Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2020 i Reminisce Extra

As a young reporter working for a small weekly in southern Ontario, I interviewed a man who was retiring after 30 years as a pyrotechnics display operator. I met him in his garden, where he was pulling weeds in his flower beds. What I knew about fireworks you could fit in a thimble, I told him. Sparklers and bottle rockets—that’s it. He smiled. “My favorites are willows,” he said. I looked around for the trees, but he shook his head. “Not that kind.” That’s when I learned that certain fireworks effects are named after things that grow—peony, chrysanthemum, palm. Willows burst into a sphere of delicate trails resembling a drooping tree. Later that week I watched a spectacular fireworks show over the Detroit River—a joint effort of sister cities Windsor…

When a conscientious objector became a Medal of Honor winner and World War I hero, it was a plot twist worthy of Hollywood. Alvin Cullum York was a third-grade-educated Tennessee farmer and sharpshooter known for winning local turkey-shooting contests. A devout Christian from the backwater town of Pall Mall, he declared himself a pacifist when called to duty in WWI. His commanding officers convinced York that war, terrible as it is, can sometimes be justified. To help save the lives of those around him, he reluctantly agreed to become an infantryman. In the waning days of the war, York killed 23 enemy combatants and managed to get 132 more to surrender. Allies France and Italy awarded him military honors, and he was given a hero’s welcome when he returned stateside.…

Arthur Battisto, 22, waited in line at the recruiting station in lower Manhattan to enlist in the Navy. It was January 1942, and ahead of him stood just about every young man who felt it was his duty to join the war effort. Art didn’t hesitate to do his part, but he held off on telling his parents, especially his mother, who cried upon hearing the news. While Art was serving in WWII, his father, John, died, but when Art came home, he carried on John’s trade of shoe repair. He opened Art’s Shoe Service on Aug. 14, 1946, paying $25 per month for rent. Memories of the Depression were fresh, and shoe repair was a good business. Art was my uncle, and just about everyone in Boonton knew him…

1947 THIS IS BIGGER THAN BOTH OF US Where to begin? It has everything you’d expect from a Cecil DeMille epic: big sets, big hair, big history (well, sort of)—not to mention wooden acting, overheated narration and Paulette Goddard in a bubble bath. As this unconquerable Life ad suggests, the lady’s wardrobe quandaries are a subplot all their own. 1946 THERE’S ONE HITCH Cary Grant plays against type in this stylish Hitchcock—a cad who uses morally confused Ingrid Bergman to catch spy Claude Rains. All’s fair in love and Nazis, right? A clever script and deft acting make it tough to decide who is more notorious. 1949 AN APE ACTS OUT A true summer hit that July, Mighty Joe Young was by the same team that made King Kong in…

We grew up in a suburban area on the southeast side of Columbus. Our parochial school was a half block from our house, so we walked to school everyday, and back home for lunch. The school and church took up several blocks, and we spent many a day playing on the grounds as if they were ours. The front porch was always a favorite place for my brothers and me to sit and keep an eye on the neighborhood. We loved being out there in the summer, with the smells of flowers blooming and fresh-cut grass. Our dad, Joe, was a butcher at Central Market in downtown Columbus. He rode his bike to work most days if the weather permitted. We never knew what he would bring home from the…

Foxhole Fight A MARINE DIGS IN ON LETHAL TERRAIN WARREN AUSTIN • SANFORD, NC AT THE TIME OF THE ATTACK on Pearl Harbor, I was a junior at Appalachian State Teachers College (now University) in Boone, North Carolina, and on the varsity wrestling team. I joined the Marine Corps and was allowed to complete my junior year. In summer 1942, I did basic training in South Carolina and special training in Pennsylvania. Marine Corps training was very physical, but I coped well since I was a P.E. major in college. Soon, I was called up to the 4th Marine Division at Camp Pendleton in California, steppingstone to the Pacific. I was made a corporal before we shipped out. We landed on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945. On the night…

Clustered on New Jersey’s Atlantic shore, dozens of one-of-a-kind motels embody a midcentury ideal. Painted in splashy sherbet shades, their architecture is futuristic, with curves and angles formed by atomic-age materials. Known as googie elsewhere, in the Jersey shore’s Wildwoods, the style is called doo-wop, like the music that was popular when the motels were built. Signs with looping neon names epitomize retro kitsch, but before the dawn of the automobile age, Wildwoods was an alternative to the fancy resorts a few miles south. When middle-class families got a taste for travel in the 1950s, the motels that caught their attention were convenient, informal and modern, and a few fake palm trees didn’t hurt. Doo-wop style was the perfect fit. From 1952 through the late ’60s, more than 250 motels…

NEON HOSPITALITY When motorists hit the first modern turnpike in 1940, small roadside inns were the norm for stays overnight. As the roadway system grew, families had more choices (see “Wish You Were Here,” page 34). Postcards highlighted life-on-the-road comforts—and invited guests to help advertise. 1. The latest midcentury amenities lured travelers to this motor hotel on the oceanfront in La Jolla, CA. 2. Mom-and-pop motels in Myrtle Beach, SC, touted Atlantic views in the ’60s, the golden era of the Grand Strand. 3. This Holiday Inn Great Sign was in Michigan City, MI, but it could have been anywhere. It beckoned families with the promise of the familiar. 4. When it opened in 1927, the El Cortez was the tallest building in San Diego, CA. The world’s first outdoor…

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins an unprecedented third term as war rages in Europe. Joe DiMaggio goes on a tear, hitting in 56 straight games. Big Bands send their swinging vibes over the airwaves. Whirlaway, affectionately called The Flying Tail, wins the Triple Crown, only the fifth horse to do so. Future classic Citizen Kan e hits the silver screen. General Mills introduces Cheerioats, but later tweaks the name. The Japanese bomb Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, bringing the U.S. into the war. And these words and phrases grab a spot in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. ASTRODOME: Rugged transparent domes on aircraft let navigators scan surrounding skies, above right. CAMPY: An extreme, stylized aesthetic startles audiences in The Maltese Falcon and horror classic The Wolf Man. DREAMBOAT: A very attractive person, the holder of…

“My friends dressed in their Sunday best for my 10th birthday party in 1963. I’m on the left, then Maureen, Nancy, Ann, Colleen and Lori.”DEBBIE BRYANT ROCKY RIVER, OH Dad was serving on a transport ship during World War II when I was born in Viroqua, Wisconsin. Mom took me by train to meet him when he was in port in Rhode Island, and told me that during that meeting, Dad promised to someday buy me a pony. As I grew up on our dairy farm, I became quite a fan of the singing cowboy shows with Gene Autry and my favorite, Roy Rogers. But I had no pony. It must have been after I fell off while trying to ride a pig that Dad remembered his promise to buy…

IN A BURST OF PASTELS, roadside motels beckoned families to destinations up and down the coasts, along Route 66 and on hundreds of other byways across North America at midcentury. Arthur Heineman built the world’s first in 1925 on Highway 101 in San Luis Obispo, California. The Motel Inn—a short form of motor and hotel—had an innovative feature: a parking space convenient to each room. His idea took off with the booming car culture after World War II. By the mid-1960s, there were some 60,000 motels in the U.S. Join us over the next few pages as we explore the neon splendor of these roadside gems in their heyday—when they were part of a new wave of bright, budget-friendly tourist epicenters. Roadside Surprise BY CAROL M. ELY • ROSELAND, VA…

An undistinguished character called Happy Rabbit debuted in Warner Bros.’ cartoons in the late ’30s. The small gray rabbit in “Porky’s Hare Hunt” (1938) was a nonspeaking extra, with a manic laugh similar to that of Daffy Duck, one of that studio’s stars. In its effort to dethrone Disney, Warner Bros.’ underdog animation team, working in a studio so cramped they called it Termite Terrace, was producing sharp, daring cartoons. On July 27, 1940, the studio released “A Wild Hare,” which starred a gray rabbit with a noticeably edgier personality. Casually crunching a carrot, Bugs Bunny baits a dimwitted hunter, then, setting up the routine that would become old hat in the many cartoons that followed, the wisecracking rabbit thwarts his antagonist after taking him on an emotional roller coaster.…

On his discharge from the Navy in 1948, my father, Kenneth, wanted to drive home to Rexburg, Idaho, from San Diego, California. The plan had one problem: He didn’t have a car. Dad found a used coupe whose overall look he liked. It had a curved dash, an unusual style for a GM automobile of the time. But a few hundred miles into his trip, the straight-eight Dynaflash engine threw a rod, destroying the car. Dad sold it to a scrap dealer and hitchhiked home. But he never forgot that car. In 1982, after 34 years of looking for another car like the one he lost, Dad found one in Las Vegas, Nevada. This one was a four-door model with dual side-mount spare tires. It had a radio, heater and…

Our windows stayed open at night in the spring and summer because we didn’t have fans or an air conditioner, and we could hear the whippoorwills. The area around Tulip, Arkansas, where we lived was heavily wooded, a natural habitat for whippoorwills, which nest on the ground. Their calls would sing us to sleep. Local folklore had it that a whippoorwill call sounds like the phrase “chip fell out of the white oak.” During the late ’30s, our family didn’t have radar or a radio to tell us what weather was coming, but my mother, Mary, was quite savvy about storms because they made her nervous. On this night, she had been keeping her eye on an approaching thunderstorm, and finally she gathered me and my siblings to take shelter…