Peace Be With You

Park Street Church, Boston, in warmer days.

A very Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and a Happy New Year to all.  In appreciation for the pleasure of your company this past year, I’m offering my eBook collection of essays from this blog, “Classic Films and the AmericanConscience” here from Amazon for free Christmas Day through the 27^th.  This will be the last time this book is offered free; in the new year it will be available not only through Amazon but also through Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Apple, Sony, Diesel, Kobo, and Smashwords.

I’m going to take a couple weeks off to tend to some other business, but I’ll be back in late January.  I hope you can join me.

This is going to be a difficult Christmas for many who have suffered tragedy and loss this year; and for the people of Newtown, Connecticut, December will never ever be the same. 

 

A few weeks ago on my "Another Old Movie Blog", I blogged about “Cry Havoc” a movie which takes place in the Philippines during World War II.  I was reminded by many images through that film of my father. 

My father entered the Army in December 1942 and missed Christmas at home that year.  He had a wife and a new baby.  He was sent to the Pacific Theater of operations and island-hopped with all the rest of the gang, and Christmas of 1943 passed by, and then Christmas 1944.

There were no telephone calls home, no emails, only letters and tiny “V-Mail” notes that took weeks to get home.  He sent Christmas messages home in early November, hoping they would make it in time.

In the summer of 1945 he was in the Philippines, and endured horrific experiences he did not like to talk much about.  He also got malaria, which stayed in his bloodstream so that he continued to suffer a bout of it after he got home.  There were other injuries and wounds, but good news came when the Japanese surrendered, which was totally unexpected for regular GIs like my dad, who were convinced they’d be spending 1946, 1947, and 1948 still fighting the war. 

Now that peace was declared, his only enemy was time.  He wanted to get back home for Christmas 1945.

 

He had earned enough points to be rotated home.  Several weeks on a troop ship.  He passed under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which was the last thing he saw of the US when he left.  Now that he saw it again, he really believed he was home.

A few days being processed, and more days on the train because he lived on the other side of the continent.  After being in the jungle for three years, winter in the US was a shock, and his first telegram home contains the line, “COLD COUNTRY.” 

Leave it to a New Englander to squeeze in a comment about the weather in his first telegram to his wife.

Finally he arrived at Ft. Devens in the eastern part of Massachusetts, and a few more days of the mustering out process.  Medical exam, paperwork, ribbons and commendations, a clean uniform to home in, and finally a “ruptured duck” lapel pin to wear. 

But he lived in the western part of the state, so it was another train ride.  He sat in the station in Boston, waiting for his connecting train, and ate at a lunch counter.  The man behind the counter gestured to his ribbons and said, “You’re money’s no good here, son.  You’ve done enough,” and wouldn’t let him pay.

Decades later, my father still felt grateful, humbled, and embarrassed by the moment.

When the train pulled into the station, his wife and daughter were there on the platform.  His daughter wasn’t a baby anymore, but a little kid running around.  She had been told many times that the man in the portrait photo at home in the uniform was Daddy.  She got mixed up and thought anybody in uniform was Daddy and had to be told over and over again that, no, that’s not Daddy.

Finally her mother points to a tall, handsome guy stepping off the train and says, “There’s your Daddy.”  I’m thinking my sister, with all the wisdom of a small child thought, “Yeah, right.  Tell me another one.  I’m not falling for that again.”

It was January 1946.  He failed to get home for Christmas. 

In his last telegram he wrote “SORRY ABOUT THE HOLIDAYS.”  A real man sometimes apologizes for what isn’t even his fault.

My father was in his early 20s when he left.  He had fired weapons in war, but the experience did not make a man of him.  He was man because he had a family and took responsibility for them.  Responsibility is what made him a man, and he knew it.  He was good marksman, but he looked down on people who needed guns to make them feel manly, or make them feel safe.  It was a crutch for cowards, he thought.

I was tempted to use as a graphic and ad here published by an assault weapons manufacturer that inferred that manhood would be achieved by ownership of their product.  However, I refuse to print any words or images on this blog that are obscene.  That image and the message behind it are obscene.

My parents lost four Christmases, and the years ahead would not be easy.  As anybody knows, happy endings are only for movies.  But they accepted what they could not change, and tried to be resilient, and change what they could.

The people of Newtown must accept what they cannot change.

The rest of us must change what we can. 

Now.

 

Peace be with you.

First Christmas Tree in Windsor Locks, Connecticut

Local legend has it that the first time a Christmas tree was put up and decorated in the United States of America appears to have occurred in Windsor, Connecticut.  A German POW in the Revolutionary War wanted to mark Christmas with a symbol of home.

He was a mercenary soldier, part of the Hessian troops employed by the British.  His name was Hendrick Roddemore.  He was taken captive during the Battle of Bennington, Vermont in August 1777, where American commander General John Stark’s colonial troops defeated the British.  Have a look here at our previous post on the Bennington Battle Monument.

Hundreds of Hessian troops were taken prisoner, and many were transported to Boston, then transferred in small groups around the region.  Hendrick Roddemore was sent to the Pine Meadows section of Windsor, Connecticut on the Connecticut River.  Later the area became the separate town of Windsor Locks.

He was put in custody of Samuel Denslow, who owned a 100-acre farm.  In a small cabin here, perhaps a day or two before Christmas, 1777, Roddemore took the extraordinary action of cutting a small growing tree from outdoors and put it inside the cabin.  We can imagine simple decorations, and may well imagine the curiosity of his captors.  Not only were Christmas trees not used to celebrate Christmas in the United States at that time, but Christmas itself wasn’t usually celebrated in New England, where our Puritan founders still held sway over our consciousness.  Christmas was not widely celebrated here until the following century.  Even up until around World War II, Thanksgiving was the larger holiday in New England.

Christmas was something those New Yorkers did.

The small cabin on West Street is no longer there, but the Noden-Reed Farm is now the home of the Windsor Locks Historical Society, and there is a stone marker planted on what is reckoned to be the site of the first indoor Christmas tree in the United States.

S&H Green Stamps - from Big Y

Ever do your Christmas shopping with these?  S&H Green Stamps, once the symbol of American Middle Class wish fulfillment, began with the Sperry & Hutchinson company in 1896, but found its heyday from the 1930s through the 1960s.

A catalogue of items, including furniture, toys, and bongo drums that could be purchased by redeeming the stamps, occupied a place of honor in a kitchen drawer of every home.  Maybe not every home, but these stamps, no longer recognizable to younger generations, were familiar to Baby Boomers.

They were offered at grocery stores, gas stations, and department stores.  You can see this folder was supplied by the New England supermarket chain “Big Y”.  That’s a lot of 10-point stamps.

 

Here are one-point stamps.  The other denomination was 50 points.

 

The program ended sometime in the 1980s, and had ceased being popular long before that.  Before this book had a chance to be filled and redeemed for bongo drums, anyway.

Perry Como & Lena Horne Sing of New England...

Perry Como and Lena Horne sing in Boston in 1965.  Here is a "New England" medley of songs:

Henry Clay Work - Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown, Connecticut hosts a statue on its town common, Union Green, to honor Henry Clay Work.  This self-taught 19^th century song composer was born in Middletown.  His songs were extremely popular around the time of the Civil War, probably most famous of which was the spirited “Marching Through Georgia.” (Listen here on YouTube.)

Mr. Work’s family moved to Illinois when he was a small child, and were ardent abolitionists.  His father was once arrested and imprisoned for helping runaway slaves to escape; his home was a stop on the Underground Railroad.  After his release from prison, the family, now penniless, moved back to Connecticut.

Henry Clay Work started as a printer’s apprentice as a young man, but composed songs, without a piano, but with meticulous precision in his head.  “Kingdom Coming” was another hit, and the sorrowful temperance ballad -- now lampooned in parody -- “Come Home, Father” (Father, dear Father, come home with me now…).

His last huge hit was “My Grandfather’s Clock” in 1876.  (Listen here on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHvOyuwJZnE)

Though Mr. Work’s music sold well in his lifetime, copyright as we know it did not exist, and poor investments made money a constant worry.  He died in his 50s of apparent heart trouble in 1884.

Popular music today may generate fame and fortune, but rarely has the social impact that it had in the 19^th century.  Henry Clay Work’s songs reflected their era, spoke for a generation, and affected change as well.

States of Mind: New England

 

This is to announce the publication of STATES OF MIND: NEWENGLAND, a collection of essays from my New England Travels blog, which has reached its fifth anniversary this autumn.

The smashing cover was created by Casey Koester, your friend and mine from the blog, Noir Girl.

The book has nearly 200 photographs.  It covers events and experiences from the early 19^th century through the middle of the 20^th century.  It’s currently available on Kindle (with a move toward other ebook publishers in the new year) and the paperback version will be on sale in December.  It’s going to be a coffee table-sized 8½x11 book, so I wouldn’t call it a stocking stuffer, but it could make a nice holiday gift.

The Kindle version will be offered FREE for five days only starting this Thursday, Thanksgiving, and running through Monday, November 26^th.   Have a look and see what you think.  After that, it goes back to its list price of $7.99.

Here’s a blurb from the foreword:

This is a collection of essays I posted on my New England Travels blog (and a couple from another blog on theatre: Tragedy and Comedy in New England), which at the time of this publishing has just passed its fifth year.  Some of the articles were also previously published in magazines and newspapers. 

This book is a small slice of New England Travels, but there are no travelogue posts here, no photos of lighthouses or covered bridges.  Perhaps that might do for a future volume.  This book is not about New England the place as much as it is about New England the idea, and the ideas that came out of New England, specifically events that happened in the 19^th century that shot us into the 20^th century.

The photo on the cover is of the Mark Twain statue that stands in front of the library in Hartford, Connecticut where he made his home in later years and wrote his most famous novels.  It’s a good image, and a good metaphor for what this book holds for the reader: a titan of American literature, and in the rugged image hewn in bronze, a representation of the artistry and industry of this region.  I like how the 19^th century figure is flanked by the modern 20^th century steel-and-glass Hartford Public Library. 

“My subject is the New England mind, as it has found expression in the lives and works of writers,” Van Wyck Brooks wrote in his preface to The Flowering of New England 1815-1865, which like its sequel, New England: Indian Summer 1865-1915, has gone out of fashion as literary criticism, but that did not stop me from enjoying them in younger years.  My subject, too, is the New England mind, but though some writers are represented here, such as Louisa May Alcott, they are not given preference over industrialists or inventors, or soldiers.  All are presented in the context of greater things going on around them, or greater things yet to be.

Alcott is shown not as the famous author of Little Women, but as a young Civil War nurse.  Francis Lowell is shown not just as one of the founders of America’s industrial revolution, but in the context of how that revolution gave women a rise in society and economic and political power.  He was the first, after all, to give preference in hiring women over men in his mills, ostensibly so that he could pay them less. 

Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller are not presented as Teacher and her severely handicapped pupil, but as a New Englander and a Southerner whose partnership was the first and most successful union between North and South after the Civil War.

Melzar Mosman, largely forgotten as one of the foremost founders of bronze statuary in this country, is shown not just as the foundryman, artist, and sculptor, but as a Union Army private, an experience he would re-live with every bronze statue of a solider standing picket duty that came out of his foundry to find a home on town commons across New England, and of generals across America.  Mr. Mosman, incidentally, will be the subject of a future book.

The 19^th century chapters seem to illustrate the spawning of ideas and inventions which made history; the 20^th century seems to show us reacting to events, like hurricanes, and juggling consequences. In the 19^th century, through the Industrial Revolution, we drew upon a new workforce (women), and created a market for manufactured goods.  In the early 20^th century—we shopped—in grand, family-owned department stores just as paternalistic as the factories of the previous century.

 These then are slices of New England, not just the place, but the idea and social movement, and the force that largely determined what America would be like in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  You can find its representation in the bricks and mortar of a factory building, or in the hobnailed boots of the mill girl who found both exhaustion and independence there. 

Thank you for your kind attention.  Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

 

Steiger's Recipe Book -- Reader's Question:

Recently a reader contacted me about an item offered from Steiger's, the family-owned department store that had originated in Springfield, Massachusetts -- see our previous post here.

"I wonder if you know anything about a recipe book put out by Steiger's in the 40's? The title across the top is: "Steiger's Wishes You a Gingeriffic Christmas" and a picture of a gingerbread man below that with the following under the gingerbread man: Wake up! it's Christmas

The book contains recipes for cookies. If you could direct me to where I could find this book on line I would appreciate it."  

If anyone has any information about this recipe book so we can help this reader out, please contact me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com.   Thanks.