The Borrowed Years

“In May of 1941 the war had just begun The Germans has the biggest ships, they had the biggest guns The Bismarck was the fastest ship that ever sailed the sea On her deck were guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees” Johnny Horton, “Sink the Bismarck” In 1960, my senior year at Upper Dublin High School, country singer Johnny Horton’s hit reached number 3 on Billboard’s Top 50. Never mind historical inconsistencies (the war in Europe had begun in 1939) and the fact that many Americans mistakenly believed that U.S. vessels had downed the battleship (spoofed by Homer and Jethro in “We Didn’t Sink the Bismarck”), it was a successful follow-up to Horton’s 1959 saga “The Battle of New Orleans.” In the Banta Center library I found Richard M. Ketchum’s 900-page tome “The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941: America on the Way to War” (1989). I decided I’d skip the chapters on foreign policy and just read ones on domestic life. The author, like my dad Vic, grew up in the Pittsburgh area, hard hit by the depression but during the late 1930s such a soot-darkened place that cars and trolleys kept their lights on during the day. Bingo, invented in 1929 by Edwin S. Lowe, was a popular diversion employed by churches and charities as a fund-raising tool. Ketchum mentions Black blues singer Bessie Smith bleeding to death in Tennessee after an auto accident because a hospital available to Black patients was so far away. Ketchum’s mother wouldn’t allow Richard’s fourth-grade friend, Sylvan Jubeliver, to come to their home because he was a Jew; and the author describes how the passenger ship St. Louis carrying a thousand Jewish refugees, some of whom later died at the hands of the Nazis, wasn’t permitted to land in a U.S. port. Unlike my father’s family, that was hard-hit by the Great Depression, Ketchum’s father’s advertising agency, Ketchum, McLeod, and Grove, managed to survive, enabling Richard, 16 in 1938 to attend Shady Side Academy and then Yale (Vic would have turned 22 in October 1938, and graduated from Pitt after securing part-time work in the steel mills). George Ketchum remained a rock-ribbed Republican, and his son was invited to several debutante parties in June of 1940 before taking a summer job on the TAT ranch in Wyoming. In a chapter titled “’the finest party I ever attended,’” Echoing the opening lines of “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, Ketchum wrote: Ah, but those were grand times – maybe even the best of times if you were lucky enough to have been born at the right moment, in the right place, in the right circumstances. Europe was ravaged by barbarians, America’s underprivileged were jobless and hungry, much of the world was at war, but a Pittsburgh boy whose family had managed to survive the Depression more or less intact could drive through a mill town’s silent slums, en route to the country club to play tennis and swim, and scarcely notice the lines of gray figures patiently shuffling toward the soup kitchens, or the shabby houses where women and children sat on rotting doorsteps, staring at an alien world with eyes that knew no hope. I know, because I was one of the lucky few. Ketchum recalled nights dancing to big bands, most memorably to Benny Goodman’s swing music at Kennywood Park and debutante parties lasting well past midnight. One night around 3 a.m. he and four buddies in a two-toned Buick convertible pulled into a White Tower on North Craig Street, and Richard ordered two hamburgers costing five cents apiece and a milkshake. Ketchum speculated that the man who served them had learned to expect “just about anything - the drunk, the panhandler, the stick-up man, the pre-dawn visits by prep-school boys in dress suits” and whose chief concern “was whether the customers paid before leaving.” On December 7, 1941, Ketchum was in New York City staying at the apartment of his girlfriend Barbara “Bobs” bray and her sister Louise. He was working on a Yale senior thesis about the history of the new Yorker. He heard about Pearl Harbor on the radio while drinking a hot chocolate at a soda fountain. Ketchum wrote: “As in millions of homes tat night, we talked the hours away, for the first time contemplating a future in which the two of us might be separated for long periods, though we would not admit to the unspoken fear beneath the surface – the possibility that I might go off to war and not come back. It never occurred to us that what lay ahead would prove to be the great divide for our generation – not only a chasm that would swallow up some of our closest friends, but the demarcation line against which we would measure time and change ever afterward, as the Civil War and the First World War marked them off for our great grandfathers’ and fathers’ generations.” Using information gleaned in “The Borrowed Years,” I sent this email to Susan McGrath: “Having been born Feb. 24, 1942, which I have to repeat every time I pick up pills at CVS Pharmacy, I figure I was conceived in May 1941, the month “Citizen Kane” opened in theaters, Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo” was number 1, and the British sank the Bismarck after it had sunk the British cruiser HMS Hood, killing over 1,400 on board. Fifteen-minute radio daytime serials (dubbed soup operas because so many sponsors made products aimed at housewives) were the rage (‘The Goldbergs’, ‘Just Plain Bill,’ ‘The Road to Life,’ ‘Big Sister,’ Myrt and Marge,’ and many more). In the afternoon they gave way to kids’ shows such as “Little Orphan Annie’ and ‘Jack Armstrong – All-American Boy.’ At 7 o’clock came the top-rated comedy ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy,’ with white actors Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll posing a Black folks. In sports Joe DiMaggio began his 56-game hitting streak and Ted Williams’ batting average reached .400.” Susan replied: “I have a number of friends who remember our fathers ‘going to war.’ Gayle Jenkins lived over a bakery with her two sisters. We all talked of writing a book about how things were for us war babies. We were all born 9 months after our fathers left. My brothers, mother, and I moved into what became the Rising Sun Hotel in Telford PA. It was not an Inn when we either rented it or bought it. My aunt who had an enormous influence on our lives, lived with us and probably bought the place. I was about one year old but have very fond memories of that time. My aunt taught school in Philadelphia and had many interesting leftist friends stay with us. The women really took over our feminist household. My father was sent to Hawaii to make relief maps for the war effort.” I wrote back: “My dad, Vic, was a chemist and his work was deemed vital to the war effort. I think he regretted not serving. Hawaii would have been an ideal place (after Pearl Harbor, that is) to be stationed. A friend, John Haller, who is a couple years older than I, recalls being at an army base ceremony at war’s end when all the adults closed their eyes during a prayer. When his parents opened their eyes, they discovered to their horror that little Johnny must have discovered wads of gum on the bottoms of folding chairs and had about a half-dozen of them in his mouth.” At Banta Center Chris Prohl and I finished in the middle of the pack at duplicate bridge but had one memorable hand against the winning East-West pair, Wayne Carpenter and Dave Bilger. Carpenter, a former steelworker, is a ruby life master, having earned over 1,500 master points (in contrast I have about 70). After they had a top board against us for being the only pair to bid and make game, Chris and I bid 4 Spades, vulnerable. Because they weren’t vulnerable and had both been biding Diamonds, Dave bid 5 Diamonds, figuring they could go down 3 Doubled and still lose fewer points than if we made game. Chris, however, bid 5 Spades, Dave doubled, and I made all but one trick. I held the Ace of Diamonds, got trump out, and then set up four Club tricks after losing the Ace. Bigler recalled that I had interviewed him three years ago and mentioned him in a subsequent Steel Shavings. He was a student at IUN and got stuck there during the blizzard of 1967. He was working at the mill and had a student deferment because he was carrying 12 credit hours. His second semester an instructor had such a heavy accent, Dave couldn’t understand him. His adviser said he could drop the class and take it later. After he followed suit, he got drafted since he no longer was a full-time student. He when into the air force, something he doesn’t regret, and completed his degree decades later after a career with U.S. Steel. He became a special education teacher at Hobart, and from his sunny personality and self-confidence, I’m certain he was a good one. Here what I wrote about his bridge career: Bigler learned bridge at a young age from his parents and played related games in college, including euchre, bid whist, and a similar Serbin version, but he didn’t again take up the card game seriously until invited to join a Bridge O Rama in Portage. Henceforth, in retirement, he and Chuck Briggs formed a successful partnership. Dave enjoys teaching bridge to beginners and introducing them to area games. He’s been involved in Little league baseball for 30 years and on the Hobart school board since 2003. I gave Bigler a DVD of our interview, deposited a second one in the Calumet Regional Archives, and at his request burned one for his grandson.