I happily listen to the “Seems Like Old Times” radio show on our local FM radio, which is also our singular news source here in small town America.
I thought it would be a good idea to share this show with mother. I thought maybe she could listen and be taken back to her childhood and teen-age days, although I can’t say that those were so good, I imagine.
So I was listening to the current show on the front porch. It was so pleasant to hear the music and narration for what was going on in the world, especially in the turbulent 1940’s.
Having an imaginary “nostalgia” for that music and those times is especially misguided. The 40’s began with a war raging in Europe and much uncertainty in the states regarding world events. Then Pearl Harbor happened in 1941. Mother would have been eight years old. In my wildest dreams, I can’t imagine how this news affected her. She was old enough to understand what was going on in a very limited way. She was definitely able to observe the worried and concerned looks on the faces of the adults around her.
I can get online and get the news in “real time” with pictures and news from whatever source I trust (that number is incredibly small). I can’t imagine hearing the news from a radio sitting on a table. I would feel incredibly removed from the world if I was hearing it on a radio. But I suppose they felt it was a lifeline for them – as I do with the internet.
So I was listening to the music and relaxing when the narrator mentioned what year it was and what month of the year the song just played was from. And I knew immediately that it would be a tragically bad idea to share this station with mother.
Music from June of 1948 was playing. Mother would have been 15 years old. She had an older beloved brother who was sixteen years old. They were born 14 months apart.
Her older brother, James, had drowned on July 4, 1948. It blew my mind for a minute just how much this music would have triggered mother and her memories of this incident.
My mother had two brothers, one older and one younger. Her parents had divorced when they were small and they had lived with their mother’s parents, who were actually comfortable. Great-grandfather worked for the railroad and great-grandmother ran a boarding house.
The story goes that James had dropped out of high school at sixteen and worked in a machine shop. Sometime in late June1948, it was storming outside and James’ boss had observed lightning coming in a window of the shop and striking James. Apparently, James was dazed but remained upright. Then he drowned during a Fourth of July swimming trip with a few of his friends. So suspicion is that the lightning strike had maybe weakened his heart because he was a good swimmer.
They were swimming in the river off a small island fairly far from the main edge of the city. His friends realized that they couldn’t find him so they dove under and pulled him up to the surface. One of them had to then run to the city across the river and call for help. Then once the ambulance arrived, the first responders had to cross the river to stabilize James and transport him back across the river for help.
The boys who were left with James performed CPR on him for a very long time. They could not revive him and he died there on the island.
I believe that it was at this point that everything stopped for this family. No one and nothing was ever the same. Everything from this point on was viewed through the magnifying glass of death and tragedy.
My misfortune was being born a girl. On both sides of the family. Dad would have done very well with a son (and I can prove it). Mother would have named me “James”, obviously, and I would have been worshipped by both sides of the family. But being born a girl was my own undoing. No one cared whether I finished high school. No one cared about my high school grades (even though I was in the Junior Honor Society). No one cared whether I went to college.
By the time I progressed to high school from junior high and mother had married my abusive step-father, I was consumed with simply surviving while at home. By the same token, if my step-father would have hit me or my mother with me a young man, I would have pounded him into pulp. Too bad I didn’t employ some type of weapon and do it as a female (chances lost).
Tears and Catharsis 