{"id":74,"date":"2012-09-15T20:10:54","date_gmt":"2012-09-15T20:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/?p=74"},"modified":"2012-12-10T02:30:55","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T02:30:55","slug":"fast-changing-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/fast-changing-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Fast Changing Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/code>When we were kids, we imitated him by holding pocket combs under our noses and stretching our arms out in a stiff salute. \u201cHeal Hitler.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was always good for a laugh\u2014at first.<\/p>\n

The laughter died about the time I entered high school. That\u2019s when Adolph Hitler set out on his maniacal quest to conquer Europe. In a thunderous speech to a jubilant crowd at the Circus Krone<\/em> in Munich, he shouted, \u201cIt is the rightful destiny of the Aryan master race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Hitler, Nazi Germany had built-up a massive war machine in the early \u201830s\u2014the most powerful military force in the world at that time.<\/p>\n

In 1936, he made his move. He sent troops into the demilitarized Rhineland, a buffer zone between France and Germany. Then, teaming up with Mussolini, the strutting Italian black shirt, Hitler proclaimed to the world a militant Rome-Berlin axis.<\/p>\n

In 1937, the two axis powers tested their weapons on the side of Franco\u2019s fascist rebels during the tragic civil war in Spain. At the same time, Hitler intensified a cruel, diabolical pogrom against the Jews.<\/p>\n

In 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in a bloodless coup d’\u00e9tat<\/em>. Nazi storm troops marched across the border and took over the country with little more than anguished hand wringing on the part of the British and the French. Hitler then threatened war as his forces occupied Sudetenland, the western half of Czechoslovakia.<\/p>\n

In early 1939, he renounced a \u201cpeace with honor\u201d pact signed previously in Munich with Britain and he seized the remainder of Czechoslovakia.<\/p>\n

Each new crisis raised the stakes. A mounting apprehension spread throughout Europe\u2014and the US.<\/p>\n

On that sunny day in June 1939, when Dan Borich, Joe Volk, Pete Zanetos and I graduated from Washington High School, Europe reeled on the brink of war.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The truth hit me hard that summer. I had no money for college. If I wanted to attend the University of Oregon, I’d have to get a job, go to work, and save enough to make it on my own.<\/p>\n

I combed a sprinkling of help wanted ads, jumped on every job rumor, talked with my Mother\u2019s friends, and friends of friends, and started making the rounds.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Aiming high at the start, I tried for a job as an apprentice to the fiery modernist architect, Pietro Belluschi, who had designed the Portland Art Museum. At the\u00a0end of a brief, unsuccessful interview, one of his associates escorted me to the door. I auditioned for a disc jockey job at Radio Station KEX, I didn\u2019t even come close. As I left the booth, however, the obsequious station manager gave me a gleaming KEX Zippo cigarette lighter as a memento. It still sits in one of my old toolbox drawers. I tried for a copyboy job at The Oregonian<\/em> and then\u00a0at the Oregon Journal<\/em>. Not a chance. Along with a dozen others, I waited in line to interview for one job opening in a West Side record store. I dimly remember the gum-chewing manager with slicked-back hair. But I didn\u2019t make the cut. I applied for a clerk\u2019s job at a friendly neighborhood bookstore on Hawthorne Avenue and at the sports shop next door. \u201cSorry, no openings.\u201d I filled out an application form at Meier & Frank\u2019s giant, downtown department store, where my mother once worked as an elevator operator. \u201cDon\u2019t call us, we\u2019ll call you.\u201d I tried for a waiter\u2019s job at three, small, non-union restaurants. All three turned me down. I even tried to get my old bike messenger job back at Western Union, full-time. They curtly told me, \u201cWe\u2019re not hiring.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the way it went. Discouraging weeks. My spirits dragged the ground. Then came an unexpected break. I received a call inviting me back for a second interview at Meier & Frank\u2019s, which lead to a battery of tests and an uncomfortable grilling. To my complete surprise, I came out of it with a job. M&F hired me on the spot and put me to work immediately in their entrance- level training program.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

At the age of forty-one, my lonely mother longed for the love of an honest, decent man in her life.<\/p>\n

I thought it would be Frank Simmons, but it didn’t turn out that way. Sadly, I saw the two of them drifting apart. I think she saw the end coming when Frank’s cruising jobs in the timberlands stretched out longer than ever. When he did return, he seemed to spend more time swapping stories with my grandfather than he did romancing my mother.<\/p>\n

At heart, I think Frank was a genuine free spirit, never to be tied down. In the end, he quietly told my mother that he was taking on a contract in the Salmon River Mountains of Idaho. He packed his clothes and his pile of gear, said good-bye, climbed into his pickup and headed out. Just like that. He remained a man who answered only to himself.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Unlike the pain and anguish of past breakups, however, my mother and Frank Simmons remained friends\u2014distant friends. Occasionally he would phone her from somewhere and they would talk. Later on, I learned it had been Frank who arranged for my mother to dazzle me with an astonishing graduation gift\u2014beyond all expectations\u2014the kind of gift most seventeen-or- eighteen-year-olds in 1939 could only dream about.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I became the proud, head-whirling owner of a nine- year-old 1931 Model A sports coupe. Closing my eyes now, I can still see it\u2014a forest green beauty with black fenders, romantic rumble seat, green pinstripe interior, wire spoke wheels, running board step plates, rear wheel\u00a0mudguards and side-mounted spare tire.<\/p>\n

When my dear mother hugged me and handed me the keys that memorable afternoon, I was taken aback, overwhelmed. I think I stammered out my heartfelt thanks in a kind of grateful daze. Eventually, I jammed a tweed cap on my head, climbed in behind the four-spoke steering wheel, squinted fearlessly off into the distance, and let my day dreams soar. Who was I? The great Rudi Caracciola in the final kilometer at Le Mans Grand Prix? Or, the Great Gatsby, running late for an afternoon rendezvous with Daisy?<\/p>\n

That tough little Ford, with its reliable, 200-cubic inch, four-cylinder engine, had traveled almost 100,000 miles. Overhauled to the hilt, it was raring to go again.<\/p>\n

By the time I sold it three years later, I\u2019d put thousands of miles more on it and racked up an array of untold memories.<\/p>\n

Once, hell-bent on my way to the Oregon coast with a buddy named Saul Barde, I recklessly pushed the old Model A up to almost 75 miles an hour on a wild stretch of pitted surface that cut through the charred hills of the Tillamook burn. Logging trucks ruled on that tortuous two-lane road. Rounding a turn, I faced a loaded logger, roaring down on us head-on, He blasted his horn. I swerved sharply, nicked a rear fender and spun around on the shoulder, headed the wrong way, We survived. But we sat there quietly for a few minutes, sweating.<\/p>\n

On afternoons when dusk drizzled perpetually over the Willamette, I sometimes explored the back roads of the Cascade foothills by myself. All alone. The valley and the hills were always green. Wondrously\u00a0so.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I remember sweet summer nights, too, with the split windshield tilted open, side windows down, the wind in my hair, and pretty girls with beguiling names like Lynn Lacy, Marcy Cherry, Virginia Valentine.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

As the dog days of August slipped by, German armies stood poised on the borders of Poland, awaiting Hitler\u2019s signal for a full-scale invasion\u2014an unbelievable escalation in the Fuehrer\u2019s<\/em> geopolitics. It was a time of frantic efforts by Poland, Britain and France for a settlement. A time of tense, continuing negotiation.<\/p>\n

Totally defiant, Hitler ridiculed a personal appeal for peace from FDR and scorned dead-serious warnings from the British and the French against further aggression. The lines were drawn.<\/p>\n

Scrambling eleventh-hour moves of the weary and exhausted diplomats proved to be completely futile.<\/p>\n

At daybreak on September 1, 1939, German armies poured across the Polish frontier. Overhead, wave after wave of Stuka bombers attacked Polish military installations and open cities alike.<\/p>\n

The unthinkable had become reality.<\/p>\n

Hitler had plunged Europe into a six-year war that was to grow into the bloodiest\u00a0conflict ever.<\/p>\n

World War II had begun.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In the beginning, we all wondered\u2014what will the war in Europe mean to us here? How can we keep out of it? That was an interminable question everybody seemed to be asking.<\/p>\n

Coming out of the Great Depression, the mood of the country in 1939 was isolationist. “Let’s stay out of any damned foreign entanglements.” Along with most of my generation at that time, I shared such sentiments.<\/p>\n

We carried on with our lives. But we would often turn to the radio for the latest bulletins from Europe.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I spent most of the year at Meier & Frank’s\u2014in advertising production and the credit authorization department. At times, the job was a deadly bore. But it paid enough for me to contribute to my room and board, get out on the town now and then, and still salt away some savings. The job offered a few perks, too. For one, M&F heir Jack Meier, manager of the sports department, gave me a one-year guest pass to the Multnomah Athletic Club, perched on a hillside above Multnomah Stadium. That pass was worth more than a few weekly push-ups, On the back balcony, we had a\u00a0good view of the Multnomah Kennel Club dog races\u2014and an occasional Pac-10 football game.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Sometime in *39 or ’40, during the San Francisco World’s Fair, I received a fat envelope in the mail from Emma Lindquist, postmarked Honolulu, Hawaii.<\/p>\n

In the envelope, along with her letter, Emma enclosed a glossy Pan-American Airways brochure, The cover featured a soul-stirring photograph of a China Clipper flying boat heading out over the Golden Gate Bridge on its way to Honolulu, Midway, Wake Island, Guam, Manila and beyond. “Wings to the Orient.” That brochure became a memento I treasured for years.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u00a0In San Francisco Bay, on a narrow, knife-like shoal, politicians and engineers created a mile-long island that became the site for the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition<\/em>, San Francisco’s own World’s Fair.<\/p>\n

The city fathers named the site Treasure Island<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The harbor at Treasure Island also became the American terminal for Pan-Am’s graceful China Clippers. Those huge but stylish 21-ton flying boats were the largest aircraft in the skies at that time. And it was on a romantic China Clipper enroute to Honolulu that Emma Lindquist traveled in white linen luxury, headed for a two-week Hawaiian honeymoon.<\/p>\n

In her letter, she told me of her marriage to an older man who owned a small chain of furniture stores in San Jose and along the San Francisco peninsula.<\/p>\n

I’ll be damned if I can remember his name.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I liked the lilt of her name,\u00a0Lynn Lacy<\/em>. Fascinated by the way she walked. She would sashay down the central aisle of Meier & Frank\u2019s main floor like some super model on a Paris runway. In reality, she was a vain, good looking, empty headed sales clerk in the M&F cosmetic department. I found out soon enough that she was also one flashy dancer.<\/p>\n

I dated Lynn occasionally that year, usually when one of the big-name bands booked into McElroy\u2019s or Jantzen Beach Ballroom.<\/p>\n

One sweltering summer night I remember best. Count Basie and his band were in town, playing at McElroy\u2019s, downtown. The Count was in his prime. You could feel the vibrancy of the beat as we cavorted to the sassy wail of Lester Young\u2019s tenor sax.<\/p>\n

Then, toward the end of the night came the slow blues. Basie’s gutsy,\u00a0growling, low-down blues, On the darkened dance floor, you could feel the mood shifting.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In synch to the smoky, sensuous rhythm, we clung tightly and we swayed and we danced and we rubbed bodies together.<\/p>\n

And in the corners of her smile, she hinted that she wouldn\u2019t mind messing around a bit.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

About this time, thirteen-year-old Mary Bovee was catching holy hell from the nuns at St. Mary’s Academy.<\/p>\n

On rainy afternoons, she had a habit of skipping out on her ecclesiastical studies and holing up in the Portland central library. In that grand old building of Ionic design, she would immerse herself, sometimes for hours, in books and abstracts on classical Russian ballet\u2014the dancers, choreographers, dance companies, impresarios, and the special life of Anna Pavlova, most celebrated prima ballerina of all time.<\/p>\n

At some point in the afternoon, she would then scurry on to the ice rink for daily ice skating lessons with her coach, Eileen Grell of England.<\/p>\n

After several years of hard work in the study of ballet, Mary had converted her ballet training and talents to the excitement and disciplines of ice skating shortly before her family moved back from Seattle to Portland.<\/p>\n

It is said that even at the height of her fame, Pavlova would practice her art fifteen hours a day. Perhaps such visions danced in Mary’s head as she approached the rigors of ice skating with an intensity that her coach had never before seen in a student. At St. Mary’s academy, however, the unyielding nuns would not put up with a school day cut short for ice skating, no matter how promising the student. Mary Bovee was determined. Her parents supported her goals. Eventually, she bid farewell to the nuns and transferred to Portland’s Jefferson High School. At Jefferson, school officials understood her youthful goals and went along with an arduous training schedule that now began at one p.m., lasted through the afternoon and sometimes into the evening.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Somebody, it may have been my grandmother, once told me that dancing never hurt anybody.<\/p>\n

It was an era when we danced the nights away to some of the most magical and enchanting music America has ever known\u2014great jazz, swing and the blues, along with a host of haunting and memorable ballads.<\/p>\n

We had some schlock, too. But mostly, we lived and\u00a0loved to the songs of Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael and the rest of the talented Tin Pan Alley gang.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It remains a musical legacy of humming material that will outlive, at the least, the past thirty or so Hollywood Oscar song winners.<\/p>\n

What a glorious run of years it was, too. On the West Coast circuit, most of the big bands played Portland.<\/p>\n

At McElroy’s, downtown, you could dance to the pulsating rhythm of Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, Chick Webb, Duke Ellington and other jazz masters. I never made it to the Duke\u2019s heralded stand that summer of 1939. But I was there at Chick Webb\u2019s opening night session, when his 21-year-old singing prot\u00e9g\u00e9, a young unknown named Ella Fitzgerald, mesmerized the crowd with the radiance and wonderful shadings of her voice.<\/p>\n

McElroy\u2019s had the atmosphere of a down-to-earth dance hall. By comparison, Jantzen Beach was a paradigm of ballroom glamour, set on the banks of the Columbia River. It was the glittery setting for black-tie headliners such as Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Dick Jergens, Billy Butterfield, and even that lovable old reprobate, Ben Bernie. Do you remember Butterfield’s dreamy theme song, What’s New? I can never hear that song without thinking of a last dance at Jantzen with Virginia Valentine\u2019s drowsy head on my shoulder, and the slow-spinning mirrored ball sending a thousand trembly dots of light across the floor.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

At the age of eighteen, maybe nineteen, I was riveted by For Whom the Bell Tolls<\/em>, Ernest Hemingway’s study of courage and compassion set against the terrors of the Spanish Civil War. It gave me a deeper understanding of the vehemence burning inside Robert Sharral, the pock marked veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade whom I had interviewed some two years before at Reed College.<\/p>\n

Ernest Hemingway was an arrogant, self-promoting, charismatic, machismo man of action and in the end, a self-destructive alcoholic. But My God, at his peak, how the man could write.<\/p>\n

His early books and short stories remain rock-hard diamonds. He wrote in a flat, true, realistic style that influenced countless modern writers to follow.<\/p>\n

Along with the rest of my generation, I read and reread Hemingway. He was the icon of our youth.<\/p>\n

He made of life an adventure, a glorious challenge, a test ofself-discipline and\u00a0courage and honor. And through all of his writings, you encountered a measure of grace under pressure.\u00a0Grace under pressure<\/em>. There is a quality I have aimed for in my own life\u2014in work and play, in peace and war.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Somehow, my mother scraped together enough money for the down payment on a two-unit, Yamhill Street flat, a few blocks east of our old waterfront neighborhood. My grandparents moved upstairs, while my mother and I took the street-level flat below.<\/p>\n

Finally, she had a home and garden of her own. This had long been a golden dream. We settled in quickly, and she was exuberant.<\/p>\n

Two huge, overgrown pink rhododendrons stood guard on each side of the front steps, overpowering the tiny front yard. She called them “Pink Pearls.” The back yard was an unplanted patch of weeds that my grandfather and I cleared out. We cut and dug out weeds and we turned over the dirt and we raked the surface and we dug shallow trenches and then my mother eventually transformed it into a flourishing vegetable garden.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

By this time, my mother had retired her yellow Hudson-Terraplane<\/em> and was driving a used, low-mileage, 1939 Packard<\/em> sedan. She was proud of that gleaming gray Packard<\/em>. Once in awhile she would let me use it for a special night out\u2014something like a double-date, perhaps\u2014but only if I washed and polished it in advance.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

On nights when I stopped by for dinner with my dad and Eleanor, we always ate at the checked, oilcloth- covered table in the kitchen. Those were special times. Good talk and good food. The dinner always ended with one of Eleanor’s fabulous fruit pies\u2014apple, berry, rhubarb, peach, or sometimes banana creme.<\/p>\n

The happiness of their marriage continued after seven years together and in July 1941, Eleanor gave birth to a healthy little girl they named Judy. Dad was fifty-two years old. Eleanor was Thirty-two. And they were ecstatic.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Marcy Cherry was a cabaret singer who joined the “Babe” Binford band that year and became a minor sensation. There was a smoky sensuality about her husky voice that captured the dance crowd. When the lights dimmed and she stepped up to the mike, under one small spot, and slid into “Embrace me, my\u00a0sweet embraceable you,” she breathed a special quality of seeming to be singing right to you.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I met Marcy late one weekend night after a dance at the Uptown Ballroom. Pete Zanetos, still playing trumpet with Binford, introduced us. The three of us sat in a booth in the cafe downstairs, sipping icy lemon Cokes laced with rum from Pete’s secreted pint of Bacardi. Marcy said little. But she was lovely to look at, And\u00a0we off-handedly stared at each other.<\/p>\n

In the weeks ahead, we had a few after-dates and then we fell clumsily into a short, absorbing and deeply irrational affair. By the end of summer, we were bored with each other. I quit my job at M&F at that point and went on to the University of Oregon in Eugene. Marcy went on to farther success with the “Babe” and somewhere down the line, she married the clarinet player.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The flames of war spread furiously across Europe, By the following spring, Poland, Denmark, Norway\u2014one by one\u2014had fallen to the Nazis. German armies then launched a swift, blitzkrieg assault on the Western front. They tore through Holland and Belgium and surged across France like a tidal wave.<\/p>\n

The powerful German Wermacht seemed invincible. The French collapse came surprisingly quick.<\/p>\n

On June 14, 1940, victorious Nazi troops surged into Paris. The great city, the glory of France, was occupied by the German army.<\/p>\n

There were tears in the theatre that weekend in Portland as we viewed the newsreels, transfixed at the sight of German troops marching triumphantly down des Champs Elyses<\/em>\u2014and the swastika unfurled from the top of the Eiffel Tower.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The last time I saw Paris,
\nHer heart was warm and gay,
\nI heard the laughter of her heart,
\nIn every street cafe.
\nThe last time I saw Paris,
\nHer heart was young and gay ,
\nNo matter how they change her
\nI\u2019ll remember her that way<\/strong><\/p>\n

OSCAR HAMMEESTEINII, 1940<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapter \u00a0Thirteen :\u00a0On the Horizon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we were kids, we imitated him by holding pocket combs under our noses and stretching our arms out in a stiff salute. \u201cHeal Hitler.\u201d That was always good for a laugh\u2014at first. The laughter died about the time I entered high school. That\u2019s when Adolph Hitler set out on his maniacal quest to conquer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fast-changing-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1154,"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/1154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronwmayo.com\/memoires\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}