Part 7 (1/2)
Then there was the year Quail was offered a large discount on five hundred copies of Margaret Wise Brown's Little Fur Family, a tiny book with a jacket made of fur packaged in a box with a hole in the center that gave the Fur Child pictured on the lid a real fur stomach. Mr. Kahn, the owner of the store, bet us a box of candy that we could not sell five hundred copies by Christmas. We sold all five hundred, explaining five hundred times that the fur jacket was made from the pelts of kangaroos, varmints in Australia, and that no good American rabbits had been sacrificed. Mr. Kahn paid up.
Of my four years as Christmas help, that first year, when Quail and I were the only employees in the children's department, remains most vivid of all. One Sunday afternoon, Clarence and I were listening to The Mikado on the radio when the broadcast was interrupted by a bulletin: Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the j.a.panese. ”I'll be d.a.m.ned!” said Clarence.
”Where's Pearl Harbor?” I asked.
We stayed by the radio the rest of the day, and the next morning went to work as usual. That week the store, with almost no customers, was in a state of nervous confusion. Quail, who had a brother who was a naval officer stationed at Pearl Harbor, was on the verge of tears, hoping for a telephone call with news from him. As we all waited with her, we pa.s.sed the time catching up on stock work and counting catalogs in what seemed like slow motion while we talked of blackout curtains and bombings. Then Mrs. Herbert paid us a visit to keep us on our toes. ”Girls,” she said, ”we must sell even though we are at war.” As we were wondering to whom, she turned to Quail and said, ”Darlin', we do not accept personal calls at work.” When Quail finally heard over the store telephone that her brother was safe, the sales staff rejoiced for her.
After work, Clarence and I nailed layers of newspapers over our kitchen windows in place of blackout curtains, listened to President Roosevelt's ”date which will live in infamy” speech, and prepared hasty dinners. At night, when air raid sirens sounded, we leaned on the bedroom windowsill, looked out into the black night, and listened to the drone of circling planes. Dogs, upset by sirens, airplanes, and darkness, barked until the all clear was sounded and lights came on again.
Gradually customers trickled back to the bookstore. Children should not be disappointed, they said, and one indignantly added, ”I do think the j.a.panese might have waited until after Christmas.”
Quail came down with flu, and I was left to face the department alone. When she returned, Mrs. Herbert, a kind woman in her own way, took me aside and whispered, ”Darlin', we don't discuss our salaries, but I am so pleased with your work I am raising your pay from eighteen to nineteen dollars a week.” This was the same woman who wrote the date on every light bulb installed so the store could be reimbursed if bulbs did not live up to their guarantees. She also required us to show her a very short pencil stub before she would issue us a new pencil. Money was still tight in 1941.
After Christmas, still unscathed by bombs, I returned to being a full-time housewife. I stood in line at the meat market, but when my turn came, all the butcher had left to sell was pig tails.
Gas rationing ended my driving lessons. From our kitchen window I watched the j.a.panese family, laden with bundles and suitcases, quietly leave their home and climb into a taxi on their way to the Relocation Center. It was a sad scene; they were such gentle, courteous people. Our landlady gave us a plot in the backyard for a Victory garden, which I enjoyed, remembering, as I had been taught in grammar school in Portland, to rotate our crops and to plant legumes to replenish nitrogen in the soil.
College friends married, had babies, were called into service, returned to their homes, or disappeared, leaving us to wonder where they had gone. Someone sent a newspaper picture of the Upshot who had been eager to see the inside of an airplane. He was sitting in a BT-14 training plane at Randolph Field. In spite of his high draft number, we were not sure how long Clarence would remain a civilian, and we did not feel it was time to start a family. I had no intention of going back to Portland to live with my parents. We finally decided it would be best if I were settled in a job. Now all I had to do was find one.
I Meet the Army.
Like the younger sons in folktales I had told in Yakima, I set forth to seek my fortune, beginning with the Oakland Public Library. I flunked the physical examination because the doctor said I was too nervous to meet the public. I did not let him discourage me.
My next stop was the Department of Employment, where I half expected to be sent to a s.h.i.+pyard to become another Rosie the Riveter. Instead I was sent to apply for a library opening at Camp John T. Knight, which turned out to be a compound of barracks, a chapel, and one-story white s...o...b..x buildings in the Oakland Army Base on the edge of San Francis...o...b..y. There I learned that another librarian, older than I, had been sent from the San Francisco Department of Employment. She was given the t.i.tle of Post Librarian, but since librarians were in short supply, Xenophon P. Smith, Chief Librarian of the 9th Service Command, did not want to let one slip through his fingers. Would I consider sharing the position with the t.i.tle of Junior Hostess? A Junior Hostess would normally work in a service club, but since there was none at Camp Knight, funds were available. Why not? I was amused by my t.i.tle, which reminded me of the song ”Ten Cents a Dance.” This time I pa.s.sed the physical examination with the army doctor's gentle comment ”Why, you're frightened.” I met the Special Service Officer, who was responsible for library and recreation services. He introduced me to Colonel Alfonte, an Old Army Commanding Officer, who told me that listening to the men talk was more important than library work, but I must never ask questions. I had a feeling that life in the Yakima boardinghouse full of men had been basic training for my new army life.
And so I went to work at raw, windy, bleak Camp Knight. Even sunny days began with cold fog pressing down on white buildings, gray sidewalks, and mud. When the sun did come out, the men whistled tunes from Oklahoma!, and the camp often had a sickly-sweet smell of coconut as copra from the South Pacific was unloaded on its way to becoming soap. At one end of the block-long street, s.h.i.+ps loading explosives flew red flags. On one side of the library a railroad track of flatcars was loaded with tanks, guns, explosives, landing craft, Jeeps, the machines of war. In daylight the cars stood motionless, but during the night their loads disappeared, and by the time we came to work, another trainload awaited its voyage to the South Pacific. Camp Knight was not a place to lift the spirits.
The post librarian and I worked in a small room in a building designed to be a mess hall but temporarily used as a day room, the army term for recreation room. As I listened to the men, new words, which Clarence defined for me, were added to my vocabulary. I did not use them. Pool b.a.l.l.s clicked, Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s, as James Thurber was to say, gnip-gnopped, and the jukebox played over and over the men's two favorite songs, something about ”Why don't you do right and get me some money, too?” and a burlesque song that contained the line ”'Take it off, take it off,' cries a voice from the rear.” The children's room of the Yakima Public Library seemed a long, long way away.
In a few weeks book-filled shelves lined the walls. The pool table, Ping-Pong table, and jukebox were moved out and replaced with long tables and pewlike benches. When we remarked to the colonel's wife that we thought a library needed some comfortable chairs, Mrs. Alfonte, loyal to the Old Army, said indignantly, ”Some of the finest generals in the army have sat on those benches.” Perhaps that explained why West Point officers were always so erect. Slumping was impossible on those straight-backed benches.
Then our Special Service uniforms arrived. They were blue gabardine suits with shoulder patches that looked like the end of an open book with pages of different colors representing branches of the service. ”The Rainbow Division,” the men called us. I was lucky enough to find a pair of British Walker shoes that buckled on the side and were appropriate with a uniform. The camp was so muddy that polis.h.i.+ng them seemed a waste of time, but I did s.h.i.+ne them once in a while. My shoes must have bothered the men, who were required to keep their shoes polished at all times. One of them presented me with a can of Kiwi polish. After that I treated myself to professional s.h.i.+nes, and my shoes gleamed and pa.s.sed the men's inspection, which my stockings did not.
My one remaining pair of nylons had to last the Duration. For work I found some handsome, I thought, cotton mesh stockings imported from England, where they were probably worn for hiking on the moors but were suitable to wear with my British Walkers. I wore them until the men began to ask, ”Do you have to wear those stockings?” I did not care to paint my legs as some women did, so my next choice was rayon stockings, presentable if worn wrong side out so they didn't s.h.i.+ne, but with feet so badly shaped that pulling them on was like putting my feet into paper bags. They did not dry overnight, and all through the war our shower rod was draped with damp rayon stockings. The men said no more.
The white s.h.i.+rts we were required to wear with our uniforms were also a problem. They were difficult to find and were usually rayon, sure to disintegrate in a short time if sent to a commercial laundry, which in wartime could not promise when they would be returned. Even though housekeeping was simplified by a lack of furniture, I resented ironing s.h.i.+rts in my limited free time until I discovered I could cut the work in half by wearing s.h.i.+rts wrong side out on the second day and keeping my jacket b.u.t.toned. No one noticed. Then overcoats arrived. They were made of such coa.r.s.e stiff woolen fabric (”shoddy,” Mother would have called it) that when I sat down on the A train, the overcoat did not sit with me. The collar rose above my ears.
On the mornings when I opened the library, no matter how cold and bl.u.s.tery the weather, men, both black and white, were waiting to use the c.o.ke machine. At that time the army was segregated, but our library was not. Rank and race made no difference to us.
The men of the United States, uprooted from their lives by lottery and thrust into the Quarter-master Corps or Military Police, were a revelation more enlightening than travel. I was astounded at the variety of men who found themselves at Camp Knight. A furrier from Marshall Fields in Chicago remarked, ”Humph, split skins,” when a corporal's wife walked in wearing a fur coat. A professional gambler from Georgia confided that payday gambling with young soldiers was ”jest like rakin' in the leaves” and asked for our help in filling out applications for postal money orders so he could send his winnings home, where he was buying an apartment house. A bootlegger explained how to smuggle liquor into the dry state of Kansas. Several law school graduates from City University of New York hoped somehow to get onto the Judge Advocate General's staff. A man whose job in civilian life had been dyeing the marbleized edges of dictionaries explained how it was done. Another man had done a stretch for robbing a Chicago hotel. Men from crowded cities reminisced about their lives in the ”C's,” as they called the Civilian Conservation Corps.
The men seemed equally amazed by one another. I overheard a black man telephoning his wife on the library's pay telephone say, ”They sez they's Creoles. What the h.e.l.l is Creoles?” Men from big cities spoke contemptuously of ”those farmers” and looked down on fresh-faced small-town boys from the Midwest who saw war as adventure. This did not sit well with me, once a farmer's daughter, and I finally snapped at one man, ”You eat, don't you?” After a moment of startled silence, he said apologetically, ”I never thought of it that way.”
The language of the army fascinated me. Once when I was hurrying to the Post Exchange to buy a sandwich before the only sort left was potato salad on white bread, a private caught up with me and said, ”Jeez, you shoulda been in the infantry, the way you pick 'em up and lay 'em down.”
Our feet grew cold on the cement floor as men showed us pictures of their families and confided, in their various accents, plans for the days when the war, which had only begun, would end and they could return home. When one man who had been promoted from corporal to sergeant asked if I knew where he could get his new stripes sewn on his blouse, I volunteered to do it for him. After that I sewed on new stripes several times a week. Private First Cla.s.s stripes were the most difficult because they tended to stretch or bend while I was sewing.
Companies were moved out of camp and replaced by others. Often men from the East came straight to the library to ask, ”How far is it to Hollywood?” When told it was about four hundred miles to the south, they asked in disbelief, ”In the same state?” When we said that California extended about the same distance to the north, they often said ”Jeez” in disbelief.
Once the camp had for a brief time a detachment of men who censored mail for the Army Post Office. They were ordered to skim through letters going to men overseas but not really read them. ”You can't help reading them,” one man said. ”You get so you watch for certain letters.” Another said, ”It seems like some women have no shame.”
I felt sorry for the men, most of whom worked in s.h.i.+fts around the clock loading and guarding s.h.i.+ps. Many men had no consideration for those who had to sleep in the daytime and did not lower their voices. Radios played night and day. One man told me he became so angry he picked up a radio, held it over his head, and dropped it on the floor. We did not disturb exhausted men who came to the library and fell asleep on the new couches. These couches had mysteriously arrived to replace the pewlike benches, leaving us to wonder what became of those benches. Were they s.h.i.+pped to the South Pacific so men would sit up straight in the jungle?
This seemed as reasonable as some of the army's orders. When an order came from Post Headquarters-”The men will attend the movie, and the men will enjoy themselves”-the men laughed about it. When a man imprisoned in the guard house, probably for the usual offense of swearing at an officer, requested a book on mathematics, we sent him one. A sergeant returned it. The Bible was the only reading material permitted in the guard house.
Then one day it was announced that the camp was to have a gas mask drill. Everyone would be issued a mask and be required to walk through a building filled with gas. The day came, but the library staff had not been given masks. ”What about us?” we asked, only to be told we were not included in the drill because we were paid from different funds.
Life on the home front was difficult. When we worked a five-day week, I could sometimes go to Mill Valley to visit pregnant Jane, whose army officer husband was in Italy, but when the government decreed that we must work six days a week, I no longer had time for the trip or any other recreation. Going to work meant either waiting for an unreliable bus or walking thirteen blocks to an A train, where pa.s.sengers were curious about my uniform with its jaunty hat, which also bore the rainbow insignia. ”What kind of uniform is that?” I was often asked. One woman wanted to know, ”Just who do you think you are in that getup?” Another asked what I was all togged out for. At the army base I had a choice of walking a cold, windy mile to the library or riding in a truck. Going home was easier. Clarence, concerned about my traveling through an unsafe West Oakland neighborhood on the nights I worked until nine o'clock, applied to the ration board for extra gasoline so he could pick me up after work. He was granted enough to come for me every day. We often stopped to eat at one of the several small restaurants on the way home.
When I worked nights I packed a spartan meal, usually a Spam sandwich and a piece of fruit. According to Army Regulation 210-70, librarians and hostesses were the equivalent of captains. This should have ent.i.tled us to get meals in the officers' mess across the street, but we were denied this right, a decision apparently made by a Red Cross volunteer who impressed officers with her wealth. She always carried five hundred dollars in cash so she could lend money to any man in need. That we could have complained by way of our library officer to Colonel Alfonte did not occur to us, and today I wonder why a volunteer was allowed to a.s.sume so much power. It was she who insisted the men wear uniforms instead of fatigues to the library because being in uniform would make them ”feel better.” We felt men should be ent.i.tled to use the library no matter how they were dressed.
Although I enjoyed listening to the men, I did not find Camp Knight a pleasant place in which to work. Almost no one wanted to be there except a few officers who had never had it so good. Enlisted men resented their officers and disliked their work on the docks. As one man told me, ”When you stand guard all night, it seems like you hate the whole world.”
One event lifted spirits. Not long after the library opened and Colonel Alfonte was transferred or retired, one of his successors was court-martialed for ”making improper advances to the wives of younger officers.” This was a great morale booster for enlisted men because it showed them officers were not always given preferential treatment.
Still, the library was an uncomfortable place. The post librarian understandably resented having to share her position with a junior hostess. I was doubtful about her abilities as a librarian because she disliked selecting books and left their choice to me, work I enjoyed. She also refused to catalog books. I did not mind taking over because I used a simplified system and used the authors' names on t.i.tle pages. Mark Twain was Mark Twain. She spoke of ”her” library, which irritated me after Miss Remsberg's lecture on no part of a library belonging to any one staff member.
The a.s.sistants were usually engrossed in personal problems and did not stay long. I missed the calm kindness I was used to from Miss Remsberg in Yakima, the friendly cooperation of the Yakima staff, and the companions.h.i.+p of Sather Gate Book Shop. Poor food, erratic transportation, irregular hours were beginning to wear me down. I was well paid by the standards of the times, but I had little need for money. In wartime, stores spread their merchandise thin or left shelves bare, and wearing a uniform six days a week, I had no need for more clothes. We could have used more furniture, if we could find any, but I would only have to dust it, and a rug would lead to a vacuum cleaner that would have to be run. A dust mop was faster. I had nothing to do with my checks but deposit them in the bank. Did I really need this job?
Then, after a bad case of flu, when I was about to give up, I received a call from Xenophon P. Smith telling me the Hotel Oakland was being converted into an area station hospital. He suggested I look the place over, and if I wanted the position of post librarian, it was mine. A job only a twenty-minute streetcar ride from home with no transfers-of course I wanted it, but when I went to the hospital, I found myself involved in the strangest interview that any librarian I have ever known has had. I was shown into the office of the commanding officer, who was leaning back in his chair. He misunderstood the situation and thought he was interviewing me. A huge man, tall and heavyset, he sat up, reached out, pulled me toward him so I was standing between his knees, gave me two pats on my bottom, and said, ”So you're a librarian. You can have the job anytime you want it.”
I stepped back and stared at him. All the men I had met at Camp Knight had been friendly, courteous, and proper. No one had ever touched me. I thought fast. By this time I had seen enough of the army to know that officers did not stay long in one post. I would take a chance.
The C.O., a.s.suming the matter was settled because he said so, released my hand, sprang to his feet, and said, ”Follow me. I'll show you where the library is going to be,” and left the room with long strides.
”Run!” cried the secretary in the outer office. ”Run, or you'll lose him.”
I ran. This giant of a man led me down the hall and into the ballroom where I had danced when I was a student at Cal. Thus began a relations.h.i.+p of post librarian vs. commanding officer. He waved his hands and explained how the ballroom was to be divided, with Red Cross recreation offices at one end, a stage in the center, and the library and Special Service office behind the stage. ”And the Dutch door to the library will go here,” he said, pointing.
A divided door in which the top and bottom halves opened separately? ”Why a Dutch door?” I asked.
”So the men can come to the door and ask for their books,” he said. ”We can't have them going into the library and getting the books out of order.”
I was speechless. Then I thought of the rallying cry of the Office of Librarians.h.i.+p of the 9th Service Command: ”Make adversity work for you.” A rich opportunity of adversity lay ahead, if I could make it work.
My War with the Army.
Traveling to work at the Oakland Area Station Hospital was much easier and much more interesting than my journey to Camp Knight. I walked two blocks to the number 14 streetcar, run by a very old motorman named w.i.l.l.y, who had been called out of retirement to serve during the war. w.i.l.l.y, glad to be back at work, took wicked pleasure in speed, and piloted his car over the uneven roadbed as if he were in a race. We bucketed around Lake Merritt, past the Hanrahan, Wadsworth, Pine, and Borba Funeral Home and a place that manufactured ”The Laminated s.h.i.+m That Pe-e-els for Adjustment,” whatever that was, to stop directly in front of the hospital.
I was given a desk in medical supply, down the hall from the morgue, where I could make out book orders while the ballroom was being converted. The administration correctly a.s.sumed that a librarian was ent.i.tled to eat in the officers' mess, a real treat after so many Spam sandwiches. The food was good, and we were often served steak. In wartime! I savored every bite of those meals even though surgeons came into the mess in their blood-smeared ”scrubs.” Enlisted men, suspicious of officers, often asked what I had to eat ”in there” and were rea.s.sured to learn that officers and enlisted men were served the same food with one exception. Officers had salad.
I quickly revived from life at Camp Knight. My first obstacle was the Red Cross, which objected to my starting a library when its workers already circulated books from a small collection of donations. When I pointed out that the army provided both librarians and ample funds for books, the woman in charge of recreation told me I could have the medical library, but the Red Cross would continue to supply reading material to patients. I quoted AR 210-70 to the library officer, who consulted the C.O., who p.r.o.nounced, ”There will be one library in this hospital, and Mrs. Cleary will run it.”
When part.i.tions were in place, I moved from medical supply to the most poorly designed library I have ever seen. It was T-shaped, with the stage in the recreation room in one angle, the medical library locked in one arm of the T, and the circulation desk and the Dutch door in the other arm. Over the part.i.tion, in the long part of the T, was the Special Service office. The main part of the library made a detour around a thick pillar. Light came from two windows and a crystal chandelier suspended from a very high ceiling.