Thank You, Uncle Happy

At dawn on December 7, 1941, naval aviation forces of the Empire of Japan launched a military strike on the United States Pacific Fleet center at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, drawing the U.S. full-force into World War II.

Pearl Harbor Day always makes me think of my grandfather, even though he wasn’t there.

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Seventeen years earlier, two young boys were playing in a small yard behind a small house in a small town in the suburbs of New York City. Anthony, who everyone called Happy, was 9 years old at the time, and he was keeping an eye on his three-year-old brother Joe (my grandfather).

As many 9 year olds do, Happy fancied himself a very grown-up boy. A responsible boy - almost a man. And as such, he decided to demonstrate his manly prowess by chopping some wood like his father or his big brother Tom would do.

There was an ax in the cellar.

Joe looked up to his big brother and followed him closely, tethered with the invisible twine of wonderous admiration. He followed him to the cellar, where the ax leaned against the cool damp stones of the basement wall. With the mighty instrument in hand, Happy headed out to the wood pile with little Joe in tow.

“Here Joe, hold this wood up for me.”

Happy lifted the ax up above his head and quickly realized that it was much too heavy for him to handle. But as he was already committed to the swing, he brought the menacing blade down and landed it on the wood with a deep thud. Almost right where he wanted it.

Almost.

He had chopped off half of little Joe’s small, dirty, three-year old ring finger on his right hand. Blood was spurting in every direction.

Joe ran into the house crying and shaking the source of his pain. The blood splattered this way and that as the little hand shook and little Joe cried.

Their mother was screaming as she tried to figure out where on his blood-covered body Joe was hurt. When she finally found the wound, she quickly wrapped his hand in rags and took him on the Charlie cars to Dr. Brooks in town. The doctor sewed up what was left of the finger, just below where there should have been a knuckle, and it healed just fine.

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But it was still a bit sensitive as Joe sat in the back of a Chevrolet Coupe, heading to New York City with a group of buddies to sign up for the Navy. He was 19 years old.

They found the enlistment office easily enough, and they got their physicals and completed their written tests.

But just as Joe took the pen in his right hand to sign his name on the dotted line, officially enlisting in the United States Navy, the registrar said, “Whoa! Wait a minute – don’t sign. You’d better go back home and get your other half a finger first.”

Joe and his buddies had planned to sign up together and stick together. But since the Navy turned Joe down, none of the other guys joined either. They all piled back into the Coupe and drove home.

Looking back, my grandfather thought maybe that man had saved his life. It was 1939, and he probably would have been sent to Pearl Harbor for four years of training.

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Joe lived with a friend in Connecticut for the next two years. He worked at a foundry with steam presses and molds, making rubber gears for airplanes.

In 1941 he had his appendix taken out. He was on sick leave from work for 6 months after his operation, so he came back to New York during that time. And that’s when he met my grandmother.

But the news of Pearl Harbor inspired the nation to action. “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory” President Roosevelt told the citizens of the United States. So early in 1942, Joe was on his way to military training in Camp Wheeler, Georgia. I guess the Army wasn’t as concerned about that stubby ring finger, especially now that the country was at war.

After training he got his shots, he got his teeth and eyes checked, and was sent up to New York Harbor. On February 8, 1943, my grandfather boarded a ship to go to war. He served in the Signal Corps in North Africa and Italy until the war finally ended in 1945.

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President Roosevelt called December 7, 1941 "… a date which will live in infamy." 2,333 lost their lives, another 1,139 were wounded, and Americans’ commitment to isolationism was cast aside as they entered the war with fierce determination.

I have nothing but gratitude and respect for all of those who have served our country, and for those who continue to serve today.

But on the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I always end up thinking about my grandfather, and the stories he told me of his service in the European Theater Operation.

I also think about chance and fate.

Our paths through life are directed and redirected by both decisions and accidents, and maybe even forces unseen. So many maybes, so many “what ifs”…

What if my grandfather had enlisted in the Navy and gone off to Hawaii for training? Maybe he would have been one of the casualties of that fateful day. Or maybe he wouldn’t have.

But maybe if he’d join the Navy in 1939 he wouldn’t have met my grandmother and started the chain reaction that resulted in me.

Or maybe if he didn’t get appendicitis he wouldn’t have come back to New York and met my grandmother and started the chain reaction that resulted in me.

Maybe I’m here today because 83 years ago my great-uncle Happy chopped off my grandfather’s finger with an ax.

Or maybe I would have happened anyway....


“There is no such thing as chance; and what seems to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.” Friedrich von Schiller

Young Love in 1942

As I mentioned a few days ago in "Baked Ziti Night", I became the keeper of a box of letters exchanged between my grandparents during WWII. As a tremendous mass of primary source material, I’m hoping to make something of this time capsule of love and American History, and so I’ve begun the tedious process of typing each letter into my computer.

In doing so, I’m gaining new perspective on my grandparents, Ida and Joe, their relationship with each other, and the kind of people they were as young, vivacious teenagers “going steady.”

Except they weren’t both teenagers. It turns out that my grandfather was much older than my grandmother, and this caused some problems for them when the age difference came to light.

Apparently, my grandmother got into trouble with her parents one night when she stayed out too late. In response, my grandfather hand-delivered a letter of apology to Ida’s mother.

Here is Mrs. L’s response:

Dear Sir,

I received your kind letter and I am sorry to say I did give Ida Mae a couple of cracks with the switch I had. I am not well and it is a worry on me when she is out late at night as I would lose my life if anything happened to her. I knew you didn’t know her age and that is why I kept talking to her all the time about coming in early. Millie told me not to worry a lot because you were a nice fellow but you know how mothers are. Now you said you liked her a lot and I know you are a good sport or you wouldn’t of wrote me this letter and I am going to trust you. I’ll let her go out with you and speak to you at any time but Joe please have her back at the house at 9:30 and don’t be afraid of anyone saying anything to you. So don’t feel bad about it, as Ida Mae knows it is her fault. She should of told you her right age.

There is no more explaining to do. Everything is O.K.

Mrs. L

P.S. Joe next week is the black out so she has to be in at 9 o’clock.

My grandfather was still troubled by the whole situation, and so he did what many did back at that time in New York. He wrote a letter to Doris Blake.

Doris Blake was a syndicated columnist for the New York Daily News. In addition to her Beauty Hints column, she also wrote a daily column, first called Doris Blake’s Answers and later Doris Blake’s Love Answers. This was one of the first advice columns to employ the letter-and-response format that is so common today.

She was also the author of many informational pamphlets, including Getting and Keeping Boys Interested and How to Reduce: New Waistlines for Old, and several books geared toward women and women’s issues.

June 2, 1942

Dear Miss Blake,

I have been going with this girl, whom I learned to love very much, for a little over half a year. When we met she told me she was seventeen. I was twenty, but didn’t know whether she knew it or not. She now reveals her age as fourteen, but undoubtedly looks to be seventeen or over. The difference in our ages is about seven years. I would like to know whether I should stay with her, as I would, disregarding the age or should I try to forget her. Your answer may mean our happiness later on. Being that I love her as I do, I try not to show it so that she’ll lose interest in me.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,
Joe

I don’t know whether this letter ever appeared in her column, but she did send a letter in response, post-marked two days later:



June 4, 1942

Dear Friend,

The girl is much too young too young to think seriously of any young man. You should seek the companionship of young women closer to your own age.

Sincerely,
Doris Blake

Luckily, my grandfather did not take her advice. Within a month he was shipped off to Camp Wheeler, Georgia, to prepare to fight in WWII. The rest of this big box I have contains their correspondence over the next several years while my grandfather served in Italy and North Africa.

When my grandfather returned in 1946, they married and bought a house . My grandmother was 17 at the time, and during the war years this was a common age to get married. My father was born in 1949, the first of 5 children.

And the rest is history.

Baked Ziti Night

One of my favorite things when I was young was Baked Ziti Night at my grandparent's house. All of my aunts and uncles would be there, and the few cousins from that side of the family.

My grandmother would make this huge pan of baked ziti.

When it was done we would all be gathered around my grandmother, waiting with our pristine white pasta dishes for that luscious scoop of pasta and cheese and sauce. Gram would give us each a big cheesy spoonful and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese. My mouth waters just thinking about it.

I’d always looked forward to those gatherings... the congregation of our extended family, reconnecting with each other, sharing stories and laughter and baked ziti. And on those nights when absolutely everyone showed up, and I had to sit at the "kids table," I didn't even mind. It was that good.

Those family get-togethers didn't happen as much in my teenage years. Even less after I went off to college.

Eventually my grandmother started to loose her grip on things mentally, and making those big dinners became too much for her. A few of us would gather for Pizza Night on Wednesdays, but it wasn’t the same as having the whole gang together.

After my grandmother passed away, we made it Chinese Food Night because my grandfather was tired of pizza. Sometimes I would cook something up for us homemade, especially when it was just my grandfather, my daughter and me, but of course it could never rival the baked ziti with the sauce of tomatoes from Gram’s garden.

After my grandfather passed away, my aunts and uncles had to clean out the old house on 4th Street. There was a huge dumpster out in the front yard, and my aunt E was pitching everything in there she could get her hands on.

I don't think anything really has any sentimental value to her. She likes nice new things. Old things are garbage.

So there I was, salvaging some of the things that reminded me of my grandparents. There was the Bunny Cup, a little purple plastic cup with a bunny on it. As kids, after riding our bikes up and down the dead-end street, or playing catch in the back yard, we would race to the cabinet to get the Bunny Cup. It was an honor of distinction to be the one sipping your cream soda from it.

There were a few boxes of papers that I decided to keep too. Since my grandfather was blind, these boxes made no sense. There would be store receipts from 1986 mixed in with oil bills from 1972, mixed in with newspapers clippings of Elvis and the moon landing, mixed in with recipes my grandmother used. One box even contained my grandfather's army yearbook and old newspapers from when he was stationed in North Africa in 1945. My aunt would have surely thrown these away. I took them home and sorted through everything.

You know what else I saved from the dumpster? The baked ziti dishes. There were only 3 left, with a few chips along the rims, and a few cracks in the glaze. And since three doesn't make a complete set, oh yeah, my aunt was throwing them out. But I saved them, along with all those fond memories of when we were all together.

And besides, there's one dish for each of us: my husband and my daughter and me. So really, three does make a complete set.

The Winning Numbers

When my grandfather was alive, I would visit him every Sunday and Wednesday.

Mandy was just a little thing, but she enjoyed our visits too. Pop was fun. He played songs for her on his keyboard, and he let her play it too. And he was very animated as he told her funny stories.

He always put Jeopardy on at seven o’clock. He loved to hear me answering the questions, especially the “final Jeopardy.”

“You should go on that show,” he would say. “You could make a lot of money.”

Pop knew I had no money. I was a single mother from the day my daughter was born. I didn’t have a dime to my name before she was born, since I was working three jobs to pay my way through college. After she was born I had even less. He was always trying to give me money.

“Here, take this twenty.”

“No, Pop. You don’t have to do that.”

“Take it for you and the baby. Just take it. I’m sure there’s something you need.”

I would make him lunch and dinner while we were there, too. He loved when I cooked for him.

“Why does toasted cheese always taste better when you make it?” he would ask.

“Because it’s nice to be taken care of sometimes,” I would tell him.

Pop was blind for the last 15 years of his life. He still took care of himself just fine, though, and people who met him didn’t even realize that he couldn’t see. And he would always figure out ways to do tasks that seemed beyond the capability of a blind 75 year old man, like taking out his air conditioner or grouting a loose tile in the bathroom.

But there were some things he just couldn’t do alone, like going to the store. And since he couldn’t go to the store, he couldn’t “play the numbers.” So every Sunday and Wednesday he would give me some money (yes he was blind, but he always knew which bill in his pocket was the $5 and which was the $20) and I would play the “Pick 3” for him. I always left his house with little scraps of paper in my pocket with his numbers written down: 616, 327, 684…

He won fairly often, too.

Sometimes the numbers were birthdays or other important dates. Sometimes he was trying to use a system, and he would pick his numbers based on the number from the day before.

“Put in 817 for me. See yesterday was 726, so I’m gonna go one up on the 7, one down on the 2, and one up on the 6. We should do alright, as long as it’s not Yolanda Vega.”

Yolanda Vega was one of the women who announced the numbers on TV. Pop never liked her. “She picks terrible numbers,” he would say.

Well one day Pop called me, all excited. “Did you hit too?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“The numbers. I was wondering if you hit too, since we played your birthday, 427.”

“Oh, are you kiddin’? I didn’t play it.”

“You didn’t play it?”

“Nah, I don’t usually play. I usually just put yours in.”

Truth was, I had forgotten to put his numbers in. We had stayed with Pop later than usual the night before. Mandy was getting cranky, and I had just gone straight home and put her to bed.

“Which store did you get them from?”

“Baisley’s.” I lied. I lied to my grandfather. But how could I tell him that I didn’t put the numbers in? What else did my grandfather have to look forward to, besides my visits and playing the numbers?

“You’ll have to go back and see how much we won.”

So I drove to the bank to see how much money I had. $367.42. I wasn’t sure which bills had gone through and which were still pending, but it didn’t matter. I took out $350 and went to see my grandfather.

“Here it is, Pop. You hit for $350.”

“Yeah? $350?”

I called out each denomination as I handed him the bills, so he knew what they were. “Here’s a fifty, and another fifty, and a twenty…” He was grinning from ear to ear.

“So you didn’t play your birthday, huh?”

“Nope. Too bad… we could’ve both hit. That would have been fun.”

After I handed him all the money, he gave me a hundred back.

“Keep this for you and Amanda,” he said.

“No, Pop. You don’t have to do that. These are your winnings.”

“Well it was your birthday that hit. Here, take it. I’m sure there’s something you need. Go buy something for you and my great-granddaughter.”

“How about if I take the three of us out to lunch?”

I can’t remember if I bounced any checks that month. I probably did, but I really don’t remember. The only thing I do remember, now that 10 years have passed and my grandfather is gone, is that I made him happy that day. And that’s all that matters.