The Teen Years

The photo is from a Yakima newspaper clipping. The words are all mom’s.

Everything we read in the paper and hear on the news, our attitudes, our clothes, our hair styles, our methods of communication, the toys children play with and practically everything in our homes are part of the ongoing history of the world. I think that is why writing your own blog is important. Record your life today. Tomorrow will be different. Life is full of surprises. It can go off at 45degree angles when you least expect it. We can’t predict what will happen tomorrow based on what happened today. Write down your fears. They will be different next year. Did you keep a diary when you were young? Reading a diary from 50 years ago is such a surprise. It shows how you were thinking then. Keep one today. You won’t regret it.

My teen years were the forties. Historically it began with WWII and ended with the bomb and the cold war. I lived through over two thirds of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st. In all that time nothing beats WWII. WWI ended 10 years before I was born and it was cruel but the second war was everything. From my point of view it was exciting and romantic. What did I know? I was 13 when it started

It began on a very scary Sunday afternoon. I had gone to Mass that morning, came home, had breakfast and decided to take a nap. I was awakened about noon by my 8 year old sister telling me we were at war. I didn’t believe her but I went downstairs where Mother and Daddy were listening to the radio. That day and days that followed were similar to the 4 days after the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 but much more important and even scarier.  Where was Pearl Harbor? Why did they bomb that? Will they bomb us tomorrow? Then we declared war on the Germans too. Now we were really in trouble. There had been such a strong America First movement in this country led by Lindbergh and others, wanting to keep us out of the European war that the whole thing was a bit unexpected. At least it was by me.

Life started to change immediately. Our maid, a farm girl from N. Dakota, immediately left for the big city to work in a defense plant. We kept a bucket of sand and a shovel in the basement in case of incendiary bombs. They were small and didn’t cause much damage but could start a fire. We closed our draperies very tightly at night. Food and gas were rationed, clothing like denim work jeans, leather shoes, nylon stockings, sheets and bedding were not to be found. Mother started growing a victory garden, we were issued food stamps and gas stamps. We could only buy small amounts of sugar at a time and plastic shoes were all that was available. We had a radio by our kitchen table and every night at dinner we listened to Edward R. Murrow from London.

The men from the store went to war and when I turned 14 that summer my father came home one night with orange and black inks and coit pens and told me he was going to teach me to be the new sign painter. I worked all summer at a desk on the balcony overlooking the main floor of the store. When I finished the signs and washed my pens and cleaned up the desk I clerked in the fabric and linen departments. We only had sheets and towels twice a year. Everyone sewed then but we could only sell four yards of fabric at a time. The Indian women from the local tribe would come in their native dress and many petticoats. They each bought their 4 yards, then lifted up their skirts to find leather pouches filled with silver dollars. I smiled and tried to be friendly but they never spoke nor smiled. I did not totally understand why. The first month I painted signs and sold over my quota so made a bonus. By the second month I was spending too much time in the basement washing my pens and talking to the stockroom boys. I also was not as afraid of the job by then so I didn’t try as hard. I also was an assistant window trimmer. One winter we made a giant snowman out of paper mache. Everyone who had a son in the war had a gold star panel to hang in their window. We did a gold star window where everyone could bring in pictures of the men and women in uniform and I printed their names. It was very successful. I lived at the movies. We had an Army firing range outside of town so the theatres were filled with soldiers on weekends.  I found that exciting but could never speak to them. Some of my friends dressed up and went to the USO dances. I wouldn’t have dared. Daddy was very involved with the war effort and even had his picture in Life magazine. He was able to get an A class gas ration ticket. That first summer we went to the Oregon coast for his summer vacation. The beach was off limits after 5:00PM. Soldiers with guns paroled all night. That was my personal, direct and total experience with the war. Otherwise it was all about those romantic, exciting movies.

 

The first really popular song of the war was “Don’t sit Under the Apple Tree with anyone else but me”. I noticed that some of the young mothers I baby sat for were not waiting alone under the tree. But how faithful were the GI’s after they saw Paris? My teen years were also the time I converted myself to Catholicism, went away to boarding school and began to acquire a more worldly point of view, went to college, joined a sorority and met my future husband. After high school I went to Hollywood to visit relatives and fell madly in love with an Italian piano player, a navy veteran. After I graduated from college I married an Irish engineer, a Navy veteran. But that is another story.

My Mother could be devastatingly tactless but was also incredibly generous. Immediately after the war Daddy gave Mother the first new Ford convertible in town. She more or less turned it over to me. I was 16. From the beginning I loved driving. Every Friday night I filled it with friends and we would ‘buzz the gut’ driving downtown and attracting all kinds of whistles and yells. The topper was the night two policemen gave us wolf whistles. We also attracted cars full of boys who followed us. That was a thrill but we were not looking for trouble so the game was to elude them. I quickly learned how to go very fast with them on my tail and at the last minute make a left turn. They couldn’t do it. I had to take everyone home later and if a car was still following I learned to quickly pull into our driveway, hop out of the car and run in the house and lock the door. My parents always asked “Did you have a good time?“ I said yes and went to my room. They never asked for details and I never offered any. They just trusted me. I became a very confident driver and only ever got speeding tickets. When I was a young girl it was easy to talk the cop out of that. It didn’t work when I got older. I had two small accidents in my life, neither was my fault. Honest.

-Jean Clarice Walsh