None of us had the economic wisdom to know that that would happen. We always, I guess, have the wisdom of the last economic crisis and not of the present one.
So in 1946 we still had our fingers crossed.
We were rushing off to schools in vast numbers, much to the astonishment of the college administrations, who had been wondering where students would come from now that wartime military training programs were ending. Everyone seemed to want to go to college—returning veterans, kids out of high school from families that had never even considered college, even girls. We were also marrying in record numbers. And getting pregnant. And looking for places to live.
Married veterans were filling up the slumlike “vetvilles” around every major college. Education, family, home, a car, a vacation—that’s what we all wanted in the summer that OPA died, almost by mistake (only to be revived partially in the autumn, again by mistake).
Well, the others wanted those things. I didn’t. I was in no hurry to marry, I didn’t particularly want to go back to school, and I had no plans for a home or kids, though I didn’t exclude them in principle.
What did I want?
Adventure, God help me.
And Romance.
And a Woman to share both.
And on that morning of July 22, 1946, it looked as if I had found all three.
As it turned out, that would be an understatement.
There were three other major events: the Paris Peace Conference, the Bikini (atoll, not swimsuit) atom tests, and the “invasion” of Palestine by Jewish refugees in blockade runners from Cyprus.
The Peace Conference confirmed what was no longer a secret: there was no trust between Russia and the West. Trieste was divided into two sections, one Italian, one Yugoslavian; the Danube was opened to shipping of all nations; Bessarabia and upper Moldavia were taken from Romania by the Soviet Union; in return northern Transylvania—and presumably the ghost of Count Dracula—was taken from Hungary and given to Romania. Russia grabbed Carpatho-Ukraine from Czechoslovakia. That was it, and it made little difference to anyone unless you happened to live in Bessarabia, Moldavia, or Carpatho-Ukraine. And you weren’t used to having a say in your own fate if you lived in those places anyway.
We blasted the hell out of the carriers Independence and Saratoga and the battleships Nevada and New York with our atom bombs at Bikini, and properly scared all the world and maybe ourselves a little too. We also caused radiation damage to some of our own men, which we kept a deep dark secret.
And the Jews with utter dedication to their cause continued to try to run the blockade. A war between them and the Arabs in Palestine was inevitable after they blew up the King David Hotel. Everyone with any sense knew the Arabs would win. Jews are not good fighters, right?
General Marshall was in China trying to make peace between the Nationalists and the Communists; Time reported the Nationalists were winning great victories. Ethel Merman was starring in Annie Get Your Gun; the B-35 “flying wing” and the B-36 bombers were on test flights; Howard Hughes’s “Spruce Goose” was being assembled. DC-6s and Constellations were poking their way across the Atlantic, with stops at Gander in Newfoundland and Shannon, Ireland, and for $310 underselling the Queen Elizabeth by $65 and giving a hint of the future.
Slogans and jingles were blaring at us from the radio: LS/MFT (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco), ABC (Always Buy Chesterfield), Fight gingivitis (sounds terrible, doesn’t it?) with Ipana, Vitalis Sixty-Second Work-Out, Poor Mirrian suffered from a lack of Irrium in her toothpaste. Spic and Span, Dentyne, Camay, Grape-Nuts Flakes—all had their irritating and insidious commercials that seemed to live forever. It would take time for the ad men to learn about overkill.
Princess Elizabeth danced with Guards officers, Margaret Truman danced with Navy officers, Greta Garbo went home to Sweden; the great movie stars were Hedy Lamarr, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, Linda Darnell, Ginger Rogers, Esther Williams, and Maureen O’Hara. Guy Madison and William Holden, still in the service, were the promising male leads.
It was a summer of painted jeans, two-piece swimsuits, the first underwire bras, California-versus-Florida bathing-beauty contests, the Ted Williams shift (all the fielders to the right side of the field) without which the man would have hit .400 every year, Loretta Young modeling nightgowns (chastely but not unattractively), the canonization of Frances Cabrini, albums by Bob Hope or Woody Herman or Lauritz Melchior for $3.50, a nice dress for $10.50, a straw hat (did I say I was wearing one in the station? I won’t mention it again, so shocked will be my kids) for $3.00.
Europe had barely survived the winter, mostly because of UNRRA grain. American farmers, however, had produced the biggest harvest in history and would save the world from starvation next winter (not the last time that would happen). Berlin and Vienna and the other great cities were struggling out of the ashes, but people thought it would take decades for them to be reborn. In fact, it required a few more years.
The U.S. Army had established an elite “constabulary” force with yellow scarves to hunt down Nazis and prevent an underground resurgence of Hitler supporters (which many predicted was certain to occur). In Japan, General MacArthur (damn his eyes!) had replaced the Emperor as God.
We were trying Nazis at Nürnberg, and a place in Denver called the National Opinion Research Center reported that half the American people did not support the Bill of Rights in practice. Gene Talmage, a gallus-snapping redneck who had once grazed pigs on the state house lawn, was again elected Governor of Georgia. Fellow rednecks celebrated by lynching (with shotgun blasts) two black veterans and their wives. Joe Louis mauled poor game Billy Conn. The Normandie was refloated and towed away for scrap.
And a young PT-boat hotshot named Jack Kennedy was running for Congress in Massachusetts.
In Chicago, Ed Kelly “rendered” his resignation as chairman of the Cook County Democratic Committee, to be replaced by Jake Arvey.
Paper dresses, bare shoulders, and buttons all the way down the front were in fashion for women (the “New Look” had yet to arrive). Surveys showed that Americans wanted big cars and wonderful houses. The Labor party, with the most generous and noble intentions possible, was destroying the British economy, Henry Kaiser was selling more Kaiser and Frazer cars than anyone thought he would; Olds was offering a “hydromatic” drive that you didn’t have to shift (my father promptly and with some relief bought my mother one, a convertible, in fact, which says something, I guess, about them), for thirty-five dollars a month you could rent an “isophone” that answered your phone for you and Jeanne Crain, Teresa Wright, Mona Freeman, Donna Reed, and Lizabeth Scott were the most promising of the new actresses.
It was a summer, I suppose, of great expectations and holding your breath, of fear that if you mentioned how good our prospects were beginning to look, they would be torn away from you without warning, just as they had been eighteen years before.
Some of the books written about that period say that all the things wrong with America in the fifties can be traced to the late forties. I suppose so—flaws in our country like universal higher education for women as well as men, the beginning of substantial higher education for blacks and almost full employment; the first led, I am convinced, to the women’s movement, the second to the civil rights movement and the last provided the economic underpinning for both.
That’s not what the critics mean.
But most of their criticism of 1946 misses the point because, like all badly written history, it ignores the context, in this case the context of the Great Depression. We were catching up for fifteen years. It would take us fifteen more years to catch up completely. Then the young PT captain would be elected President and another turning-point year would occur.
I didn’t see any of this in 1946, though I did have a hunch that the Depression was over and that we were in for many years of prosperity. And I was very well aware of the irresistible urge of my contemporaries for a degree, a spouse, a car, a house and kids.
; Nothing much wrong with that.
But I wanted a hell of a lot more. Before midnight, under the full moon of July 22, I thought I might have found it.
CHAPTER 4
WE TOOK THE BENSON ROAD OUT OF TUCSON, ACROSS THE harsh brown desert. I tried to forget about God and death, war and peace, and other cosmic issues. There was a pretty young woman next to me in the car, who seemed, astonishingly, to find me both attractive and amusing. My fantasies about her became more respectful and respectable. She was now a person to be protected and cared for.
And hence even more appealing sexually—as I was beginning to learn. Barbara was a girl whom I’d necked with and petted on another planet.
This would be a brief tour through the desert, nothing more. I should enjoy it for what it was worth and then bid her a quiet good-bye in Phoenix at the end of the day.
Which was one of the most idiotic notions I ever had in all my life.
“My guidebook says that this was all cattle country until the end of the last century. Tombstone folded because the silver minds flooded and the ranch land dried up.”
She nodded, a favorite gesture, conveying appropriately different reactions. God, she was lovely. I was glad that she would be with me for the day.
“Did you work in San Diego?”
A waitress at the Del Coronado Hotel after it reopened. She was not very good at it. Couldn’t concentrate. Too many memories. Too much Navy. She thought she should start over somewhere else. They had been very nice to her, but she couldn’t exist forever on pity.
“I used to drink there occasionally. I’m sure I would have remembered you.”
“After how many drinks?” Her laugh, I decided, was pure magic.
“Touché. But you are the kind I would remember, even drunk.”
“If we’re going to exchange compliments, Commander, I think I would remember you, too.”
Young and innocent, but somehow experienced and wise. I thought I might just be falling hopelessly in love with Andrea King.
How do you explain a young man who on the one hand thinks he’s going to rid himself of an alluring young woman at the end of the day and on the other speculates that he is not only falling in love with her but hopelessly in love with her?
Endocrine secretions, is what my daughter the doctor would say.
And I would have remembered her if I had seen her at the Coronado.
So I didn’t say much on the road to Tombstone. Just short of Benson, US 80 branches off from Arizona 86 and heads due south. We slowed down to twenty-five miles an hour on the outskirts of St. David.
“Mormon town.” I glanced over at her. She seemed far, far away from southern Arizona.
Tombstone was even less impressive then than it is now. Wyatt Earp had yet to become a TV hero, and the old town had yet to discover it could squeeze a few extra dollars a year from tourism. I pulled up in front of the Post Office Café on Main Street.
“Want another cup of coffee?”
She was staring out the window, seeing neither the Post Office Café, nor 1946 Tombstone.
“Andrea?” I said gently, touching her arm, the first of what I was beginning to hope would be many touches.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Do you want a cup of coffee before we do the O.K. Corral?”
“No … Commander, uh, Jerry … Do you mind if I stay in the car? I’m afraid of this place.”
She huddled against the door; her body was tense, her face tight with fear.
“Don’t you want to see the real town on which My Darling Clementine is based?”
“I did till I realized that they were real people. Now I’m afraid.”
“It’s just an old Western ghost town.” I took her hand.
“Please.”
“Of course.”
The O.K. Corral was a disappointment—merely a yard next to a house. Reality was so much more bland than story. But I explored Tombstone with a singing heart. A new challenge had entered my life to replace war, just as war had replaced flight training and chemistry and football. Pretty, haunted young women were, I told myself, the best excitement yet.
Still, as I stood at the site of the shoot-out, I had no trouble conjuring up images of Wyatt and Doc and the Clantons. One part of my personality wished I’d been there. Another part cringed in horror from the brutality of the few seconds of gunfire that wiped out the Clantons.
As a young man I was an odd mixture of competitiveness and fear of conflict. Or, as my wife would say later, fear of my own deep reactions to conflict. I was (and am, I add proudly) a moderately skillful athlete. I lacked the raw ability to be first string in college and the motivation to work hard to make up for that lack of ability. But when I played alley basketball or prairie softball, I played to win. Even today I can shoot in the middle eighties most of the time at golf without working at it too hard. So I don’t work at it too hard, but I am a fierce competitor on the golf course, until someone else in the foursome becomes unpleasant about the contest. Then I lose interest.
My wife tells me I am afraid of my own anger. I was gifted at only one sport in high school—boxing; I was a quick, hard puncher and a deft dodger of the other kid’s fists. The coach at Fenwick wanted to enter me in the Golden Gloves, a scheme that my father wisely vetoed. Once a boxer from another school took a cheap shot at me after the bell at the end of the first round. I was furious, maybe to the point of irrationality. I knocked him out, a rare event in high school boxing, in the first ten seconds of the next round.
And quit boxing the next day.
At Iowa preflight, there was some compulsory boxing. I had to do it, so I was freed from responsibility. They matched me against an overgrown bully from Texas who had been hassling me from the beginning of the program. He lasted fifteen seconds. (The poor guy died later in the Marianas when the Admirals turned off the lights on their carriers, although the risks were slight and most of the air crews had not landed, a bigger disgrace than Pearl Harbor.)
Even though it was not fashionable in those days among the Army of Occupation, I even messed around with some martial arts while I was in Japan because you were supposed to learn to discipline and focus your rage.
Maybe I was a pretty good fighter pilot because of restraints on rage that fighter planes imposed on you.
As I left the O.K. Corral and strolled back to my car, my head was filled with images of fighting for and protecting my appealing and fragile young charge.
Reconsidering my state of mind now, I think that, among other things, she provided me with an excuse to legitimize my deep-seated rage. So my daughter the psychiatrist might suggest if I ever told her this part of my life story.
The woman to be protected was still crouched against the door, now reading a book. All the King’s Men.
“Good book?”
“Very. About politics and corruption. I’m sorry if I disappointed you.”
“The sights on this tour are an option. We’ll get you to Phoenix ‘fore sundown, ma’am.” I bowed like Randolph Scott.
“Silly.” She grinned weakly. “And I’m not a schoolteacher either, Mr. Scott.”
She was still terrified, even if she had read The Virginian.
“What was it like?” she asked as the Chevy plugged along on the gravel road toward Colossal Cave.
“Tombstone?”
“No.” She seemed to be sitting very close to me, as close as she could with the gearbox between us. “The war … combat.”
“There wasn’t much combat.” At last I had a chance to tell someone things I had never said before. “I was out there for more than two and a half years and I don’t suppose there were more than thirty days of actual combat, and some of that was at the end, when it hardly counted—the Japanese didn’t have anything with which to fight back. They were milk runs, which didn’t mean you couldn’t die from engine failure or get lost.”
“The rest of the time? …”
“Monotony, boredom, rough seas, an occa
sional typhoon to scare the hell out of you and make you so sick you wanted to die. Training flights, air crew conferences, steaming back to Pearl or San Diego for refitting, waiting for mail, worrying about how you’d act in combat. Dangerous because a sub could always get you or you could die in an accident, but after a while even that danger doesn’t scare you much.”
“Lots of time to think.” I kept my eyes on the highway, but I knew she was watching me, her blue eyes soft with compassion. Hell, I didn’t want compassion.
Oh, yes, I did. The more the better.
“And even on the days of battle, most of the time is spent in preparation, changes of plans, fueling and refueling, flying to the target and coming home. The actual combat—you shooting at them and them shooting at you—sometimes it’s only a few minutes. We won the Battle of Midway in a half hour when McCluskey and his SBDs found the Japanese carriers with refueled planes on their decks. I wasn’t around for that, but in the Philippine Sea—’Marianas Turkey Shoot,’ we called it—the Japanese lost most of their air crews—and for all practical purposes the war—in less than two hours.”
“Such a short time.” Her voice made me want to curl up against her breasts and sleep for the rest of eternity.
“A few minutes, a few seconds, even. When you get back—if you get back—you’re astonished at how quickly it happens. You make your dive or your run if you’re in a TBF, you drop your bomb or your torpedo, you turn around or pull out of it, and if you are still alive, you go home. Or, if you’re in a fighter like me, you get behind him before he gets behind you, you squeeze the button, a few tracers lace over toward him, he explodes in a cloud of dirty orange, and it’s all over. He’s dead or you’re dead.”
“Were you frightened?”
“No time to be frightened. Before, you worry about losing your nerve and letting down your mates. After, maybe, you wake up at night wishing you could scream. In combat it’s all too quick. On shore it’s not too different. I mean, the marines are always in danger from snipers or mines, but it’s mostly boredom too, much more uncomfortable boredom—dirt, smell, sickness, no toilets. The guys I met in San Diego after the war said the actual firefights, even on Iwo, were all pretty quick, finished before you realized they’d started.”
The Search for Maggie Ward Page 4