Our Father's Generation

by F. M. Worden

  She started telling me about herself. “I’ve been a dancer with my father since I was eight. We’ve danced all over the U.S. in night clubs. Now, I have left him and am going back to New York, to be in actress school in the city, I hope to dance in Broadway shows and maybe the movies.”

  “Lady, if good looks get it done, you’re a shoe-in.” She laughed the best laugh I had ever heard. I told her I was on my way to Europe to study architecture.

  “Your looks are good enough to be an actor; you should come with me and study to be one.” That really made my day.

  I asked if she was traveling in a chair car; she was. I asked if I could sit with her? She was very pleasant and said she would be pleased to have me as a companion. She was in the car ahead of mine. We went and got what she called her overnight case, came back and sat in the seats I had. We made small talk way into the night, I found she was born in Brooklyn.

  The Conductor came by and gave us pillows for the night, they cost ten cents each. She didn’t need hers as she used my shoulder and chest for hers, O, how good she smelled. I can still smell her perfume, it was the best.

  Somewhere around midnight, our Conductor came by and told us he was getting off and a new one would be getting on; he wished me a lot of luck. He looked at the lady asleep on my chest. “Son, I see you are all ready having good luck.” he smiled and left.

  We must have been changing engines as we sat still for some time, and then moved on. The lady was curled up in her chair and stayed sound asleep. It was well passed day light when she woke up. She took her case and went to the ladies room and returned looking like a true living Goddess, Holly cow! She was beautiful.

  The new Conductor came by and asked if we were man and wife. Boy- O- Boy, did that make me feel good. She told him, “Maybe someday, but not now.” That made me feel even better to think I might have a chance with a lady like her.

  He asked our names, I had never thought to ask hers. She told him, “Rita Casino, I’m changing it to Rita Hayworth, that’s my Mother’s maiden name, that will be my stage name.”

  I remarked, “It’s a beautiful name.”

  We went to the dining car for breakfast. The whole day flew by, too fast to suit me. That night I had her sleep on my shoulder again, but this time I had my right arm around her all night. How lucky could a guy be to have her beautiful face so close to mine and to smell her perfume? It almost drove me crazy. The next day, we did the same as the day before, it flew by. The night was the same, her asleep on my shoulder. I want-a tell ya, it was pure torture being that close to her and not being able to make love to her.

  The next day, in the early afternoon, we entered Grand Central Station. What a place, she knew her way around like the native she was. Off the train, I followed her to the baggage room, I told you she knew her way around. The man in the baggage room said it would be awhile before our trunks would come. We sat on a bench talking for most of an hour, it was the most pleasant hour I had ever spent.

  When the trunks arrived, a deep feeling of sorrow came over me. She called a man in a red cap to come and take our trunks to the cab stand. He set them on a cart and we followed him out to where a line of yellow taxi cabs sat. The driver, with my help, put the trunks on a rack on the back of the cab and strapped them down.

  Inside the cab, the driver asked where we were going. She gave him an address uptown and I said, “Pier 19.” He told us he would take her uptown and then me to the Hudson River. As we rode, I sat feasting my eyes on her, I bet I looked like some love sick kid. At her destination, I helped the driver carry her trunk inside, she was checking in at the desk. The driver said he would wait in the cab. She turned to me and floated over, put both arms around my neck and gave me the best kiss on the lips I had ever had. She backed off and said, “How do you like that, Frank?”

  Without a word, I reached and with both hands pulled her to me, put both arms around her and kissed her as hard as I could on her beautiful lips. She backed off again and said, “Why don’t you stay in New York? We could get to like each other.”

  “I can’t, Rita, I made a promise to my uncle. If I stayed, I’d be a basket case around you. I have to go.” As I reached the door, I turned back and thru her a kiss, she thru one back and waved good bye.

  As I entered the cab, I said to myself. “I could fall in love with that woman.” The driver brought me back to the present. “You ever were in the city before?” He could tell I hadn’t by the way I had been gawking around looking at the tall buildings. “My name is Dave, that girl we dropped off is the best thing I ever saw, bar none, you her boyfriend?”

  “No, sir” I told him. “I sure wish I was.”

  “I’ll tell you friend, if she don’t become a star on the stage or in the movies, I’ll miss my bet.” Dave was taken with her, too Then he said, “I’ll drive ya down Fifth Avenue, when I tell ya roll down the window on your right, you’ll see the tallest building in the world, the Empire State Building.” I did as he said, why, I couldn’t even see the top from where I sat.

  At Pier 19, he stopped the cab in front of an office with a sign that read {Grace Ship Lines.} Dave helped me set my trunk off and said, “If you ever get to the city again, look me up I’ll be here.” What a nice man, everyone I’d met so far treated me nice, I hoped it would continue.

  In the office, a man behind a counter asked my name. I told him and he took an envelope from a cubby hole and handed it to me. Inside, I found a ticket telling me I had a passage on a boat going to Cherbourg, France. I asked the man, “Where do I get the boat that’s going to France?”

  “Turn around, son you’ll be looking at it, and it ain’t a boat, it’s a ship. I’ll get someone to take your trunk aboard.” I thanked him, went out, picked up my suitcase and walked up the gang plank.

  At the top, I met a man on board the ship, he asked for my ticket. Looking at it, he told me I was in cabin 10. “Go down these steps,” he pointed to a door. “Number 10 cabin is the third door on the right.” Then he said, “Breakfast is from seven to nine, lunch eleven to one and dinner six to eight. Your life preserver is in your cabin, you have any questions?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “Do I get a cabin to myself?”

  “No, you’ll have a Bunkie.”

  “A beautiful girl?” I laughingly asked him.

  “O sure, just what a young guy like you needs,” he said with a smile “We try to fix you up with a guy your own age. If you are hungry, go to the kitchen, the cooks will feed you.”

  “Sir,” I said, “I have no idea where the kitchen is.”

  “In the hallway your cabin is in, the Dining room is up the stairs if you keep going straight on, you will find the kitchen there, is that your trunk on the dock?”

  “Yes, sir, that green one down there.” He told me a man would go get it and bring it to my cabin. I thanked him and hurried to cabin 10. Inside, I saw two bunks on each wall, a desk and a closet, a door led to the bathroom. There were no port holes in the cabin.

  I went to the Kitchen; there were ten cooks in white clothes sitting around a table. They fixed me a great meal and I had a lot of conversation with them. They told me the people would come aboard tomorrow and we would sail the next morning. I walked the deck of the ship around and around. The lights of the city were spectacular, a sight I could not in my wildest imagination ever expect to see again.

  That night, I wrote mother and Uncle Bob, took a shower and turned in. The next morning, I was up early, washed and hung my other suit in the closet. I went up to breakfast. After the meal, I went to watch the people coming aboard. There were all kinds and lots of young girls. Hot dog, this trip was going to be ok, I said to myself.

  That afternoon, I got to meet my Bunkie, an old fart who started in bitch-en before he even told me his name. He was a German and lived in Berlin, he said he was a professor of languages.

  I returned to the deck to watch the people. I walked around the ship and met a guy who said he was a sailor on this ship, we had a nic
e conversation. He knew I had never been on a ship before, how he knew I never discovered, anyway, he seemed to be a nice person. He told me we would sail the next morning about nine a.m. “Be on the port side when we pull out and you will see the Statue of Liberty, I always get a little choked up when I see her. Mister, this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, I always think of that when I see her.”

  I thanked him for talking with me and went to the stern of the ship and sat in a deck chair to watch the lights of the city come on as the darkness fell. A great stroke of luck fell on me there, I hadn’t sat there for more than a few minutes when this comely young girl came and asked if she could sit in the chair next to me. I stood and told her I would be pleased to have her company. She was no Rita but wasn’t bad and I couldn’t be too choosy, what did I have to lose? Turned out I came to like the young woman. Her name was Jane Hardy and she was the daughter of Judge Hardy. Did you ever see the movie with Mickey Rooney where he played Andrew Hardy, the son of a Judge Hardy? This girl was not the daughter of that judge.

  We sat and talked until eleven o’clock. This girl was really easy to be with, I found out she had just had her seventeenth birthday. I walked her to her cabin, no she and her folks were in a state room cabin. She introduced me to the folks and right away I could tell her mother didn’t care for me. Her mom was quite a bit younger than the old judge, I felt he liked me right way. Did I care one way or the other? “No!”

  I went to my cabin to go to bed; Holy Cow, that old fart was snoring so loud I had to plug up my ears. That night I couldn’t get much sleep. The next morning, I went out on deck on the port side.

  All the people on board seemed to be there, there was a crowd of people on the dock yelling and waving like crazy. This girl Jane came and took my arm and told some of those crazies were from her family. We both starting laughing so hard, I couldn’t control myself, I grabbed her and hugged her so hard she asked me to stop, then she did the same to me. In all this confusion, I planted a kiss on her lips, boy, did she kiss back. Come to find out her steady boyfriend was on the dock waving, she just did it to make him jealous.

  If he had been on this ship, he would have reason to get jealous. We did a lot of hug-n and kiss-n before the trip was over, I never tried anything like Gloria and I did. This girl was too ready to suit me, I wasn’t about to get locked into a relationship I could not control.

  Any way, as the ship pulled out, I could see the Statue of Liberty and I really got choked up myself, she is a beauty. Soon we were in open water and on the way to France. Jane and I spent the whole day together and went to the dance in the ballroom that evening, a most enjoyable time. Thank God, the professor changed cabins; I had one all to myself.

  The whole ship could see me and Jane we’re getting pretty thick. A few days later, a kindly old gentleman stopped me in the hallway. We were about ten days out from New York. He asked if I knew about Jane’s father. All I knew he was some kind of judge.

  He said they were from Newark, New Jersey. She had told me that. He said during prohibition, he was a bootlegger and was in with gangsters. That was enough for me. I became very cool with Jane. She knew something was wrong and started fooling around with a bunch of college students on vacation. That suited me just fine.

  I found another girl the next day. She was French and said her name was Mamie. Hot Dog, I got me a French teacher. She said she was nineteen, she looked twenty-five. Anyway, we hit it right off. All she wanted to do was hug and kiss; I found she was good at that. We docked at Cherbourg, France, late in the evening. There was a big dance in the ballroom that night. The Captain gave us a speech about how he had enjoyed all our company.

  The next morning, I caught the train with Mamie to Paris; Guess what? Mamie’s husband met her at the station, I had been messing in someone else’s garden. Live and learn.

  Chapter 3

  Paris – Lilly

  At the station, I got my trunk and suitcase out to the taxi stand and was lucky to get a driver who liked Americans. He said he was here during the war and liked the doughboys. That really made me feels good. I asked if he knew a boarding house near the La Villette School of Architecture. He said that was in the Latin Quarter on the left bank of the Seine River and he happened to have a lady friend who had a boarding house in walking distance of the school.

  What good luck to find this taxi driver. The boarding house was a very old house with three stories. A woman in her fifties owned and ran the house. She said it would cost me thirty dollars a month in American money; she made me feel right at home. I would get breakfast and supper with my board. She said four men and three ladies lived there, and I would have a room on the third floor. That suited me just fine. I unpacked and wrote the folks and Uncle Bob letters.

  As the darkness filled my room, I could see from my window why Paris was called the city of lights. The Eiffel Tower stands out in a beautiful golden glow. I was so tired I washed up and went to bed without supper. The next morning, my land lady scolded me badly for not eating the evening meal. She fixed an excellent French breakfast. Yes, sir, the French do make French toast.

  After breakfast, I took a walk to see the school I was going to attend. It took about ten minutes of walking to enter the grounds of the campus. It sat in a park-like setting with only three buildings, old beautiful buildings. I found out later they were built in the seventeenth century. On the way back, I took a little detour up a narrow street with shops and cafes. It was near noon, so I decided to stop and have lunch in one of the cafes. I sat at a table alone. This young girl came and took my order. She really got a kick out of my French, laughing as she took my order. I saw her go tell another waitress about me. She was still laughing hard. This other girl came right over and asked, “Are you an American?”

  “Yes, I sure am; how can you tell?”

  She plopped down in a chair next to me and said, “Your French gives you away.” Then she said with a big smile, “I’m half American; my daddy was a soldier in the war.” Right then I knew I had an in with this beautiful girl.

  I leaned over to her and said, “You’re the most beautiful half American girl I ever saw.” I gave her my biggest smile.

  She said, “You are a funny boy,” and she laughed so nice I had to laugh with her. As I ate my lunch of cheese, bread and milk, I asked if Americans came to her café often. She said she had never seen one here before. I told her I was going to school to be an architect. I asked if she would take a walk with me when she got off work.

  “I’d be pleased to,” she said smiling. “I want to ask you about America.”

  It took over an hour before she got off. I walked up and down the street for that hour and window shopped the small stores along this narrow street. She found me a few doors down from the Café. We walked around the streets talking for the rest of the afternoon. What a delight she was. She told me her mother worked in the Le Jules Verne restaurant in the Eiffel Tower.

  She asked where I came from in America. When I told her the Southwest, right away she asked if I ever saw a cowboy. I told her my folks lived on a cattle ranch and I had been a cowboy. I thought she might have wet her pants; she got so excited about cowboys. What a sweet girl she was. She asked me to go home and meet her mother. “I know she would like to meet you, she always says good things about Americans.”

  While we walked toward her house, she took my hand and said, “I haven’t met many Americans, just the tourists that come to Paris. Most of them are in such a hurry, I never get to talk with them.” In a few minutes, she guided me up the steps to her home. It was a block from my boarding house.

  Wow, what a beauty her mother was. She looked to be twenty-five, but this girl said her mother was thirty-eight. I couldn’t believe this lovely lady was in her thirties. She was a raving beauty, the most beautiful eyes I ever saw and the rest was pretty darn good, too. She spoke perfect English. She introduced herself as Marie La Vou and her daughter’s name was Lilly. “I like Americans, they gave me my Lill
y.” She was smiling all the time and hugging Lilly.

  We sat and talked late into the evening. I got a lot of questions about America. Marie had fixed supper for us. I made a date with Lilly for the next day. I had a week and a half before school started. As I walked home, I felt I was the luckiest boy in all of Paris to have met the most beautiful ladies in all of France.

  At the boarding house, I had a letter from my Mother. She said that my brother Tom went to work for Smiling Jack as a stunt pilot, flying in an air show. Tommy was to be one of the pilots in the show. Her letter said everybody else was good. I’ll bet Tommy was one happy guy.

  The next morning, I had just finished breakfast when Lilly came to my boarding house. She had taken the day off to take me sightseeing. Holy Cow, how lucky can a guy get?

  “Is there anything you’d like to see?” she asked.

  “I would like to see where Lucky Lindy landed in his airplane.”

  “That’s out at Le Bourget Airport,” she said. “Its a few miles north of the city, we can take the Trolley out there.” We had to walk quite a ways to catch the Trolley. We had to stand all the way to the airport. She stood close and she smelled so good I had to contain myself, if you know what I mean.

  We arrived at the airport at noon and had lunch in the airport lounge. When the people there learned I was an American, they all had a story about the night Lindbergh landed. It took several hours to get away from those people. We walked around the field. Lilly told me she was there that night with her mother. “I was 10 years old, I remember the night well.” She showed me the exact spot where the plane set down. “The people would have taken his plane apart if the Gendarmes hadn’t stopped them.” She was so good at explaining what happened the whole time Lindbergh was there. We had a fun afternoon.

  We took the trolley back to the city. It was the same, standing room only. Again, she stood so close; I had to steady her by keeping my arms around her. Her forehead bumped my chin all the way back. She still smelled so good I could hardly stand it, but I did. When we arrived at her house, it was just getting dark. We shook hands and she said, “Come early in the morning, I have the day planned.” She had took another day off just to be with me.