I heard the bells on Christmas Day,Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet, the words repeat,
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow~
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Merry Christmas, Dear Friends
I heard the bells on Christmas Day,Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet, the words repeat,
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow~
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Thank you, Frank.
Frank H. Chambers(Photo: The Journal Star)
* * *
Sixty-five years ago, on December 16, 1944, one of the greatest battles in American history began: The Battle of the Bulge. Seven hundred thousand troops, mostly American, participated. And when it was over, on January 25, 1945, 19,000 Americans were dead, 47,500 were wounded, and 23,000 missing.
Fast-forward fifteen years: It is a cold, dark morning in 1960. I am nineteen years old and beginning my first job. As I gaze at the tall, intimidating building at 43 East Ohio Street in downtown Chicago, I consider hopping on the next south-bound Greyhound and heading back to Kentucky. What's in store for me? Can I do the job? Will I mess up and be fired the first day? What will my boss be like?
As it turned out, I had two bosses: Cullen B. Sweet and Frank Chambers.
Mr. Sweet was a laughing, gregarious man with white hair. He was very kind, but I was a little uncomfortable around him, reluctant to ask questions, afraid of doing something wrong.
Frank Chambers immediately put me at ease with his open, friendly manner. He took an interest in me as a person, wanted to meet Carroll, hear all about my family in Kentucky. When I needed help, he told me what I needed to know, how to do it. When I was ready to throw up my hands in despair, he appeared and made things right.
"You're doing a great job, Brenda," he often said, "This letter is perfect!"
"I'm glad you changed the wording in this report, Brenda. It reads much better!"
He took Carroll and me under his wing, invited us into his home; he and wife Doris treated us like family. (I will never forget what fun we had one Saturday night playing cards, their two little ones, Margie and Johnny, giggling and playing nearby.) After we relocated with the company to Bloomington, Illinois, we often dined out together, went to their home for cook-outs.
In the mid-seventies, Frank took a position with the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation and he and Doris relocated to Lincoln. A few years later, Carroll and I parted ways and Suzanne and I moved home to Kentucky.
After exchanging Christmas cards and letters every now and then, we lost touch. But I'm happy to say Frank and I recently reconnected and are corresponding frequently, catching up on each other's lives, reminiscing about days gone by. He is 86 years old now and still going strong. He has changed little in the thirty years since I last saw him.
I knew Frank had served in the Army in World War II, but I had no idea he had participated in The Battle of the Bulge. He kept a journal during the war and his younger brother saved all of the letters Frank had written him while he was overseas. He recorded his experiences on DVD and sent me a copy; he also sent me this story, which made the front page of the Lincoln Journal Star on December 16th.
Thank you, Frank, for your service to our country. And thank you for being such a good friend to me.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Life
Life is a process of becoming,
A combination of states we have to go through.
Where people fail is they wish to elect a state and remain in it.
This is a kind of death.
~Anais Nin~
~Anais Nin~
Thursday, November 26, 2009
A Peaked-Looking Housecat
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. There's nothing I enjoy more than getting together with family and friends, enjoying a big meal, visiting, reminiscing.
When I was growing up, we usually had Thanksgiving dinner at our house. The house was bursting at the seams, with various people in attendance from year to year, but Maw Maw Wilson and Maw Maw and Paw Paw George were always there.
Mother cooked a big turkey, made cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes & giblet gravy, corn, cherry pies. Maw Maw George brought sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows, green beans simmered for hours with fatback, pumpkin pies, a three-layer cake, (oftentimes jam). Maw Maw Wilson brought roast pork (so tender you could cut it with a fork), turnip greens, and apple pies, the likes of which I have never tasted since.
Afterward, the men retired to the living room, lighting up their pipes and cigarettes as they settled back in their chairs for the afternoon. The kids rushed out to play, and the women stayed at the dining table, lingering over coffee and dessert.
One sunny Thanksgiving day, when I was about nine, my brothers and sisters were playing baseball. I didn't want to play. I was no good at it anyway. So I stayed inside, skulking here and there, evesdropping on the adults.
There was nothing much happening in the living room; the men were talking about farming and politics. The women talked about politics, too, and they reminisced. But my ears really perked up when I heard more interesting tidbits: Geraldine had a spell last night. It was a bad one, Toy said. Node Morgan's wife ran off and left her kids. Poor Miss Eda had one of her nerve attacks in church last Sunday. She's not doing any good.
"What's a nerve attack?" I said, "Where did Node Morgan's wife run off to?"
"Brenda, what are you doing in here?" Mother said, "Go on outside and play with the other kids."
"You need to get out there in the sunshine," Maw Maw George said, "You look kind of peaked."
Peaked?
I rushed to my bedroom and gazed in the mirror, searching my face. Was it serious? Did I look sick? Outside, I could hear the smack of the bat and my brothers and sisters cheering.
"Come on, Brenda," Terry called through the window, "We need another player!"
"I told you I don't want to play!"
And then I thought about my peakedness. Maybe baseball would help.
I rushed outside, where I was soon up to bat. Terry tried to show me how to hold it, but I grabbed the bat and held it with both hands directly in front of me.
"I'll hold it however I want!" I said, "Just throw it!"
He suddenly spun around and threw the ball.
I dodged, but the it hit me on the arm. So I threw the bat down and headed toward the house.
"Where you going?" said Mary Ellen.
"The game isn't over," Pitty Pat said.
"I don't feel like playing. I'm peaked."
"You are not!" said Mary Ellen, hands on her hips, "You're just using that for an excuse!"
Pitty Pat stared at me, a thoughtful look on her face. "You don't look peaked."
"I'll tell you what she is," called Terry, "She's a housecat. A peaked-looking housecat!"
When I was growing up, we usually had Thanksgiving dinner at our house. The house was bursting at the seams, with various people in attendance from year to year, but Maw Maw Wilson and Maw Maw and Paw Paw George were always there.
Mother cooked a big turkey, made cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes & giblet gravy, corn, cherry pies. Maw Maw George brought sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows, green beans simmered for hours with fatback, pumpkin pies, a three-layer cake, (oftentimes jam). Maw Maw Wilson brought roast pork (so tender you could cut it with a fork), turnip greens, and apple pies, the likes of which I have never tasted since.
Afterward, the men retired to the living room, lighting up their pipes and cigarettes as they settled back in their chairs for the afternoon. The kids rushed out to play, and the women stayed at the dining table, lingering over coffee and dessert.
One sunny Thanksgiving day, when I was about nine, my brothers and sisters were playing baseball. I didn't want to play. I was no good at it anyway. So I stayed inside, skulking here and there, evesdropping on the adults.
There was nothing much happening in the living room; the men were talking about farming and politics. The women talked about politics, too, and they reminisced. But my ears really perked up when I heard more interesting tidbits: Geraldine had a spell last night. It was a bad one, Toy said. Node Morgan's wife ran off and left her kids. Poor Miss Eda had one of her nerve attacks in church last Sunday. She's not doing any good.
"What's a nerve attack?" I said, "Where did Node Morgan's wife run off to?"
"Brenda, what are you doing in here?" Mother said, "Go on outside and play with the other kids."
"You need to get out there in the sunshine," Maw Maw George said, "You look kind of peaked."
Peaked?
I rushed to my bedroom and gazed in the mirror, searching my face. Was it serious? Did I look sick? Outside, I could hear the smack of the bat and my brothers and sisters cheering.
"Come on, Brenda," Terry called through the window, "We need another player!"
"I told you I don't want to play!"
And then I thought about my peakedness. Maybe baseball would help.
I rushed outside, where I was soon up to bat. Terry tried to show me how to hold it, but I grabbed the bat and held it with both hands directly in front of me.
"I'll hold it however I want!" I said, "Just throw it!"
He suddenly spun around and threw the ball.
I dodged, but the it hit me on the arm. So I threw the bat down and headed toward the house.
"Where you going?" said Mary Ellen.
"The game isn't over," Pitty Pat said.
"I don't feel like playing. I'm peaked."
"You are not!" said Mary Ellen, hands on her hips, "You're just using that for an excuse!"
Pitty Pat stared at me, a thoughtful look on her face. "You don't look peaked."
"I'll tell you what she is," called Terry, "She's a housecat. A peaked-looking housecat!"
* * *
Happy Thanksgiving, dear friends. And God bless.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Memoirs
I know I have been neglecting my blog again, and I apologize to my readers. I've been working on my memoirs.
Here are a few excerpts:
Part I - Windy City
I was mesmerized by my co-workers at 43 East Ohio Street, who welcomed me into the fold with open arms. I had grown up in a small town in Kentucky where everyone was white and Southern Baptist, girls taught to keep smiles on their faces, be nice to everyone and keep their personal lives to themselves. Most of the Chicago girls were Catholic, a religion that was unacceptable down home. Or at least in our little community, where backwoods preachers ruled with threats of eternal agony in the lake of fire to those who questioned their doctrine.
The girls knew nothing about keeping their personal lives to themselves; they didn’t care what they said or how someone took what they said. Most of them smoked and drank and were fond of saying, “Oh, my Gawd!” in response to just about everything. They were kind and caring. And they were not hypocrites. I began to rethink my religious upbringing, and, for the first time in my life, question it.
Down on the fourth floor, Carroll was getting a rude awakening. Marie, his boss (whom I nicknamed "Helmet Head"), was a wild-eyed, fifty-something spinster who wore her bleached hair in a heavily sprayed pageboy. She ruled the accounting department with an iron hand, and nothing anyone did pleased her. She yelled, stomped and threw fits when everything wasn’t going to her satisfaction. Some days she went into frenzies and yelled so loud that she could be heard from one end of the fourth floor to the other.
Each day, on our way home, Carroll had another story to tell about Helmet Head. She had jumped all over him or a co-worker, yelled at someone for a mistake, or made a mistake and blamed someone else. One day she ran out of her office, glaring at Carroll and others in the department. They hadn’t done anything wrong, so she reared back and kicked the file cabinet. She blamed them all when she broke her big toe.
* * *
Since Carroll and I had no money, we were short in the clothing department. I had three outfits, a blue shirtwaist dress and a two-piece floral green dress with a peplum and straight skirt. They were seconds; I bought them at a factory in Southern Illinois for three dollars each. The third was a beige sheath wool dress with a short matching jacket, the neckline trimmed in fur, which I splurged on when we went to a company banquet at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. I rotated the outfits that whole winter.
Carroll owned two used suits, a black one, the trousers of which were long enough for a six-foot man (he was five feet, four inches tall). When they were altered for him they just cut off the legs, and if he raised his leg you could see his Fruit of the Looms. He called them his “Knee Straddlers.”
“Looks like it’s the Knee-Straddlers today," he'd say, pulling on the wide-legged trousers, or “Can’t decide what to wear today; oh, I think I’ll wear my ‘Panama Suit!’”
The Panama Suit was a very light gray flannel, almost white, which reminded me of Humphrey Bogart's attire in “Casablanca.” His wool topcoat, given to him by a tall friend in Southern Illinois, sported tiny blue checks on a cream background, and it fell to his ankles.
“We should have it shortened,” I said.
“Keeps my legs warm," said Carroll.
* * *
One Sunday night in June there was a knock at our door and in walked a childhood friend of Carroll's with his bride. They had gotten married that afternoon, and immediately after the reception they had jumped in their car and driven three hundred miles to our little two-room attic apartment in Brookfield.
“Is it okay if we stay with you’ens until you get us a job where you work and we find a place?” he said, an expectant smile on his face.
We gave them the pinstripe couch, and Carroll and I slept on the kitchen floor. Our apartment was small, and although they were in the next room, they slept less than eight feet from us.
“Why on earth would they want to spend their wedding night, with us right here?” I whispered to Carroll, trying to block out the squeak, squeak, squeak of the old pinstripe couch.
“Hell if I know,” he said, bumping his head against the leg of the dining table, “But if that fu*king couch collapses, the landlord will make us pay for it.”
Here are a few excerpts:
Part I - Windy City
I was mesmerized by my co-workers at 43 East Ohio Street, who welcomed me into the fold with open arms. I had grown up in a small town in Kentucky where everyone was white and Southern Baptist, girls taught to keep smiles on their faces, be nice to everyone and keep their personal lives to themselves. Most of the Chicago girls were Catholic, a religion that was unacceptable down home. Or at least in our little community, where backwoods preachers ruled with threats of eternal agony in the lake of fire to those who questioned their doctrine.
The girls knew nothing about keeping their personal lives to themselves; they didn’t care what they said or how someone took what they said. Most of them smoked and drank and were fond of saying, “Oh, my Gawd!” in response to just about everything. They were kind and caring. And they were not hypocrites. I began to rethink my religious upbringing, and, for the first time in my life, question it.
Down on the fourth floor, Carroll was getting a rude awakening. Marie, his boss (whom I nicknamed "Helmet Head"), was a wild-eyed, fifty-something spinster who wore her bleached hair in a heavily sprayed pageboy. She ruled the accounting department with an iron hand, and nothing anyone did pleased her. She yelled, stomped and threw fits when everything wasn’t going to her satisfaction. Some days she went into frenzies and yelled so loud that she could be heard from one end of the fourth floor to the other.
Each day, on our way home, Carroll had another story to tell about Helmet Head. She had jumped all over him or a co-worker, yelled at someone for a mistake, or made a mistake and blamed someone else. One day she ran out of her office, glaring at Carroll and others in the department. They hadn’t done anything wrong, so she reared back and kicked the file cabinet. She blamed them all when she broke her big toe.
* * *
Since Carroll and I had no money, we were short in the clothing department. I had three outfits, a blue shirtwaist dress and a two-piece floral green dress with a peplum and straight skirt. They were seconds; I bought them at a factory in Southern Illinois for three dollars each. The third was a beige sheath wool dress with a short matching jacket, the neckline trimmed in fur, which I splurged on when we went to a company banquet at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. I rotated the outfits that whole winter.
Carroll owned two used suits, a black one, the trousers of which were long enough for a six-foot man (he was five feet, four inches tall). When they were altered for him they just cut off the legs, and if he raised his leg you could see his Fruit of the Looms. He called them his “Knee Straddlers.”
“Looks like it’s the Knee-Straddlers today," he'd say, pulling on the wide-legged trousers, or “Can’t decide what to wear today; oh, I think I’ll wear my ‘Panama Suit!’”
The Panama Suit was a very light gray flannel, almost white, which reminded me of Humphrey Bogart's attire in “Casablanca.” His wool topcoat, given to him by a tall friend in Southern Illinois, sported tiny blue checks on a cream background, and it fell to his ankles.
“We should have it shortened,” I said.
“Keeps my legs warm," said Carroll.
* * *
One Sunday night in June there was a knock at our door and in walked a childhood friend of Carroll's with his bride. They had gotten married that afternoon, and immediately after the reception they had jumped in their car and driven three hundred miles to our little two-room attic apartment in Brookfield.
“Is it okay if we stay with you’ens until you get us a job where you work and we find a place?” he said, an expectant smile on his face.
We gave them the pinstripe couch, and Carroll and I slept on the kitchen floor. Our apartment was small, and although they were in the next room, they slept less than eight feet from us.
“Why on earth would they want to spend their wedding night, with us right here?” I whispered to Carroll, trying to block out the squeak, squeak, squeak of the old pinstripe couch.
“Hell if I know,” he said, bumping his head against the leg of the dining table, “But if that fu*king couch collapses, the landlord will make us pay for it.”
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Theo's Story
Books about politics and corruption are not my favorites, I must admit. But when I began Ron Rhody's novel, Theo's Story, I could hardly put it down.
It all begins on a snowy night in 1941, when the coatless body of prominent newspaperman Benjamin Dannan is found beside a lonely road in eastern Kentucky one hundred miles from home. No one knows why he was there, how he got there, or whether his death is an accident or a murder.
Thirty years later, Dannan's son, Michael, CEO of a large corporation in San Francisco, moves back to Kentucky to run for governor, drafting his boyhood friend, Theo, to help him make it happen.
And thus begins a fascinating tale that takes you through the hills and hollows of Kentucky, climaxing in a struggle for the governorship between a self-made Appalachian power broker and a rich and gifted young man who has everything going for him.
It all begins on a snowy night in 1941, when the coatless body of prominent newspaperman Benjamin Dannan is found beside a lonely road in eastern Kentucky one hundred miles from home. No one knows why he was there, how he got there, or whether his death is an accident or a murder.
Thirty years later, Dannan's son, Michael, CEO of a large corporation in San Francisco, moves back to Kentucky to run for governor, drafting his boyhood friend, Theo, to help him make it happen.
And thus begins a fascinating tale that takes you through the hills and hollows of Kentucky, climaxing in a struggle for the governorship between a self-made Appalachian power broker and a rich and gifted young man who has everything going for him.
Rhody weaves such an intricate tapestry of Kentucky's diverse geography, cultures, and rich history that I felt I was riding along with Michael and Theo as they drove from one end of Kentucky to the other, gaining the support of powerful politicians throughout the Commonwealth; I was with them as they entered the mystical world of the Melungeons. (I've always been intrigued by the Melungeons!). It held my attention every step of the way. And that is no small feat!
The mystery, suspense, and clearly drawn characters make this book a real page-turner. There is love and romance, ambition and murder, and it's all bundled into a mystery that doesn't play out until the very end. And what an ending it is!
Ron Rhody is a former newspaperman and broadcast journalist who grew up in Kentucky where he learned his craft. He now lives with his wife in Pinehurst, North Carolina. He is the author of several books, but Theo's Story is his first piece of fiction.
I hope it is not his last.
The mystery, suspense, and clearly drawn characters make this book a real page-turner. There is love and romance, ambition and murder, and it's all bundled into a mystery that doesn't play out until the very end. And what an ending it is!
Ron Rhody is a former newspaperman and broadcast journalist who grew up in Kentucky where he learned his craft. He now lives with his wife in Pinehurst, North Carolina. He is the author of several books, but Theo's Story is his first piece of fiction.
I hope it is not his last.
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All words and pictures © 2008 Brenda G. Wooley
