Meanwhile - On the Home Front (reposted)

Meanwhile - On the Home Front 

(Those of you who have read this, please forgive me for reposting. I want some of the newer people in my groups to read it. I had deleted it from Gather, altogether.)

My husband was an Amm2/C, a second-class aircraft mechanic when he was shipped to Hawaii in the spring of 1945. He was a good, all-round mechanic and eventually the powers that be decided to send him to the states to take a crash course on the Douglas DC3, a two-engine cargo plane and the work-horse of the Navy. He wired me with the good news. We hadn’t seen each other in a year, and had been married only four months when he first shipped out.  

When I got his telegram, I was learning to be a tool-maker at Winchester Repeating Arms in New Haven, CT. Management was not pleased with my one-week notice, but there was no holding me back. During that week I got another wire from my husband telling me he had been given delayed orders, giving him extra time to visit his parents, and I was to meet him in Grand Forks, ND, his home town. So, I got a ticket on a Greyhound bus bound for North Dakota.

Somewhere along the way I caught a bad cold and by the time I reached Grand Forks I was running a high fever. There, his family told me he had sent another wire to them, “No delayed orders. Meet me in Santa Monica”.  So back on the bus I went for several more days of misery. 

 I arrived at Santa Monica before dawn and it occurred to me I didn’t know where  in Santa Monica I was supposed to meet him. I was feeling feverish and dizzy as I tried at several hotels to get a room. It was wartime and rooms were hard to come by. I must have looked pitiful, staggering along the sidewalk with a heavy suitcase, feeling sorry for myself, and tears beginning to run down my cheeks. I was walking on a street where there were doors leading to rooms built over the stores. There were a surprising number of people up at that early hour, walking briskly along the sidewalk .  

As I was passing a door, a nice-looking man stepped out, and fell in close behind me. He saw my distress, and with a concerned look, asked me what was wrong. I told him I had just come in on a bus from the east, and hadn’t slept in a couple of days, and I couldn’t get a room in a hotel.  He immediately offered me his room up over the store. He said he was on his way to work and wouldn’t be back until 5 PM. I was quite shy in those days, and normally wouldn’t consider accepting the bed of a strange man, but I felt I would soon be falling down if I couldn’t find a place to lie down first. I accepted. He showed me the way upstairs where there was a man acting as a sort of hall monitor stationed at a desk. My benefactor explained my plight to him and left.  I slept soundly for several hours, but when I awakened, I knew I had to go to a hotel early to apply, or I wouldn’t have a hope of getting a room. I left a silver dollar and a thank-you note on the bureau for the kind man. (I had acquired the silver dollar at a rest stop in Las Vegas, which was not much more than a bus stop in those days.)

After several hours, I did get a room. Then, I had to confront the problem of finding my husband. I called Douglas Aircraft Co without any success that I remember. I went to the Salvation Army, the USO, the Red Cross, the Gray Ladies, and Traveler’s Aide and left messages everywhere to let my husband know where he could find me. I bought Vicks Vapor Rub, cough syrup, and aspirin at a drug store and retreated to my hotel room, and went to bed.  Later that afternoon I awoke to knocking on my door. Cautiously, before I opened the door, I croaked, “Who is it?”  “Who do you think it is?” someone croaked back at me. I knew that croak, and opened the door to my husband, who also had a bad cold. We had a joyous reunion anyway. Later I shared my Vicks Vapor Rub etc. and we sent down for food, and slept. 

Next day we went to thank the ladies at Traveler’s Aid who had told my husband where to find me, and also thanked the people in the other organizations who had helped me. They all had people on duty at desks at the bus station. We looked at classified ads in the newspaper and found a nice room for rent in a private home where we could stay while my husband went to school at Douglas. I got a job installing seats in the planes.  We bought a Model A Ford Coupe for transportation. We ate our meals out, and spent too much time in bars until my husband decided we didn’t need that kind of life. He said he had seen too many marriages break up because of drinking and hanging out in bars, and we would not live like that.  

After over two months of becoming reacquainted with each other, his crash course at Douglas was over, and his time in the states was up. He had to report to Treasure Island in San Francisco to await transportation back to Hawaii. He sold the Model A back to the dealer he bought it from, I saw him off on a Greyhound bus, and returned to my lonely room.  I had no friends, relatives or connections and didn’t feel very self sufficient, so wanted to leave Santa Monica as soon as I could and I began to plot ways to get to Hawaii. I thought I might become a civil servant, and maybe could be sent there, and I thought my chances would be better if I applied in San Francisco. But, quitting my job at Douglas was not as easy as leaving Winchester in New Haven. It seemed there were wartime laws so that they could make me stay. At last I said I was pregnant and wanted to go home to my mother who was living in a little town near Boston. They bought that. But the joke was on me. I found out later I really was pregnant!  

Soon, I was on another Greyhound bus that took me to San Francisco. Again, I suddenly realized I had no idea how to contact my husband in San Francisco. After walking down the main street, that was a sea of the white hats of sailors, I found a room in a small hotel.  I found a phone and called the Navy District Chaplain who, told me that the whereabouts of my husband was classified information. I told him I thought he was on Treasure Island. The chaplain hesitated, made me wait, and said my husband had been detailed to guard prisoners on Goat Island. I asked him if there was a phone number I could call there and he said it was classified, but, as if talking to himself, he said something like, “Let’s see, I just called ------“, and he said the number twice before dismissing me with an apology that he couldn’t help me. For once, I was alert enough to understand his ruse, and I jotted down the number and called it immediately. It was answered right away and the man on duty called out, “Does anyone here know Schauer?”  I could hear a voice say, “I’m Schauer. What do you want?”  At that very moment he had been walking by that desk! That was an amazing coincidence! Don’t tell me that Someone up there isn’t looking out for me! So we had another joyous reunion, but all too soon we had another sad farewell. I didn’t get that civil service job.  

There I was in a strange city without a friend or acquaintance. I was very short of money and after buying my ticket to Boston on the Greyhound bus, I had $15 left. I bought some snacks and went to the movies. I saw “The Picture of Dorian Grey”, a moody movie that really scared me. I had given up the hotel room thinking I would be able to leave for Boston that day, so I was out on the street. Some helpful person told me about a facility out by the ocean where Navy wives could be housed overnight. I took a trolley to the end of the line and at sundown, I was walking down a lonely street that had very few buildings, but a lot of dead trees poking their barren branches into the starlit sky. I was spooked, but eventually found a small Navy facility with a large barracks, a no-frills bathroom and a bunk where I could safely sleep. 

 Next morning, when I boarded the Greyhound bus for Boston, I had just $12 left. The fellow seated next to me was a Merchant Marine sailor who was going to Chicago to marry his best girl. By the time we reached Salt Lake City, he noticed I had bought only snack crackers, and had not eaten a single meal.  I told him I had only $12 that had to last until reached Boston. At the next stop he insisted I take $20. He seemed so sincerely concerned for my welfare, I finally I took it, and told him I would send it to him as soon as I arrived home. It was a blessing because the bus was detoured through New York City and the trip took an extra day. Because of his generosity I didn’t have to go hungry. My mother loaned me $20 and I mailed it to the Merchant Mariner in time to reach him before the date of his marriage.  

And the war and our lives went on.