Harbor again as part of a convoy escort. The convoy was carrying reinforcements to our garrison on a South Sea island base, which protected our supply line to Australia and had to be strong enough to withstand whatever the Japs might send from their islands. Except for those reinforcements, the Pacific route to Australia might have been cut, and men and supplies for any offensive would have to be brought clear around Africa.

We stood guard in the open sea while the reinforcements were being discharged, then departed. We got orders to be ready for action. Our task force had a real job to do.

On a day around the end of January, we altered our course and turned west toward the Marshall Islands, primed for an all-day attack. The Japs had called at Pearl Harbor on a Sunday eight weeks before. This was our first chance to return the call.

We got up early — about 3:00 in the morning. The anticipation of battle was a noticeable thing in the wardroom, something you could detect almost as plainly as you could smell the fragrance of the coffee, toast, and bacon. This middle-of-the-night breakfast was the climax of four or five days of tension, of worrying. Each man was challenging his own soul to tell him how he would measure up in battle. No man ever lived who got the answer in advance.

I was feeling a trifle smug because twice before I had been under fire. All of us who had been up at Pearl Harbor were exchanging glances; we were regarding one another with a certain comfort. We were, we felt, veterans.

I had put the first piece of fried egg in my mouth when I made a peculiar discovery: I couldn’t swallow. That piece of egg seemed to swell and turn into something the size of a tennis ball. I crammed my mouth with dry toast and washed it down with water. After puttering a bit with my knife and fork, I decided to call that piece of toast my breakfast and went to the ready room of Scouting Squadron 6.

We pilots took our places in 21 chairs arranged in seven rows of three. Time spent in the ready room is as much of a strain as flying. But after every scrap of data was down and digested, the seconds began to drag and minutes were like hours. Actually, of course, we hadn’t been there long. It still was night when finally we heard the telephone, and the talker relayed the order we’d been waiting for: “Pilots, man your planes!”

Scouting 6 had something like 175 miles to go to reach its objective, Roi Island, which is a part of Kwajalein Atoll. The scouts were going to attack; the bombers were coming along in reserve and to see how we made out. Then they were to seek an objective. Whoever came back from this raid, we knew, would be able to draw a better map of Kwajalein Atoll than the one we carried with us. Well, we would bomb whatever we could see.

After 30 or 40 miles, below we could see many islands. These were low-­lying, circular reefs, and down there, 10,000 feet below, were many Japs, and we hoped the Japs were sleeping.

We had been told to make a glide bombing attack. In a dive attack you swoop down at the target at an angle of 65 to 75 degrees, but in a glide attack, you approach at an angle of no more than 55 degrees. Our skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Hopping, had labored mightily to get us ready for this morning’s work. Hopping was a brilliant tactician. He taught us a lot, and our squadron went into the war much better off for having been his. A graduate of the Naval Academy, class of ’24, he was a tall man — 6 foot 1 — and strong, and strong in his opinions too. But he was extremely hard to “fly on.” Men don’t fly with equal skill any more than they play tennis with equal skill. We were always a little leery when flying on Hopping, but we were devoted to him, and therefore afraid that he would get himself into a situation out of which he couldn’t fly.

We had climbed to 15,000 or 16,000 by the time we reached Roi Island. After about 15 minutes, far off to my right I saw my skipper starting to coast, taking the first division in. I saw their bombs exploding on the ground, saw fires erupt down there, and knew the skipper’s division was strafing hangars and field. But what I did not learn until later was that a Jap fighter was taking off from the airfield as our skipper was coming down at the head of his division.

Earl Gallaher, leading the second division, saw it happen. Seemingly, Hopping had pushed over too early. You really ought to have that angle of about 55 degrees as you come down on the target to give you the speed you need. And you do need it. A shallow angle won’t give you that extra push. We know that well now. As the skipper reached a low altitude he was still some distance from the island.

Instead of going in at 300 knots, or, better still, 350, he was doing no more than he could get with his engine, which was scarcely half what he needed. Passing over the island he was a low, clear target, and they concentrated on him. A Jap fighter, just getting airborne, came up on his tail. The skipper’s plane struck the water and went right under. Gallaher, diving, saw the whole thing plainly.

I took the third division in on the left of Gallaher’s. We made practically a simultaneous attack. I think our 12 planes arrived at the end of our glide with considerably more speed than those first six planes had had. Going in, I saw the angry flashing of the antiaircraft guns throwing stuff at us. But it is surprising how quickly you come to a state of mind which almost disregards AA fire. It doesn’t bother a pilot much more than lightning. It isn’t especially effective — yet — but more important to your self-control, as your enemy trains his big guns on you, is your utter absorption in the job you are doing. A man who has precious bombs to drop hasn’t time to be scared.

I had three, but I was saving my 500-pounder for dessert. What I released as I flew toward a bunch of buildings on the airfield were my two 100-pounders. After pulling out, I kicked my tail around, the better to see what damage I had wrought. My two bombs hit a building or a house.

My wing man, Lt. Norman West, who was flying just back of me, had startling luck. His load struck right next to the building I hit, but he got the jackpot. It must have been a storehouse for ammunition, probably TNT. It went up with a tremendous bang and a gigantic flare. An enormous smoke cloud came swelling after us. When that smoke thinned, there were no buildings left there. They had been leveled. That was quite gratifying.

Crossing the island, we scattered. I found myself well off the island, about 1,500 feet above the sea, completely entranced with one of the most glorious fireworks shows I had ever seen. The moon was gone and the first glowing hint of morning was in the east. All over the island there was an extravagant flowering of flame. Great white-and-pinkish-streaked fire shapes bloomed profusely, each for just an instant, as plane after plane went in and unloaded. The explosions were fiercely jagged, intensely bright. The Japs down below were getting more than a taste of Pearl Harbor.

I must have been a mile off the island, above the sea, just drunk with the fantastic beauty of this extraordinary dawn before I suddenly realized that for any antiaircraft gunner on the ground or any Jap fighter in the air I was just a cold turkey. Several thousand feet up I saw a couple of our planes. I pulled up the nose of my plane, shoved the throttle all the way forward, and went away from there, sensible again. As I breezed up alongside my friends and they fell in on either side of me, we all felt better.

We three had come together for mutual protection just in time. On my left-hand side, two Jap fighters — the first I had seen — were coming in to make an attack on us. They took turns making runs, but always both from the left. Had they known a little more about their business we would have been finished, because for some reason our rear-seat men were having a bit of trouble with their guns just then.

I had time to wonder what species of shark would get me for his breakfast when our rear guns got going and started shooting dark red lines at the Japs. They turned tail and ran. Apparently these two had never affiliated themselves with any suicide squadron.

Watching them climb up and away, I gave a sigh of relief that practically blew the cockpit open. Then they really did astonish us. Out of range, the two of them started doing stunts. They looped together and followed with an elegant slow roll. This went on and on. They just sat up there, well out of battle, and did what we call “flat-hatting,” a term for all kinds of stupid, show-off flying. They had been sent to fight us, but they just kept on waltzing in the sky. I can’t guess what was in their minds, unless they had agreed they weren’t going to risk their necks excessively for dear old Nippon.

I had just rendezvoused with two others of my squadron when a report came over the radio giving information we had been yearning to hear.

“Targets suitable for heavy bombs. Targets suitable for heavy bombs at Kwajalein anchorage.”

I recognized the voice and was satisfied that this was no wild goose chase. The voice had come from somewhere in the sky above. It was that of Commander Young, our group leader. We three immediately headed south.

Kwajalein anchorage was 40 miles or so from where we were, and everybody wanted to get there first. Targets for heavy bombs were what we all had been hoping for, and when mention of a carrier was added to the good news, that was like offering fresh meat to dogs.

Because we had to climb, we could do scarcely more than 130 miles an hour. I was leading my three-plane section. The pilot on my right, a big fellow, kept shoving his shoulders and arms forward in a pantomimed plea to me for hurry. That was Dobby — Ensign Dobson.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Kleiss was the other pilot. He has had a nickname ever since a day when he landed at the Hawaiian Marine base, Ewa Field, before it was fully paved. Kleiss had turned his tail up into the wind and his propeller was blowing up a lot of dust, which hid the plane from the man in the control tower. So, when Kleiss called, requesting permission to take off, by radio the reply came back: “Unknown dust cloud. From Ewa Field tower. Permission granted.” So he had become Dusty.

In no more than seven or eight minutes, we could see a vast ruffle of beach sand embroidered with lacy surf and touched here and there with green. Inside this ruffle was the lagoon, Kwajalein anchorage. Moored there in five or six symmetrical rows, as if on a chart, were more than a score of ships.

I saw one new cruiser, a row or two of big auxiliaries, an old light cruiser, tankers, a seaplane tender, three or four submarines and other ships. As we flew over the reef toward all these fine targets, I saw on the beach below us two great four-engined flying boats. They were temptingly exposed to strafing, but we had no time for that. All the ships were shooting at us as the wide atoll beach passed astern of our three planes.

It was broad daylight then, nearly 20 minutes to eight. Far below on the wide lagoon, the big new cruiser was winking at us with many glittering eyes. Time and time again as her 8 or 10 bigger antiaircraft guns let go, she seemed to be an angry mass of living flame. All told, that one warship probably had 30 or 35 guns shooting at us.

We had gone far apart to make the attack. I was on the left, Dobby in the middle, and Dusty on the right as we put our noses down and went into steep dives.

I was sighting at the deck of a tanker, of 12,000 tons I’d say, when I saw that all the while she’d been masking a richer prize. It was a thundering big Jap liner. She was about 17,000 tons. Poised aft, high up on her stern, was a seaplane. I wanted this liner. I pulled my nose up to hedge-hop the tanker and aimed right for the plane on the liner’s deck; aimed well, too, because my 500-pound bomb struck the stern, and the blast of it wrapped her in flame.

As I pulled out of my dive at 600 feet, the Jap liner was well on fire. I saw Dusty’s bomb land right on the big new cruiser, and a lot of Japs aboard her stopped shooting. Dobby’s bomb struck a submarine tied alongside a bigger ship, the tender. The sub blew up and sank so fast that the tender listed from the pull of lines and gangways.

Because of my passionate interest in what was going on, any concern for myself was simply crowded out of consciousness. It was as if somebody else were flying and I were watching. My best subject at the academy had been naval battles; I had such an interest in old sea fights that I would sometimes argue in the classroom with instructors and get my ears knocked down for stubbornly coming back lugging 11 books to support a point. Right there at Kwajalein anchorage, below, above, and all around me was a sea fight, and it wasn’t in any book.

War from a Box Seat

I’ll admit that if I find myself alone in a dark, creaky old house, I can scare myself near to death. But neither at Pearl Harbor nor afterward in action was I really scared. There is worry underneath, of course, and the nervous strain of it finally tells in subtle ways.

But battle is grand excitement. It is excitement beside which any other kind I’ve ever known seems diluted and lacking in the real flavor. This was the essence.

I hung around watching the show until the antiaircraft shells burst too close, then got out of Kwajalein. I was about 40 miles out over the water when Dobby and Dusty caught up with me. The three of us headed back to the carrier.

I was standing on the deck as our carrier was warped in to Pearl Harbor. I heard her cheered as she came around the island. The commander in chief of the Pacific, Admiral Nimitz, had passed the word around about our raid on the Marshalls. Work would stop on any warship the carrier passed, and men would crowd to the rail, even on the half-submerged wreckage of the Arizona. In impudent Tokyo broadcasts, the Japs had been asking the world, “Where’s the American Navy?” Well, now they knew where a part of it had been.

That was why there was something special in the cheers our admiral got, and hearing them was something special for any Navy man. We could see the admiral’s head and shoulders as he walked back and forth on his bridge high in the superstructure. Several times he raised his hand to salute friends greeting him from the dock. Afterward, we heard the admiral had tears in his eyes. I shouldn’t wonder if he had.

Footnote: Lt. Dickinson engaged in numerous additional air battles, sank another Japanese ship, ditched a plane in the ocean after running out of fuel, and must be regarded, by any account, as one of the great heroes of the war. 

Art Gallery: Holiday Glamour

This holiday season, we bring you 33 portraits of women from the pages of the Post,from 1920s beauties to 1950s fashion plates, all wishing you season’s greetings and winter cheer!

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Christmas in Hiding
George Hughes
December 10, 1960

Sneaking away while the house is asleep, this couple stashes away their Christmas gifts.

 

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Couple Under Mistletoe
December 15, 1900

Lavish parties and formal garb say sophistication, but this couple whisks each other away to steal a kiss under the mistletoe.

 

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Woman lighting candles on Christmas tree
J.J. Gould & Guernsey Moore
December 6, 1902

The warm candlelight from the tree makes this Christmas beauty radiant.

 

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Hanging Holly
J.C. Leyendecker
December 21, 1918

They may be celebrating the holidays miles apart, he’s still the focal point of her celebration.

 

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Woman Gazing Up at Mistletoe
Harrison Fisher
December 12, 1908

This woman hopes for kisses from Christmases future.

 

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Christmas Shopper
Neysa McMein
December 13,1919

Arms overflowing with parcels and holly, she can’t remember if she bought the pipes for Grandpa Joe. 

 

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Holly Bouquet
Charles A. MacLellan
December 13, 1924

This merry maid has boughs of holly to spare.

 

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Lady Walking Dogs in Snow
William Haskell Coffin
December 11, 1926

Cheeks chilled to rosy red, there is no better way to enjoy the snow than a stroll with your two best friends. 

 

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Snowy Night
E.M. Jackson
January 5, 1929

This festive flapper is cozy indoors while the snow piles up outside.

 

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Snow Buffet Party
Thornton Utz
February 20, 1960

This hostess awaits her guests on a wintry evening.

 

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Romantic Skate
Manning de Villeneuve Lee
December 1, 1937

 

Late nights in the winter are perfect for ice-skating…and maybe something more.

 

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Hanging the Mistletoe
Harrison Fisher
December 14, 1912

This elegant lady puts the finishing touches on the mistletoe.

 

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Christmas 1902
Henry Hutt
December 20, 1902

There’s no better way to get into the holiday spirit than hanging garland with the one you love.

 

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A Wife for Christmas
Paul Nonnast
December 01, 1954 (Country Gentleman)

There is no time like the holidays for romance.

 

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Woman and Snowball
James Calvert Smith
January 17, 1925

This holiday lady is eyeing the next victim of a playful pelting.

 

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Woman at Fireplace
William Hurd Lawrence
December 22, 1906

For some, snuggling up next to hearth and enjoying the solitude is a far better way to spend the holidays.

 

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The Muses is My Racket
Al Parker
February 03, 1945

With a microphone and her sultry voice, she performs a stunning rendition of “Christmas Time.”

 

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Tumble from Sled
Dominice Cammerota
January 27, 1940

Who said kids get to have all the fun?

 

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The Lady’s Future
Ernest Chiriaka
February 06, 1954

She’s almost late to her own party!

 

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Hunting a Husband
Robert Meyers
April 20, 1957

Holiday romance takes the chill out of the coldest nights.

 

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I Love You, Mama Girl
Joe deMers
March 31, 1956

A quiet moment before the whirlwind.

 

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Clever Women are Dangerous Too
Joe deMers
August 05, 1950

She recounts her encounter with her admirer at the park.

 

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Girls Don’t Play Fair
R.G. Harris
May 12, 1951

When he asked his best friend to join him for dinner he never expected to be the third wheel on his own date.

 

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New Years, 1905
Henry Hutt
December 30, 1905

With fresh snow covering the ground, sleigh rides make the perfect escape from the festivities.

 

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Too Young for Trouble
Coby Whitmore
May 07, 1960

Poinsettia pinned and hair curled, this winter wonder catches the eye of all the guys.

 

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Lady Throwing Snowball
Sarah Stilwell-Weber
March 03, 1917

This winter-clad socialite prepares to thrash any who threaten her fashion.

 

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Crack the Whip
Emery Clarke
March 02, 1940

She sails with grace across the ice.

 

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The Golden Rose
Coby Whitmore
October 24, 1959

Out of all of the gifts she received, her favorite was the rose.

 

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The Lady had an Angle
Coby Whitmore
August 20, 1955

The best way to enjoy a fresh snowfall is with someone who can hold you close.

 

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F. Sands Brunner
December 01, 1938 (Country Gentleman)

Waiting for someone under the mistletoe.

 

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I Want a Man
Joe deMers
April 15, 1950

She coaxes him over for a midnight dance.

 

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Larcenous Lady
Bob Hilbert
February 21, 1953

The letter in her hand doesn’t stave off this mistletoe kiss.

 

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Mail Delivery by Sleigh
Alex Ross
January 29, 1944

This postwoman is delivering season’s greetings in spite of the snowfall.

The Young Mark Twain: Amusing Scoundrel, Storytelling Genius, or Both?

When writing under his pseudonym “Mark Twain,” Sam Clemens liked to present himself as an amusing scoundrel: self-centered, irreverent, often blasphemous, and thoroughly lazy.

Readers believed he was none of these things. The sheer volume of his literary output argued for his industry. And anyone who read his works knew the author was a broadminded humanitarian, earnestly concerned for the downtrodden of the world. True, he had a cynical streak and was blisteringly critical of religions, but no one doubted his devotion as a husband and father.

But that was the mature writer. As a young man, Clemens often showed traits that more closely resembled the comical Twain. According to the man with whom Clemens shared a cabin and silver mine, the 26-year-old Twain was indolent, irresponsible, and self-serving — but entertaining.

Michael J. Phillips’ Post article, “Mark Twain’s Partner,” which appeared in 1920, cites Calvin Higbie’s reminiscences of young Sam Clemens.

In 1861, Clemens unexpectedly showed up at Higbie’s cabin. He’d been sent by his older brother, Orion, to work a mine Orion and Higbie jointly owned.

To Higbie, Twain seemed brash, presumptuous, and lazy. He spent his days on the upper bunk bed — which had been Higbie’s before Twain appropriated it — telling one story after another. Higbie couldn’t stay irritated with the young man, though, because the stories were so entertaining. In fact, Higbie found he was spending so much time listening to Twain he wasn’t getting his own work done.

Twain wasn’t idle, however. In these days, he began writing pieces that were published in the Virginia City Enterprise. Some of them were recycled in the book Roughing It, Twain’s account of his life in the west.

He wrote how he and Higbie had made and lost a fortune when he failed to file a claim on a rich mine.

As Twain tells it, Higbie left him a note in their cabin directing him to file the claim, but Twain found it too late. Before he could reach the county office, others had claimed the mine.

Higbie’s version disagrees. He claims that Twain first agreed to file the claim, but then became distracted and simply forgot to complete the paperwork.

Who are we to believe?

We don’t know Higbie, but we know Twain and his genius for storytelling. Roughing It isn’t autobiographical, but rather a creative work that contains travel writing, anecdotes, and tall tales.

Both men claim Twain was responsible for losing the mine, but it didn’t appear to ruin their friendship. In the Post article, Higbie offered a good excuse for Twain not filing a deed for the mine. Twain, for his part, dedicated Roughing It to Higbie, “an honest man, a genial comrade, and a steadfast friend.”

2016-11-25-mark-twain-archive-page
Read the original story of Mark Twain’s partner, Calvin Higbie, in this September 11, 1920 issue of the Post.

Featured image: Library of Congress

Cartoons from the World War II Home Front

Life changed dramatically for civilians during WWII. The homefront was characterized by sacrifice of luxuries and enrollment in the various duties of the Civil Defense Corps. The World War II-era cartoons in this collection focus on the uncertainty and paranoia of civilians under threat of attack, all served with a dollop of black humor.

Cartoon

“Oh, come now. With all that’s happening these days you don’t think you could frighten me?”

 

March 7, 1942

 

 

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“I’m so glad Mr. Burley is a fatalist. We were one mask short.”

 

Fred Price; March 7, 1942

 

 

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“I think I’ll quit, boys — I find it impossible to concentrate on poker with the war going on.”

 

July 4, 1942

 

 

Cartoon

“Of course the Messerschmitt Me-109F has a high ceiling and speed, but don’t forget that our P-38 does 404 mph and climbs 35,000 feet, and also that our Turbo-supercharged B-17 carries 4 tons of bombs and outclimbs both the Me-110 and the Me-109F.”

 

Colin Allen; August 29, 1942

 

 

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Bill O’Malley; December 19, 1942

 

 

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“And, then, just to make absolutely sure, we always just sit in the dark.”

 

Gardner Rea; June 5, 1943

 

Cartoon

“What the heck did we do every evening before this war started?”

 

Dave Gerard; December 4, 1943

 

 

Top Holiday Reads 2016

Fiction

2016-nd-pg26-books-whistlerThe Whistler

by John Grisham

The no. 1 best-selling author takes his talents to Florida in this dark thriller about the pursuit of a corrupt judge that could turn deadly.
Doubleday

2016-nd-pg26-books-moonglowMoonglow

by Michael Chabon

Inspired by his grandfather’s death, Chabon journeys from a deathbed confession to the Jewish slums of prewar Philadelphia to WWII Germany to New Yorks’ Wallkill Prison and beyond.
Harper

2016-nd-pg26-books-terranautsThe Terranauts

by T.C. Boyle

A novel based on the failed Biosphere experiment of the 1990s, written by one of the most talented and interesting authors working today.
Ecco

2016-pg26-nd-books-faithfulFaithful

by Alice Hoffman

An accident leaves one young woman in a coma and another living with survivor’s guilt, as Hoffman weaves a tale about suffering, happiness, and finding one’s way in the world.
Simon & Schuster

2016-pg26-books-swingtimeSwing Time

by Zadie Smith

One of the most highly anticipated books of the season, spanning northwest London to West Africa, is a story of friendship, music, dance, and the stubbornness of roots.
Penguin Press

Nonfiction

2016-nd-pg26-books-just-getting-startedJust Getting Started

by Tony Bennett

Even at 90 years old, the crooner possesses the gratitude to pay homage to the many remarkable people he has learned from in life — people like Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, and Fred Astaire.
Harper

2016-nd-pg26-books-glassuniverseThe Glass Universe

by Dava Sobel

Subtitled “How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars,” this book uncovers the important scientific work performed by a group of remarkable women who were nearly forgotten.
Viking

2016-nd-26-books-twentysixTwenty-Six Seconds

by Alexandra Zapruder

The film lasts only 26 seconds, but when Abraham Zapruder captured JFK’s assassination, his key contribution to American culture also forever changed his family’s future.
Grand Central Publishing

2016-nd-26-books-thankyoulateThank You for Being Late

by Thomas L. Friedman

The best-selling author of The World Is Flat offers his optimistic advice for how we can live in a world where change is accelerating at a break-neck pace.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2016-nd-pg26-books_victoriaVictoria: The Queen

by Julia Baird

Drawing on previously unpublished papers, this biography separates Victoria the woman from Victoria the myth, offering a brilliant perspective of a queen who ruled during one of the most fascinating eras in history.
Random House

Gifty

2016-nd-pg26-books_rollingstonesThe Rolling Stones All the Songs

by Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon

More than 700 pages and 500 photographs chronicle the history of every song in the Rolling Stones’ catalogue.
Black Dog & Leventhal

2016-nd-pg26-books_artmovementThe Art of Movement

by Ken Browar and Deborah Ory

A lavish collection of photographs of more than 70 dancers from top dance companies; for lovers of dance, movement, grace, and the human form.
Black Dog & Leventhal

2016-nd-pg26-yearbetweenfriendsA Year Between Friends 3191 Miles Apart

by Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes

Over a full year, two friends from opposite coasts share their daily love of the handmade, well-lived domestic life.
Abrams

2016-nd-pg26-books_goodcooksWhat Good Cooks Know

by America’s Test Kitchen

Much more than just a book of recipes, this is the perfect gift for anyone who ever wished their kitchen came with an instruction manual.

2016-nd-pg26-books_versaceVersace

by Donatella Versace

A stunning visual history of the famous fashion house, celebrating the years since Donatella Versace took over as creative artistic director in 1997.
Rizzoli

Call of Beauty: Rationed Fashion on the Home Front

By the time Americans entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor, they had already been feeling the effects of shortages.

Gas was still available in the fall of 1941, but gas stations were reducing their hours of operation to help conserve energy.

New cars weren’t in short supply yet, but automakers were reducing their production of passenger cars to build more airplanes and tanks. Businesses were warning Americans to take better care of their cars because it might be a long time before they could be replaced.

Of all the industries affected by the war, though, none brought the effect of war closer to Americans than the glamour business.

As J. C. Furnas points out in his November 29, 1941, article, “Glamour Goes to War,” American women were coping with shortages of cosmetics and stockings well before 1941. Embargoes and blockades halted the export of essential perfume oils from France, Bulgaria, Tibet, and Zanzibar. Necessary ingredients for lipstick and hair dye were no longer available from warring nations. Chemical solvents in nail polish were being requisitioned for military purposes. Even the brass used for lipstick containers was in short supply.

Almost all available silk had been purchased by the Defense Department to make parachutes and tents. Nylon stockings should have been the economical alternative. They had been introduced in May 1940, and 64 million pairs had been sold within the first year. But the raw materials of nylon were being used in the war effort, and women who wanted to avoid a bare-legged look were painting seams up their calves.

When the military began buying up the market supply of textiles, the fashion industry responded to the shortages by using less fabric in dresses. Hemlines went up and unnecessary detailing was dropped.

When cosmetics began to disappear, there was no matching movement to cut back on lipstick and powder. European perfume ingredients were replaced with synthetics, and whale spermaceti used in lipstick was swapped for more domestic lubricants.

Women continued to pursue the conventionally feminine image, even when operating heavy machinery in a B-17 plant. Advertisers encouraged this attitude, telling women it was their patriotic duty to maintain their looks for their men in uniform. The author himself warns that “many women, deprived of the usual makings of charm, would lose the personal self-confidence that helps bolster them through the ills of life.” The thought of 40 million women “reverting to Nature” made everyone jittery.

Much of the article is addressed to the “man of the house,” suggesting that his wife shouldn’t panic over the shortage. She may not have heard his reassurances, having already left for work at the munitions plant.

Front page for Glamour Goes to War
Read the original article, “Glamour Goes to War,” from the November 29, 1941 issue of the Post.

Featured image: Photos by Constance Bannister for “Glamour Goes to War,” from the November 29, 1941, issue of the Post.

The Conscience of the Court

African-American woman sits before a judge
© SEPS

Originally published March 18, 1950

The clerk of the court took a good look at the tall brown-skinned woman with the head rag on. She sat on the third bench back with a husky officer beside her.

“The People versus Laura Lee Kimble!”

The policeman nudged the woman to get to her feet and led her up to the broad rail. She stood there, looking straight ahead. The hostility in the room reached her without her seeking to find it.

Unpleasant things were ahead of Laura Lee Kimble, but she was ready for this moment. It might be the electric chair or the rest of her life in some big lonesome jail house, or even torn to pieces by a mob, but she had passed three long weeks in jail. She had come to the place where she could turn her face to the wall and feel neither fear nor anguish. So this here so-called trial was nothing to her but a form and a fashion and an outside show to the world. She could stand apart and look on calmly. She stood erect and looked up at the judge.

“Charged with felonious and aggravated assault. Mayhem. Premeditated attempted murder on the person of one Clement Beasley. Obscene and abusive language. Laura Lee Kimble, how do you plead?”

Laura Lee was so fascinated by the long-named things that they were accusing her of that she stood there tasting over the words. Lawdy me! she mused inside herself. Look like I done every crime excepting habeas corpus and stealing a mule.

“Answer the clerk!” The officer nudged Laura Lee. “Tell him how you plead.”

“Plead? Don’t reckon I make out just what you all mean by that.” She looked from face to face and at last up at the judge, with bewilderment in her eyes. She found him looking her over studiously.

The judge understood the look in her face, but he did not interfere so promptly as he ordinarily would have. This was the man-killing bear cat of a woman that he had heard so much about. Though spare of fat, she was built strongly enough, all right. An odd Negro type. Gray-green eyes, large and striking, looking out of a chestnut-brown face. A great abundance of almost straight hair only partially hidden by the high-knotted colored kerchief about her head. Somehow this woman did not look fierce to him at all. Yet she had beaten a man within an inch of his life. Here was a riddle to solve. With the proud, erect way she held herself, she might be some savage queen. The shabby housedress she had on detracted nothing from this impression. She was a challenge to him somehow or other.

“Perhaps you don’t understand what the clerk means, Laura,” the judge found himself saying to her in a gentle voice. “He wants you to say whether you are guilty of the charges or not.”

“Oh, I didn’t know. Didn’t even know if he was talking to me or not. Much obliged to you, sir.” Laura Lee sent His Honor a shy smile. “‘Deed I don’t know if I’m guilty or not. I hit the man after he hit me, to be sure, Mister Judge, but if I’m guilty I don’t know for sure. All them big words and all.”

The clerk shook his head in exasperation and quickly wrote something down. Laura Lee turned her head and saw the man on the hospital cot swaddled all up in bandage rags. Yes, that was the very man who caused her to be here where she was.

“All right, Laura Lee,” the judge said. “You can take your seat now until you are called on.”

The prosecutor looked a question at the judge and said, “We can proceed.” The judge nodded, then halted things as he looked down at Laura Lee.

“The defendant seems to have no lawyer to represent her.” Now he leaned forward and spoke to Laura Lee directly. “If you have no money to hire yourself a lawyer to look out for your interests, the court will appoint one for you.”

There was a pause, during which Laura Lee covered a lot of ground. Then she smiled faintly at the judge and answered him. “Naw sir, I thank you, Mister Judge. Not to turn you no short answer, but I don’t reckon it would do me a bit of good. I’m mighty much obliged to you just the same.”

The implications penetrated instantly and the judge flushed. This unlettered woman had called up something that he had not thought about for quite some time. The campus of the University of Virginia and himself as a very young man there, filled with a reverence for his profession amounting to an almost holy dedication. His fascination and awe as a professor traced the more than two thousand years of growth of the concepts of human rights and justice. That brought him to his greatest hero, John Marshall, and his inner resolve to follow in the great man’s steps, and even add to interpretations of human rights if his abilities allowed. No, he had not thought about all this for quite some time. The judge flushed slowly and deeply.

Below him there, the prosecutor was moving swiftly, but somehow his brisk cynicism offended the judge. He heard twelve names called, and just like that the jury box was filled and sworn in.

Rapidly now, witnesses took the stand, and their testimony was all damaging to Laura Lee. The doctor who told how terribly Clement Beasley had been hurt. Left arm broken above the elbow, compound fracture of the forearm, two ribs cracked, concussion of the brain and various internal injuries. Two neighbors who had heard the commotion and arrived before the house in time to see Laura Lee fling the plaintiff over the gate into the street. The six arresting officers all got up and had their say, and it was very bad for Laura Lee. A two-legged she-devil no less.

Clement Beasley was borne from his cot to the witness stand, and he made things look a hundred times blacker. His very appearance aroused a bumble of pity, and anger against the defendant. The judge had to demand quiet repeatedly. Beasley’s testimony blew strongly on the hot coals.

His story was that he had come in conflict with this defendant by loaning a sizable sum of money to her employer. The money was to be repaid at his office. When the date was long past due, he had gone to the house near the river, just off Riverside Drive, to inquire why Mrs. Clairborne had not paid him, nor even come to see him and explain. Imagine his shock when he wormed it out of the defendant that Mrs. Clairborne had left Jacksonville. Further, he detected evidence that the defendant was packing up the things in the house. The loan had been made, six hundred dollars, on the furnishings of the entire house. He had doubted that the furnishings were worth enough for the amount loaned, but he had wanted to be generous to a widow lady. Seeing the defendant packing away the silver, he was naturally alarmed, and the next morning went to the house with a moving van to seize the furniture and protect the loan. The defendant, surprised, attacked him as soon as he appeared at the front door, injured him as he was, and would have killed him if help had not arrived in time.

Laura Lee was no longer a spectator at her own trial. Now she was in a flaming rage. She would have leaped to her feet as the man pictured Miz’ Celestine as a cheat and a crook, and again as he sat up there and calmly lied about the worth of the furniture. All of those wonderful antiques, this man making out that they did not equal his minching six hundred dollars! That lie was a sin and a shame! The People was a meddlesome and unfriendly passel and had no use for the truth. It brought back to her in a taunting way what her husband, Tom, had told her over and over again. This world had no use for the love and friending that she was ever trying to give.

It looked now that Tom could be right. Even Miz’ Celestine had turnt her back on her. She was here in this place, the house of The People, all by herself. She had ever disbelieved Tom and had to get to be forty-nine before she found out the truth. Well, just as the old folks said, “It’s never too long for a bull frog to wear a stiff-bosom shirt. He’s bound to get it dirtied some time or other.”

“You have testified,” Laura Lee heard the judge talking, “that you came in contact with the defendant through a loan to Mrs. J. Stuart Clairborne, her employer, did you not?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Beasley answered promptly and glibly.

“That being true, the court cannot understand why that note was not offered in evidence.”

Beasley glanced quickly at the prosecutor and lowered his eyes. “I — I just didn’t see why it was necessary, Your Honor. I have it, but — ”

“It is not only pertinent, it is of the utmost importance to this case. I order it sent for immediately and placed in evidence.”

The tall, lean, black-haired prosecutor hurled a surprised and betrayed look at the bench, then, after a pause, said in a flat voice, “The State rests.”

What was in the atmosphere crawled all over Laura Lee like reptiles. The silence shouted that her goose was cooked. But even if the sentence was death, she didn’t mind. Celestine Beaufort Clairborne had failed her. Her husband and all her folks had gone on before. What was there to be so happy to live for any more? She had writ that letter to Miz’ Celestine the very first day that she had been placed in jail. Three weeks had gone by on their rusty ankles, and never one word from her Celestine. Laura Lee choked back a sob and gritted her teeth. You had to bear what was placed on your back for you to tote.

“Laura Lee Kimble,” the judge was saying, “you are charged with serious felonies, and the law must take its course according to the evidence. You refused the lawyer that the court offered to provide for you, and that was a mistake on your part. However, you have a right to be sworn and tell the jury your side of the story. Tell them anything that might help you, so long as you tell the truth.”

Laura Lee made no move to get to her feet and nearly a minute passed. Then the judge leaned forward.

“Believe it or not, Laura Lee, this is a court of law. It is needful to hear both sides of every question before the court can reach a conclusion and know what to do. Now, you don’t strike me as a person that is unobliging at all. I believe if you knew you would be helping me out a great deal by telling your side of the story, you would do it.”

Involuntarily Laura Lee smiled. She stood up. “Yes, sir, Mister Judge. If I can be of some help to you, I sure will. And I thank you for asking me.”

Being duly sworn, Laura Lee sat in the chair to face the jury as she had been told to do. “You jury-gentlemens, they asked me if I was guilty or no, and I still don’t know whether I is or not. I am a unlearnt woman and common-clad. It don’t surprise me to find out I’m ignorant about a whole heap of things. I ain’t never rubbed the hair off of my head against no college walls and schooled out nowhere at all. All I’m able to do is to tell you gentlemens how it was and then you can tell me if I’m guilty or no.

“I would not wish to set up here and lie and make out that I never hit this plaintive back. Gentlemens, I ain’t had no malice in my heart against the plaintive. I seen him only one time before he come there and commenced that fracas with me. That was three months ago, the day after Tom, my husband, died. Miz’ Celestine called up the funeral home and they come and got Tom to fix him up so we could take him back to Georgia to lay him to rest. That’s where us all come from, Chatham County — Savannah, that is.

“Then now, Miz’ Celestine done something I have never knowed her to do be-fore. She put on her things and went off from home without letting me know where she was bound for. She come back afterwhile with this plaintive, which I had never seen before in all my horned days. I glimpsed him good from the kitchen where I was at, walking all over the dining room and the living room with Miz’ Celestine and looking at things, but they was talking sort of low like, and I couldn’t make out a word what they was talking about. I figgered that Miz’ Celestine must of been kind of beside herself, showing somebody look like this plaintive all her fine things like that. Her things is fine and very scarce old antiques, and I know that she have been offered vast sums of money for ‘em, but she would never agree to part with none. Things that been handed down in both the Beaufort and the Clairborne families from way back. That little old minching six hundred dollars that the plaintive mentioned wouldn’t even be worth one piece of her things, not to mention her silver. After a while they went off and when Miz’ Celestine come back, she told me that everything had been taken care of and she had the tickets to Savannah in her purse.

“Bright and soon next morning we boarded the train for Savannah to bury Tom. Miz’ Celestine done even more than she had promised Tom. She took him back like she had promised, so that he could be buried in our family lot, and he was covered with flowers, and his church and his lodges turned out with him, and he was put away like some big mogul of a king. Miz’ Celestine was there sitting right along by my side all the time. Then me and Miz’ Celestine come on back down here to Jacksonville by ourselves.

“And Mrs. Clairborne didn’t run off to keep from paying nobody. She’s a Clairborne, and before that, she was born a Beaufort. They don’t owe nobody, and they don’t run away. That ain’t the kind of raising they gets. Miz’ Clairborne’s got money of her own, and lives off of the interest which she receives regular every six months. She went off down there to Miami Beach to sort of refresh herself and rest up her nerves. What with being off down here in Florida, away from all the folks she used to know, for three whole years, and cooped up there in her house, and remembering her dear husband being dead, and now Tom gone, and nobody left of the old family around excepting her and me, she was nervous and peaked like. It wasn’t her, it was me that put her up to going off down there for a couple of months so maybe she would come back to herself. She never cheeped to me about borrowing no money from nobody, and I sure wasn’t packing nothing up to move off when this plaintive come to the door. I was just gleaming up the silver to kill time whilst I was there by myself.

“And, gentlemens, I never tackled the plaintive just as soon as he mounted the porch like he said. The day before that, he had come there and asked-ed me if Miz’ Clairborne was at home. I told him no, and then he asked-ed me just when I expected her back. I told him she was down at Miami Beach, and got the letter that she had sent me so he could get her right address. He thanked me and went off. Then the next morning, here he was back with a great big moving wagon, rapped on the door and didn’t use a bit of manners and politeness this time. Without even a ‘Good morning’ he says for me to git out of his way because he come to haul off all the furniture and things in the house and he is short for time.

“You jury-gentlemens, I told him in the nicest way that I knowed how that he must of been crazy. Miz’ Celestine was off from home and she had left me there as a kind of guardeen to look after her house and things, and I sure couldn’t so handy leave nobody touch a thing in Mrs. Clairborne’s house unlessen she was there and said so.

“He just looked at me like I was something that the buzzards laid and the sun hatched out, and told me to move out of his way so he could come on in and get his property. I propped myself and braced one arm across the doorway to bar him out, reckoning he would have manners enough to go on off. But, no! He flew just as hot as Tucker when the mule kicked his mammy and begun to cuss and doublecuss me, and call me all out of my name, something nobody had never done be-fore in all my horned days. I took it to keep from tearing up peace and agreement. Then he balled up his fistes and demanded me to move ‘cause he was coming in.

“‘Aw, naw you aint,’ I told him. You might think that you’s going to grow horns, but I’m here to tell you you’ll die butt-headed.’”

His mouth slewed one-sided and he hauled off and hit me in my chest with his fist two times. Hollered that nothing in the drugstore would kill me no quicker than he would if I didn’t git out of his way. I didn’t, and then he upped and kicked me.

“I jumped as salty as the ‘gator when the pond went dry. I stretched out my arm and he hit the floor on a prone. Then, that truck with the two men on it took off from there in a big hurry. All I did next was to grab him by his heels and frail the pillar of the porch with him a few times. I let him go, but he just laid there like a log.

“‘Don’t you lay there, making out you’s dead, sir!’ I told him. ‘Git up from there, even if you is dead, and git on off this place!’

“The contrary scamp laid right there, so I reached down and muscled him up on acrost my shoulder and toted him to the gate, and heaved him’ over the fence out into the street. None of my business what become of him and his dirty mouth after that.

“I figgered I done right not to leave him come in there and haul off Miz’ Celestine’s things which she had left there under my trust and care. But Tom, my husband, would have said I was wrong for taking too much on myself. Tom claimed that he ever loved me harder than the thunder could bump a stump, but I had one habit that he ever wished he could break me of. Claimed that I always placed other folks’s cares in front of my own, and more expecially Miz’ Celestine. Said that I made out of myself a wishbone shining in the sun. Just something for folks to come along and pick up and rub and pull and get their wishes and good luck on. Never looked out for nothing for my ownself.

“I never took a bit of stock in what Tom said like that until I come to be in this trouble. I felt right and good, looking out for Miz’ Celestine’s interest and standing true and strong, till they took me off to jail and I writ Miz’ Celestine a letter to please come see ‘bout me and help me out, and give it to the folks there at the jail to mail off for me.

“A sob wrestled inside Laura Lee and she struck silence for a full minute before she could go on.

“Maybe it reached her, and then maybe again it didn’t. Anyhow, I ain’t had a single scratch from Miz’ Celestine, and here I is. But I love her so hard, and I reckon I can’t help myself. Look, gentlemen, Celestine was give to me when I was going on five — ”

The prosecutor shot up like a striking trout and waved his long arm. “If the court please, this is not a street corner. This is a court of law. The witness cannot be allowed to ramble — ”

The judge started as if he had been shaken out of a dream. He looked at the prosecutor and shook his head. “The object of a trial, I need not remind you, is to get at the whole truth of a case. The defendant is unlearned, as she has said. She has no counsel to guide her along the lines of procedure. It is important to find out why an act was committed, as you well know. Please humor the court by allowing the witness to tell her story in her own way.” The judge looked at Laura Lee and told her to go ahead. A murmur of approval followed this from all over the room.

“I don’t mean that her mama and papa throwed her away. You know how it used to be the style when a baby was born to place it under the special care of a older brother or sister, or somebody that had worked on the place for a long time and was apt to stay. That’s what I mean by Celestine was give to me.

“Just going on five, I wasn’t yet old enough to have no baby give to me, but that I didn’t understand. All I did know that some way I loved babies. I had me a old rag doll-baby that my mama had made for me, and I loved it better’n anything I can mention.

“Never will forget the morning mama said she was going to take me upstairs to Miz’ Beaufort’s bedroom to lemme see the new baby. Mama was borned on the Beaufort place just like I was. She was the cook, and everything around the place was sort of under her care. Papa was the houseman and drove for the family when they went out anywhere.

“Well, I seen that tee-ninchy baby laying there in a pink crib all trimmed with a lot of ribbons. Gentlemens, it was the prettiest thing I had ever laid my eyes on. I thought that it was a big-size doll-baby laying there, and right away I wanted it. I carried on so till afterwhile Miz’ Beaufort said that I could have it for mine if I wanted it. I was so took with it that I went plumb crazy with joy. I ask-ed her again, and she still said that she was giving it to me. My mama said so too. So, for fear they might change they minds, I said right off that I better take my baby home with me so that I could feed it my ownself and make it something to put on and do for it in general.

“I cried and carried on something terrible when they wouldn’t leave me take it on out to the little house where we lived on the place. They pacified me by telling me I better leave it with Miz’ Beaufort until it was weaned.

“That couldn’t keep me from being around Celestine every chance I got. Later on I found out how they all took my carrying-on for jokes. Made out they was serious to my face, but laughing fit to kill behind my back. They wouldn’t of done it if they had knowed how I felt inside. I lived just to see and touch Celestine — my baby, I thought. And she took to me right away.

“When Celestine was two, going on three, I found out that they had been funning with me, and that Celestine was not my child at all. I was too little to have a baby, and then again, how could a colored child be the mother of a white child? Celestine belonged to her papa and mama. It was all right for me to play with her all I wanted to, but forget the notion that she was mine.

“Jury-gentlemen, it was mighty hard, but as I growed on and understood more things I knowed what they was talking about. But Celestine wouldn’t allow me to quit loving her. She ever leaned on me, and cried after me, and run to me first for every little thing.

“When I was going on sixteen, papa died and Tom Kimble, a young man, got the job that papa used to have. Right off he put in to court me, even though he was twelve years older than me. But lots of fellows around Savannah was pulling after me too. One wanted to marry me that I liked extra fine, but he was settling in Birmingham, and mama was aginst me marrying and settling way off somewhere. She ruthered for me to marry Tom. When Celestine begin to hang on me and beg and beg me not to leave her, I give in and said that I would have Tom, but for the sake of my feelings, I put the marriage off for a whole year. That was my first good chance to break off from Celestine, but I couldn’t.

“General Beaufort, the old gentleman, was so proud for me to stay and pacify Celestine, that he built us a nice house on the place and made it over to us for life. Miz’ Beaufort give me the finest wedding that any colored folks had ever seen around Savannah. We stood on the floor in the Beaufort parlor with all the trimmings.

“Celestine, the baby, was a young lady by then, and real pretty with reddish-gold hair and blue eyes. The young bloods was hanging after her in swarms. It was me that propped her up when she wanted to marry young J. Stuart Clairborne, a lawyer just out of school, with a heap of good looks, a smiling disposition, a fine family name and no money to mention. He did have some noble old family furniture and silver. So Celestine had her heart’s desire, but little money. They was so happy together that it was like a play.

“Then things begin to change. Mama and Miz’ Beaufort passed on in a year of each other. The old gentleman lingered around kind of lonesome, then one night he passed away in his sleep, leaving all he had to Celestine and her husband. Things went on fine for five years like that. He was building up a fine practice and things went lovely.

“Then, it seemed all of a sudden, he took to coughing, and soon he was too tired all the time to go to his office and do around like he used to. Celestine spent her money like water, sending her husband and taking him to different places from one end of the nation to the other, and keeping him under every kind of a doctor’s care.

“Four years of trying and doing like that, and then even Celestine had to acknowledge that it never did a bit of good. Come a night when Clairborne laid his dark curly head in her lap like a trusting child and breathed his last.

“Inside our own house of nights, Tom would rear and pitch like a mule in a tin stable, trying to get me to consent to pull out with him and find us better-paying jobs elsewhere. I wouldn’t hear to that kind of a talk at all. We had been there when times was extra good, and I didn’t aim to tear out and leave Miz’ Celestine by herself at low water. This was another time I passed up my chance to cut aloose.

“The third chance wasn’t too long a-coming. A year after her husband died, Miz’ Celestine come to me and told me that the big Beaufort place was too much for her to keep up with the money she had on hand now. She had been seeking around, and she had found a lovely smaller house down at Jacksonville, Florida. No big grounds to keep up and all. She choosed that instead of a smaller place around Savannah because she could not bear to sing small where she had always led off. An’ now she had got hold of a family who was willing to buy the Beaufort estate at a very good price.

“Then she told me that she wanted me to move to Florida with her. She realized that she had no right to ask me no such a thing, but she just could not bear to go off down there with none of her family with her. Would I please consent to go? If I would not go with her, she would give Tom and me the worth of our property in cash money and we could do as we pleased. She had no call to ask us to go with her at all, excepting for old-time love and affection.

“Right then, jury-gentlemens, I knowed that I was going. But Tom had ever been a good husband to me, and I wanted him to feel that he was considered, so I told her that I must consult my pillow. Give her my word one way or another the next day.

“Tom pitched a acre of fits the moment that it was mentioned in his hearing. Hollered that we ought to grab the cash and, with what we had put away, buy us a nice home of our own. What was wrong with me nohow? Did I aim to be a wishbone all my days? Didn’t I see that he was getting old? He craved to end his days among his old friends, his lodges and his churches. We had a fine cemetery lot, and there was where he aimed to rest.

“Miz’ Celestine cried when he told her. Then she put in to meet all of Tom’s complaints. Sure, we was all getting on in years, but that was the very reason why we ought not to part now. Cling together and share and lean and depend on one another. Then when Tom still helt out, she made a oath. If Tom died before she did, she would fetch him back and put him away right at her own expense. And if she died before either of us, we was to do the same for her. Anything she left was willed to me to do with as I saw fit.

“So we put in to pack up all the finest pieces, enough and plenty to furnish up our new home in Florida, and moved on down here to live. We passed three peaceful years like that, then Tom died.”

Laura Lee paused, shifted so that she faced the jury more directly, then summed up.

“Maybe I is guilty sure enough. I could be wrong for staying all them years and making Miz’ Celestine’s cares my own. You gentlemens is got more book-learning than me, so you would know more than I do. So far as this fracas is concerned, yeah, I hurted this plaintive, but with him acting the way he was, it just couldn’t be helped. And ‘tain’t nary one of you gentlemens but what wouldn’t of done the same.”

There was a minute of dead silence. Then the judge sent the prosecutor a cut-eye look and asked, “ Care to cross-examine?”

“That’s all!” the prosecutor mumbled, and waved Laura Lee to her seat.

“I have here,” the judge began with great deliberation, “the note made by Mrs. J. Stuart Clairborne with the plaintiff. It specifies that the purpose of the loan was to finance the burial of Thomas Kimble.” The judge paused and looked directly at Laura Lee to call her attention to this point. “The importance to this trial, however, is the due date, which is still more than three months away.”

The court officers silenced the gasps and mumbles that followed this announcement.

“It is therefore obvious why the plaintiff has suppressed this valuable piece of evidence. It is equally clear to the court that the plaintiff knew that he had no justification whatsoever for being upon the premises of Mrs. Clairborne.”

His Honor folded the paper and put it aside, and regarded the plaintiff with cold gray eyes.

“This is the most insulting instance in the memory of the court of an attempt to prostitute the very machinery of justice for an individual’s own nefarious ends. The plaintiff first attempts burglary with forceful entry and violence and, when thoroughly beaten for his pains, brazenly calls upon the law to punish the faithful watch-dog who bit him while he was attempting his trespass. Further, it seems apparent that he has taken steps to prevent any word from the defendant reaching Mrs. Clairborne, who certainly would have moved heaven and earth in the defendant’s behalf, and rightfully so.”

The judge laced the fingers of his hands and rested them on the polished wood before him and went on.

The protection of women and children, he said, was inherent, implicit in Anglo-Saxon civilization, and here in these United States it had become a sacred trust. He reviewed the long, slow climb of humanity from the rule of the club and the stone hatchet to the Constitution of the United States. The English-speaking people had given the world its highest concepts of the rights of the individual, and they were not going to be made a mock of, and nullified by this court.

“The defendant did no more than resist the plaintiff’s attempted burglary. Valuable assets of her employer were trusted in her care, and she placed her very life in jeopardy in defending that trust, setting an example which no decent citizen need blush to follow. The jury is directed to find for the defendant.”

Laura Lee made her way diffidently to the judge and thanked him over and over again.

“That will do, Laura Lee. I am the one who should be thanking you.”

Laura Lee could see no reason why, and wandered off, bewildered. She was instantly surrounded by smiling, congratulating strangers, many of whom made her ever so welcome if ever she needed a home. She was rubbed and polished to a high glow.

Back at the house, Laura Lee did not enter at once. Like a pilgrim before a shrine, she stood and bowed her head. “I ain’t fitten to enter. For a time, I allowed myself to doubt my Celestine. But maybe nobody ain’t as pure in heart as they aim to be. The cock crowed on Apostle Peter. Old Maker, please take my guilt away and cast it into the sea of forgetfulness where it won’t never rise to accuse me in this world, nor condemn me in the next.”

Laura Lee entered and opened all the windows with a ceremonial air. She was hungry, but before she would eat, she made a ritual of atonement by serving. She took a finely wrought silver platter from the massive old sideboard and gleamed it to perfection. So the platter, so she wanted her love to shine.