Spitball Army

April 4, 1942

Still Sunday Eve. (2nd part letter)

Darling:  Still love you, too.

Have that letter of yours out again (the long one, written aboard ship evidently) and am reading it over and over.  Sort of looks, though, as if you squeezed in some of those “I love you’s” as an afterthought.  What’s the big idea!  Only kidding, Honey!

Aud and I were down town yesterday P.M. looking for curtains and drapes for the new house.  Was almost all set to make them myself and save Dad’s money until we found some inexpensive ones.  Am planning on getting a portable elec. sew. machine – trading in our old one – which we don’t have room for.  All right with you?  Am sure we can always get our $20 worth out of it.  That’s what the difference is in the trade-in.  We have some ideas too, on how we’re going to fix up our bedroom.  Got the ideas from the “Better Homes and Gardens” magazine.  Sort of fun to try new things.

Hope you’re all right Darling and feeling fine and looking as handsome as ever.  You are too “good looking,” Sweet.  Am so happy I have that grand photograph of you – always smiling at me – whenever I’m in the bedroom – as have your picture there in top of our chest of drawers.  I love your smile.

Please write often, won’t you, Honey.  I do wait so anxiously for your letters – Do you feel that way about mine?  Or aren’t you as anxious?  I live for your letters, Darling, and for the time when you’ll be coming back to me.

Love,
Bev

April 4, ’43
Sunday 2100

Dearest Darling

I love you & wish I could hear you tell me that to-night.  Glad you remember it in your letters because I do look for it, Sweetheart.  Saturday was another lucky day for me as I received your V-mail letter of March 16.  It seemed so tiny, but then, was glad to get it anyway.  You mentioned playing a game with the officers and giving them a trimming.  What game was that?  You certainly know how to keep fit with those exercises, don’t you.  I think that’s fine.  Audrey and I took a ride down by the creek this afternoon.  We all ate our dinner out today and took a ride down by the Minn. River, which has really flooded over, due to the many snows.  Many of the houses were partially under water.  We’ve been spending the evening at home.  I’ve been helping Aud get her clothes ready for the trip.

I enjoyed the concert so much last night.  Paul Robeson, the colored singer, was very fine.  The orchestra was exceptionally good, but this was the first time I’ve ever heard them have to begin over again 2 times before they could get the piece right.  The audience really got a kick out of it.  Mrs. Welte was there and we talked to one another.  She wanted to know where you were.  Have more to talk about so will continue in my next V-letter.

Loving you as always,
Bev

[audio:Paul_Robeson___Joe_Hill.mp3]
“Joe Hill” sung by Paul Robeson. This performance was recorded on January 30, 1942.

Paul Robeson singing “My Curly Headed Baby” (Prague, 1949)

As [writer Dalton] Reymond and [writer Maurice] Rapf finished the screenplay [for what would become the 1946 film Song of the South] late that summer and the studio announced the project, a problem arose: members of the black community protested that any film version of the Uncle Remus stories was bound to portray black Americans in a servile and negative way.  A “vicious piece of hocus pocus,” one group called it.  Walt Disney was no racist.  He never, either publicly or privately, made disparaging remarks about blacks or asserted white superiority.  Like most white Americans of his generation, however, he was racially insensitive.  At a story meeting he had referred to the dwarfs piling on top of one another in Snow White as a “nigger pile,” and in casting Song of the South he noted a “swell little picaninny [sic]” he had found.  Like most Hollywood producers, he had also engaged in racial stereotyping, from a blackbird in the short Who Killed Cock Robin? who speaks in a thick drawl and blanches white when frightened, to the hipster crows in Dumbo, though the case has been made that the crows were sympathetic to Dumbo precisely because they understood what it was like to be ostracized themselves.  Worse, in the “Pastorale” sequence of Fantasia, Walt enthused over the idea of a little black centaurette with a watermelon who is terrified when Pegasus gallops after her.  “She sees him and Jesus!  She goes like hell,” Walt said at a story meeting.  “There would be a lot of laughs and it would give a definite lift to the whole thing.”

– From Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

from Dumbo (1941)

from Fantasia (1940): scene 1

from Fantasia (1940): scene 2

April 3, 1943

3/29
Dear Babe,
The day is beautiful and I keep comparing it with a year ago.  Remember while we were in church it started to snow and what a slushy time we had going to dinner.  When we reached home the relatives were already assembling for our grand homecoming.  But we are all looking forward to the next one now.  We hope it will all be over then and what a wonderful time we’ll have.  I should have wished you happy birthday when I wrote yesterday but I didn’t realize May 3rd was so near at hand.

3/30
T’was a beautiful spring day.  We are beginning to see a few green blades.  I heard the first robin while at work in defense school and tonight as we ate supper I spied him perched on a tree outside the window.

4/1
What a fooling we got today.  I’ll tell you in the words of the little boy next door.  He went to the window and saw the ground covered with about 2 in. of snow and said, “Well, God sure Aprilfooled us.”

4/4 [sic]
Had our coach and his wife up last night.  They like to play cards and we had a good time.  Today we spent all afternoon going over our Easter cantata changing words.  We’ll give it on Good Friday.  We’ll have vacation that week but I won’t go home.  May go to Fargo a couple of days.  Had a letter from Peter.  Christine had been there for a few days.  He said the folks on the farm were all settled and they had painted and cleaned things up fine.  I wish we could know where you are.  Do you get the V-mail original or the micro film copy?  I’m anxiously waiting for a letter from you.  I hope your birthday will not be _____ay [sic] in anyway.  Take good care of yourself.

Much love, Judie

[Note: Judith has a habit of writing the ends of her V-Mail letters over the black square at the bottom of the form, rendering some words unreadable.]

Apr. 2, ’43
Friday 1600

Hello Sweetheart:

I love you today, too — every day, Darling — more and more!

This is a lovely day, but I really have been so busy inside, that haven’t had a chance to hike.  The only walking I did do, was down to the store.  I’ve been working in the basement in preparation for moving.  We still don’t know when we will be going into the other house, as the tenants there haven’t found a place as yet.  When I was going thru things in the basement, I saw many of our wedding gifts, so wait until you & I move, eh what!  Just wait is right.  We’ll certainly have a lot of sorting & “looking over” to do.

Am going to try to get up to our new house on Xerxes No. tomorrow, and measure the windows for drapes.  Want to paint the kitchen furniture white too, so there’s a lot to do – but I like it.  I should really be quite experienced in all this housework when we finally have our own home.  Won’t it be fun, Honey!

Rec’d the Navy check today & plan on buying two $100.00 and one $25.00 bonds this month.  “Bye” Sweetiepie & loads of love to the most wonderful man on earth.

Affectionately,
Bev

Trained In – a 2007 documentary short by Kevin Garrison and Allison Stagg.

This 10-minute film portrays the difficulties faced by the residents of the small residential neighborhood of Collegeville, in north Birmingham, that is surrounded on all sides by railroad tracks.

For a brief time, a very brief time (like about six hours), this video clip was posted on Spitball Army.  Nearly as soon as I was able to embed it, it was blocked by the YouTube member sponsoring it.  After several attempts to circumvent the technology that would not allow the clip to be shown on this site, and e-mailing that YouTube member (who decided not to waste her time with a reply), I am posting the link to the clip here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SJxpouYg_w

The video clip is a series of scene fragments from a 1934 film entitled The Cat’s Paw, in which Harold Lloyd plays a missionary with a propensity for quoting the wisdom of Ling Po.  It is hilarious and inspired and beautifully edited.  Again, here’s the link.  Please watch it, mark it as a favorite, have a few good laughs, and take a moment to ask the YouTube member hosting the clip (her name is asagara) to enable embedding.

After all, should the video be blocked because the candidate with the majority of the popular vote can’t bowl? – Ling Po.

This morning, I get up late.  Around 9:30.  Damn, I’ve already missed a few hours of daylight.  Feeling appropriately groggy and very definitely hungry, I decide that it would be a good idea for someone else to cook a meal for me.  So, I get dressed, grab the day’s newspaper, get in the truck and venture out in search of breakfast.

I end up at the Waffle House on Crestwood Blvd.  The joint is about half full.  I take a seat at the counter and wait.  Five minutes later, the waitress (I omitted the adjective “surly”…whoops, there it is!) decides to bring me some silverware (though I am sure the Waffle House variety is some form of aluminum).  She places it on a wet napkin in front of me, pointed directly and threateningly at me, just north of the plastic menu/placemat.  Okay, I’ll give her a break on the silverware placement, I think.  This is not the Ritz-Carlton, after all.  I look at her and say, “Good morning!”  She looks at me as if I have two heads.  As if she has a particular disdain for people with two heads, in fact.  She walks away.  Five minutes later, she decides to come back.  Now she clears the coffee cup and orange juice glass that were left by the customer who occupied the seat before me.  “I’m ready to order,” I tell her.  She looks right through me.  She walks away.  A man walks in and sits down two chairs away from me at the counter.  The waitress meanders over to him, does the same silverware thing to him, then pulls an order pad out of her apron and begins to take his breakfast order.  I stand up, pick up my silverware, lean toward the waitress and, excusing myself to them both, hand her the utensils.  Then I walk out the door.

Back in the truck and on the road, I head back toward town.  I drive into the parking lot of the iHop.  Besides the parking lot being completely full, there is a line of pancake-loving, well-dressed church-goers extending out the front door onto the sidewalk.  Hurry up and wait, I think.  I keep driving.

A few blocks away there is a McDonald’s.  Hell, at this point I’m not too picky.  Plus, I’ve seen the commercials for their new breakfast burrito and, God knows, I could love anything approximating Mexican food.  So I pull into the drive-thru.  The speaker box announces

“WEHCUMNTOMACKDONODESTAYKYERODOR!”

I ask for the McBreakfast McBurrito.

“WEEOWNLEESURVINLUMCH!”

I look at my watch and it is 11:01 a.m.  But it’s Sunday!  I say nothing to the box and drive away.  Out my window, I hear more incomprehensible human static screeching forth from the box.

Across the street is a supermarket.  So, it has come to this, I think.  I will have to make my own breakfast.  That is truly my last resort option, so I head for the bakery area.  I am eyeballing the pastries and spot a cheese danish that might make an easy meal.  Just heat and eat!  Right at that moment, a store employee rushes up with a shopping cart and starts frantically loading the contents of the pastry shelves into the cart willy-nilly, beginning rather forcefully with the cheese danish ring in front of me, as if he knows that it is the million dollar suitcase.  “What’s this?!”  “My manager told me to clear this rack.  We can’t sell these.”  Well, the manager is in league with the surly waitress at Awful House, I think to myself.

Dejected, I drive half a block away to the three-day-old location of the new Starbucks.  I order a charcoal-flavored cup of coffee.  “What size?” asks the barista.  “Medium,” says I.  “Grande?”  asks the barista.  “No, medium,” says I.  She looks at me and my two heads, but in a friendly way that could only come from working for a company that provides you with health insurance and occasional tips.

Hot coffee in hand, I drive home and prepare a bowl of instant oatmeal in the microwave.

Mar. 31, ’43
Wed. 12 noon

Hello Honey:  I love you.

The nice balmy weather that we were enjoying yesterday has disappeared, and we have another one of those grey, cold days.  Have been busy finishing cleaning up the attic this morning and also did a little laundry aside from carpet-sweeping.

Helen Jarek called me last night.  I was so glad to hear from her, though know that she too, would rather have been with her husband.  We’re seeing one another Monday.  She asked me to come over there.  They’ve been in Philadelphia the last couple months, and he has definitely been assigned to an air-craft carrier.  She says he expects to be on the Pacific though.  She’s going to join him again in a few weeks & then they will bid one another “farewell.”  I think saying one’s goodbye only once is really the best, but of course, I’d want to be with you just every chance I had, too.

Am seeing Dr. Lang again today – am hoping he doesn’t have to give another air-test, but am willing to do anything that will help matters.  After his app’t., will go to club at the “Y.”  Maxine will be there to-night too.

Are they photographing these letters?

I love you very much, Darling and am just living for the day when you come back to me.  It will be so wonderful to have you close again.

Love,
Bev

March 30, ’43 (Tues.)
2 p.m.

Dearest Sweetheart:

I love you as always.

Just found myself a nice secluded spot down by the creek, so here I am thinking of you again, as usual.  The creek is very wide, and the waters are quite turbulent today.  I started out on this hike looking for pussy willows, but when I saw this bench, hurried back for my stationery & book.  It really is beautiful here.  Do wish you were with me.

Went to Red Cross class this morning from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.  Learned what is expected of Staff Assistants.  They are sent to different Red Cross centers to aid in the keeping of records, filing, reception work, stenographic duties, & so on.  They all wear yellow uniforms.  Of course, I can’t get to be a worker until I pass the examination at the end of the course.

The afternoon mail hasn’t arrived yet, but am looking for another letter from you.  Honey, I live for those letters of yours! — Because I do love you so, and want to know that you are safe and well.  Am so interested too, in what you are doing – and the life you are living now is really so much more interesting than mine – but I’m keeping happy and busy though I do have my days when things aren’t as “sunny” as they should be.  All I have to do though, is just think of you & plan for your return; then the corners of my mouth turn up again – for I do have so much to live for in living for you –

How about a series of “flute dances?”

That’s the way I like them.

I love you.
Bev