Christmastime is here

I was just at Christmas Eve services at my church.  I go to a fairly large church and we have 7 services!  There are 3 family related services, 3 candlelighting services and a communion service, which is the one I attend.  It’s become a tradition for me every year to go.  It’s held in the larger of the two chapels at the church and it’s both relaxed and a little austere.  And it’s the one service on Christmas Eve that has communion.  It’s a noon service, so timing wise it works well.  I think I also like the fact that it's simple and not flashy.

While I was there today, one of the hymns we sang was “The First Noel” and it immediately took me back to my childhood and a memory so clear it actually brought tears to my eyes.

My childhood church was Covenant Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC.  Rather unassuming on the outside, the sanctuary to me was magical and awesome and awe-inspiring.  To me it always seemed huge and magnificent and I felt wrapped up in a happy blanket.  We were told that the church was fashioned after an upside down ark, so it had a pointed ceiling that was all dark wood and beams.  The pews were also dark wood with deep purple velvet cushions.  The stained glass windows were “real” stained glass, all jewel tones, and told Bible stories.  While it seemed cavernous and huge, it also seemed enveloping and warm.  There was a great pipe organ, played by a magnificent organist.  My favorite time of year was at Christmas, because we had this wonderful Christmas service and all the choirs sang.  When I was very small, we weren’t allowed to participate in the processional or carry real candles, so it was a huge treat to be old enough to walk down the central aisle with the lights dimmed and carrying real candles.  I remember wearing a choir robe that was black on the bottom and white on top with huge billowy sleeves.  We had to learn the first two verses of “The First Noel” because, with candles in our hands, we couldn’t carry a hymnal.  I was so proud to be floating down the aisle singing one of my favorite Christmas hymns!

I went to one candlelighting service at my current church, but the times always conflict with dinners and no one really seems to want to go with me, so I've only been the one time.  I remember the time I went it brought back some of those same memories.  I remembered having to breathe deeply to keep the tears from flowing.

But Christmas doesn’t mean the same thing anymore to me.  The first Christmas I was married turned out to be my father’s last Christmas.  I didn’t know that at the time, but he’d had cancer and it had come back and maybe I should have been more in tune with that.  But my new in-laws were in town from Jacksonville and I got talked into spending most of the holidays with them.  We ended up spending about an hour and a half with my family on Christmas Day.  There was no Christmas Eve dinner with them and we came well after the gift opening and breakfast traditions on Christmas morning.  My father died a little more than a month later and Christmas was never the same again.  I promised myself I wouldn’t miss those traditions anymore, and I didn’t, but the magic was gone.

And then 9 years ago, we buried my mother on Christmas Eve.  It seemed cruel that there was so much happiness and festivity going on around us during those few days when I felt none of it.  I know what Mother would say to me now – “just tell yourself you’re not going to let it get to you”.  But it does.

I don’t know that I could say today what would bring me joy at Christmas.  I spent Christmas one year in France and that was certainly magical, but I still went to bed Christmas Eve and cried for what was missing.  As I was driving home from church today, I thought how nice it would be to be surrounded by a family with a fire going and laughter all around.  Or rushing around with someone I loved grabbing last minute gifts and then having lunch and a few drinks at a local pub.  But I’m not really sure if having those things would make it feel ok.

I am happy to be able to spend time with my brothers and their families.  If someone is missing, as George will be this year because he’s sick, it feels incomplete.  But it feels incomplete anyway because the two people that made Christmas joyful and magical aren’t here.  There will always be something missing for me and always be a hole I can’t fill.

But, as I do every year, I try.  I do the modern equivalent of “just tell yourself it’ll be ok” – “fake it till you make it”.  And I will be happy to spend time with the people that I love most in the world, even though there’s still an ache in my heart.

Traditions!

Traditions!  Every time I think about this word, I’m hearing the song from “Fiddler on the Roof”.  I actually saw that on Broadway.  When I lived in New Jersey during junior high school, I had the opportunity to see 3 Broadway plays – “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Mame”, and “Man of La Mancha”.  How exciting was that?

Anyway, this is the time of year for traditions.  My family has always been about traditions, not just at the holidays, but all year long.  But I see a lot of those traditions going by the wayside, which makes me a little sad.  I wrote about the naming traditions in my family.  But how we celebrated – whether it was Christmas or Thanksgiving or birthdays – was just as important.

Birthdays were always your “special” day.  You always got to pick out your special dinner, as well as what cake and ice cream you wanted.  I always picked shrimp as my dinner.  Since my birthday is in August, there were a number of times when I was fortunate enough to be vacationing at the beach on my birthday and we would pick up shrimp fresh from the shrimp boats for my birthday dinner.  My choice of cake was always chocolate cake with chocolate icing.  I didn’t need or want anything fancy, just plain chocolate.  Oh, and chocolate ice cream too.  Plain.  For my 16^th birthday I did get a bakery cake, but I’m pretty sure I had chocolate ice cream to go with it.  I don’t remember all of my brothers’ birthday meals, but I do remember that my brother John’s was fried chicken.  At some point, Mother decided that she didn’t want to fry chicken anymore and she told John that if he wanted that, she could pick some up from Kentucky Fried Chicken.  He was horrified.  He tried to shame her into making an exception for him, but she was not going to be budged.  I don’t think he ever had fried chicken again on his birthday!  When we were young, my grandmother often made our cakes.  Anything we wanted she would try to create.  A favorite was her angel food cake.  My mother tried making it one year when we lived in New Jersey and Mocha wasn’t there to make the cake.  Her first attempt completely vanished in the pan!  So she tried again.  Looked good, but when we went to eat it, it was the chewiest thing ever – turns out she had mistakenly doubled the number of egg whites!  That was another thing she never made again.

As the years went by and we got older, we stopped having the special birthday meal.  Even the cakes stopped being our “special” cakes.  These days, if there is a birthday celebration at all (and there isn’t always), the cake is likely to be an ice cream cake or something from Publix.  And the ice cream is whatever someone picks up.  We no longer seem to celebrate everyone’s birthday together either.

Every time there was a “holiday” – like Memorial Day or 4^th of July or Labor Day – we would go over to the house and cook out.  Even after my father died, Mother liked to have everyone over and we would cook out hamburgers.  I think she just liked to see us and it gave her an excuse to do that.  We don’t do that anymore either.

New Year’s Day also had a tradition to it.  We always got together and had the traditional ham, black eyed peas, and greens.  Mother would nearly lose her mind if we didn’t do that.  She was convinced that we would jinx ourselves if we did not follow that tradition.  But I can’t tell you the last time I had that meal on New Year’s Day.  Not that I would eat greens these days – yuck! – but I don’t eat anything even close to that.

But the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays were the big deal.  We always had pretty much the exact same meal for both holidays – turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, squash casserole, peas, rice, rolls, a relish tray, and pumpkin and mincemeat pies for dessert.  Growing up, we used to have these big meals at my Great Aunt Helen’s house.  She always had a huge tray of shrimp and cocktail sauce, which I remember fondly.  All of the children would gather around the coffee table and nosh on the shrimp, while our dismayed parents stood behind us cursing themselves for teaching us to like shrimp.  We had other dishes on the menu that I remember,  like sweet potato casserole and pickled peaches.  In the years before my mother died, she actually was ok with having HoneyBaked ham and HoneyBaked sides for Thanksgiving.  I do remember one year my brother Paul made a pumpkin pie for dessert using a graham cracker crust.  Which he baked first.  That was interesting.

The first year after my father died, I had Thanksgiving at my house.  I thought that my mother would appreciate it, since especially that first year all the traditions made her sad.  I did my best to recreate the traditional meal and even found a sweet potato casserole recipe, which I had to make for several years in a row after that. 

After my mother died, Thanksgiving became kind of a lost holiday.  My brothers John and Paul went off elsewhere with their families and my brother George and I were left to our own devices.  For several years we went to one of the Brazilian churrascarias for Thanksgiving.  Other years we got ham slices and sides.  It meant few or no leftovers, but it actually wasn’t so bad.

Christmas is where we’ve held on to most of the traditions, although not all.  Our tradition was always to have Christmas Eve dinner with all the trimmings and then eat leftovers on Christmas Day.  We still do that, although not all of us together anymore.  My sister-in-law Beth usually prepares the Christmas Eve dinner and she has done traditional as well as non-traditional (a shrimp boil).  The years that they lived in France meant that George and I again had to be creative.  Christmas Eve dinner at a restaurant is ok, but actually was more sad to me than Thanksgiving.

When we were growing up, Santa always left our presents in the living room, with each of us having our own “station” of gifts.  Once we had had our fill of investigating them, we would open presents under the tree, and then we would have breakfast.  Our traditional breakfast was scrambled eggs, sausage links, and Moravian sugar cake from Dewey’s Bakery in Winston-Salem.  My mother always drove to Charlotte before Christmas to deliver gifts to her side of the family and always returned home with the Christmas sugar cakes.  As we got older and were finally able to convince my mother that we no longer believed in Santa Claus, her plan was that all the Santa gifts – yes, we still got them, even into our 20’s and 30’s – would be wrapped and go under the tree.  Daddy would wrap the gifts and number them; on Christmas morning, he would have his number key so that each of us got the right gifts.  Then the opening ceremonies would begin – we went around the room, each opening a gift, until they were all opened – and then we had breakfast.  After Daddy died, Mother still wrapped the presents, but she put names on them instead of numbers.

We still have that same breakfast, with some additions.  But one thing has never changed – the sugar cake!  We still order that from Dewey’s every year.

Another tradition during the Christmas season was driving around looking at the Christmas lights.  I still like doing that.  Not that it’s exclusive to New Jersey, but we seemed to see more than the usual number of houses with an overabundance of Christmas lights in New Jersey.  You know the houses, the ones that had the entire house outlined in lights, along with the yard and the walkways and the shrubs and the trees.  And there were often Santa’s and manger scenes and snowmen and stars on the roofs and chimneys and in the yards.  And more often than not the lights were blinking.  After we moved back from New Jersey, we still drove around looking for the “New Jersey houses”.

So often when I think back on these traditions, I realize that they came from my mother.  I don’t know if they were all the traditions that she grew up with – I’m guessing many of them were, because she was very traditional like that – but I think these were the things she wanted to do to put a stamp on the Moore family experiences.  This is the time of year when I remember my parents and miss them the most.  This is the time of year when the traditions were strongest and the things I remember about those days always revolves around them.  So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons’ Greetings and thanks, Mother and Daddy, for making the holidays – all of them – special times. 

Cuba!

So this year I went to Cuba.  An unusual place to go, because not many people from the US go there.  In fact, the most common comment I got when I said I was going to Cuba was “I didn’t think you could go to Cuba”.  But you can and I did.

I wondered what my parents would have said about my going to Cuba.  Remember that both of them were in Germany less than 10 years after WWII ended.  A divided Germany ravaged by war.  My dad was in the Army and was stationed there, so maybe his parents wouldn’t have been so concerned about him being over in Europe, and specifically in West Germany, then.  They may have just been happy he had a stable job.  My mother, on the other hand, chose to go there.

I asked my aunts what Mocha and Granddaddy had said about her going over there like that.  They said they don’t know what might have been said behind closed doors, but that in public they were supportive.  This, of course, was back before the days of women’s lib and women being major players in the workforce, so for my mother to have made the decision to go teach school for a year in Germany had to have been a BIG deal.  Both my parents grew up with Germany being this major world power, ruled by Hitler.  I know that, at least for my mother, the concept of a reunited Germany in the late 80’s/early 90’s was cause for apprehension.  The Germany they knew was a “bad” country, filled with hate and evil.  After the war, I think for them it was a matter of the “good” Germans being in West Germany and the ones who couldn’t move past the past being in East Germany.

I didn’t remember a Cuba that wasn’t ruled by Fidel Castro.  That wasn’t Communist, although Cubans today will describe what they live in as closer to socialism than communism.  I vaguely remember the anxiety around the Cuban Missile Crisis, although I was too young to know what it meant or what it was about.  I wrote a paper about it in college and learned more about how close we may have come to disaster back then.  I remember the Mariel boat lift, mostly from watching the movie Scarface, and the problems around that.  I knew that Cuba was a communist country, but that was about it.  Of course, I knew about the embargo, but it didn’t really touch me, so I didn’t dwell on it.  I certainly didn’t know much about what life was like in Cuba when I decided to go.

I think my parents, and especially my mother, would have been worried about my going over there.  They would have worried about my safety and they would have assumed that the living conditions would have been meager and difficult.  I think they would have supported me because, after all, I’m a grown woman and can make my own choices, but I think they would have been worried.  Especially since I would have been on total communication lockdown while I was away.

As I think back on my decision to go, it was a totally spur of the moment decision.  My church sent out a pamphlet on all the missions that we do and at the end had a list of upcoming mission trips.  The Cuba trip was on the calendar but just listed as “fall 2012”.  As I looked over the list, it was as if a voice said to me “Go to Cuba”.  I knew right then that I needed to do this.  For many reasons.  I was sure that it would be a popular trip, so I emailed the Missions Director right away.  Turns out I was the first person to ask about it!  I met the Associate Missions Director, who would be leading the trip, and was reassured that this was not a “building” trip or a “planting crops” trip, just a support trip.  I knew I could do that!  When the application came, I filled it out and sent it in immediately.  And then started to wonder if I was making a good choice.

Several years ago a friend and I had gone to hear Bruce Wilkinson speak at a local church.  He’s the guy who wrote, among other things, “The Prayer of Jabez”.  He talked about a mission trip he was sponsoring to a remote, undeveloped area of South Africa and was asking for 100 people to come forward and go with him.  My friend really wanted to go and I could hear her making all kinds of noises as she was struggling with the decision.  She knew her husband would not want her going alone and he wouldn’t go with her, so she was hoping I was “hearing the call”.  At one point she asked me “do you feel led to go?”  But I didn’t.  Not even a little bit.  But this time I certainly heard that call.  And made the decision to answer before I could talk myself out of it.

This was when I heard the “I didn’t think you could go to Cuba” stuff and people wondered what it was like there, would we be roughing it or having to go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground.  My best friend was apprehensive because not only was it a Communist country, but she didn’t think she could do it because she’s not a “camping girl”.  We did learn that, while Cuba is not as modernized as the US, they do have electricity and air conditioning and TV and phones and indoor plumbing.  Not so bad.  And no camping!  LOL

I did worry, in the weeks leading up to the trip, whether I could do this or not.  Because, after all, this was a mission trip.  Not a guided tour trip focused on sightseeing, although we would have a translator who was like a guide and we did do sightseeing.  I consider myself to be religious and spiritual, I believe in God and Jesus, I pray.  But I wasn’t sure I was “good enough” to go on a religious mission.  I couldn’t quote Scripture and I was uncomfortable praying out loud.  I wasn’t good about talking about my faith, even with others of faith.  I was sure I would fail.  It didn’t help that, when I went to the pre-trip meetings, the other folks who were going seemed to be so much more Godly than me.  I worried that I would be unmasked as not enough – not spiritual enough, not knowledgeable enough, not able to carry my weight enough.  But I also believed that God had led me to make this decision and that it would help me find a closer walk with Him.  So, in spite of the fact that I felt like I was completely out of my depth, I pushed forward.

The trip itself was amazing.  It was a little like peeking behind the curtain and seeing the Wizard of Oz unmasked.  The people were wonderful, happy to have us there and warm and welcoming.  I never felt unsafe.  There were no overt political overtones, in spite of the many graffiti messages of “Viva la revolucion!” and pictures of Fidel and Che.  The few times it ever came up, the message was really one of hopefulness – hope that the embargo would soon go away, hope that soon it would be time for the Americans to come.  It gave me hope, even while I felt immense sadness that it was this way.  I had never given much thought to the embargo and what it meant, both to these people in Cuba as well as those who had left after the revolution.  But I was left with the feeling that we were beyond it, that it had gone on too long and that whatever was important about this at one time was long in the past.  I couldn’t, and can’t, figure out who or what it benefits anymore.  This is a beautiful country with beautiful people and I’d love for more Americans to see this amazing place.  Even though I fear that if that does happen, Cuba will lose a lot of what makes it so special, because the Americans they want will change this place to be more acceptable to Americans. 

The only part of the trip that wasn’t so amazing had to do with clothes.  And as much as I tried to tell myself to get over it, I couldn’t.  One of the team members had been on several mission trips to Cuba and gave us her thoughts on what we would see and experience.  One of the things she told us was to “dress like a bag lady”.  No fancy jewelry or designer clothes or shoes.  No high dollar purses or other things that would show us to be Americans.  We wanted to blend in.  She even said that we could probably get away with wearing the same clothes the entire trip and that midway through we’d have the opportunity to have some laundry done.  While that last part about the laundry was true, the rest of it was mostly not.  And, as it happened, I was the only one who actually took it to heart and didn’t bring a lot of clothes.  Certainly not enough to wear something different every day.  Even the team member who gave us this advice didn’t take it herself.  She had a different outfit for every day and sometimes even more than one!  It was hot and humid while we were there and it didn’t take long to feel hot and sticky in your clothes.  So wearing a top two days in a row or a pair of pants four days in a row got old.  And every time I had to do that, every time I didn’t have what I thought were more appropriate clothes for the occasion, every time I saw her and the others wearing something nice, I couldn’t get past my anger and irritation.  I couldn’t not mention it either, even though I didn’t want to.  The other women even took makeup, which I did not, so when we went out to dinner or went to something a little more special occasion, they could look nicely made up (and wearing clean fancier clothes!) and I felt like an idiot.

We did get to do things that tourists would do.  The seminary, which was our host, had someone who planned the trip for us and she made sure that we had cultural experiences as well as the more religious ones.  We went to the ballet, we heard a chamber choir sing.  We visited a pharmacy museum and a slavery museum (which focused more on Santeria than slavery!), we visited the Hemingway Museum.  We got to go to the beach and had a mojito at the former DuPont mansion (now a hotel).  We had dinner at two nice restaurants in Havana and stayed at a nicely appointed hotel in Havana.  We went to craft markets in both Varadero and Havana and got to buy souvenirs and mementos.  And we had a walking tour of Old Havana.

But what impressed me the most was the faith of the people in Cuba.  The enduring faith that made it through a difficult time when Cuba was an atheist state and discriminated against people of faith and caused them to have to go underground for fear of reprisal.  Because of this, it’s not uncommon to see mostly old people and children in church.  Few young and middle-aged adults are in church because they weren’t allowed to go as they grew up and they don’t have that history.  Many of those who go to the seminary and spend many years learning about the Scripture and about Scriptural teachings will leave Cuba once they have completed their studies.  So while Cuba is now a secular state and does not prohibit its people from going to church, it’s still hard to grow the church because of the many years of neglect.  So it was encouraging to see young adults starting to come back and teenagers standing up for their faith when many of their friends are not.

I didn’t get the major spiritual moment that I thought God led me to Cuba for.  But as I saw how God worked through the people of Cuba and that He hadn’t given up on them, it started to awaken in me the knowledge that He hadn’t given up on me either.  I often wonder how God could love me, an imperfect and flawed person.  I’ve worked so hard in my life to be the Anti-Mother that I think I lost a lot of the wonderful qualities that really made her who she was and would have made me more pleasing to God.  And so I felt that God surely couldn’t love that hard-hearted and selfish person that I have become.  I needed to understand that God would stand by me and I started to learn that through seeing how He has stood with the Cubans all these years.  When everything was against them and it didn’t seem as though there were any hope, He was still there.  Waiting.  And so I think He’s been waiting for me and that was what He wanted me to see in Cuba.

Here are some pictures that say “Cuba” to me and that are representative of my trip and what I want to remember.  And I think that, in the end, if my parents had heard what I learned about myself and about the country of Cuba while I was there, they would have been glad I had gotten that opportunity.

Small town Cuba - Jaguey Grande

Sunday afternoon in Jaguey Grande

Small churches like this one in Guisima are common and staffed by seminary students

Cubans, like Israel, are kind and gentle people

The tourist beach - the new face of Cuba

At the seminary in Matanzas

Cuban women who make and sell needlework and other crafts to show their faith

Jose Marti - the father of Cuban independence and a symbol of hope, even today

Even in hard times, Cubans are a happy people

The beauty of Cuba

 

So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu!

July 23, 1954

Monday and Tuesday nights I went to the movie with Willie.  Then Wednesday night went to Rita and Bernie’s to dinner.

Yesterday about noon Willie found out that his orders had been changed.  He left this morning instead of Sunday.  Last night we went to Juanita and Lilburn Irwin’s to dinner.  This morning I got up and ate with Willie.  Then I went to the train with him.  I surely did hate to see him go, and I surely did feel down in the dumps.  He called this afternoon from Nuremberg and I missed the call – darn it!  [It makes me a little teary to read this.  I can only imagine how hard it was for her - she was leaving - and not for somewhere close by but halfway around the world! - and then he gets called away sooner than expected.  I can remember when I had a long distance relationship and every time I left, I felt bereft.  I imagine that's how she felt.]

Tonight Dan Clark had a promotion party.  Afterwards Detachment had a going away party for the Freeman’s and they let me in on it too.  They gave me some grand perfume.  It was a grand party.

Mother at the Officers Club going in for one of those infamous parties

Party time!

The Martin’s leave tomorrow.  Tomorrow night I am to go to the Ireland’s for dinner, Sunday the Verboshes, and Monday the Allen’s.  Tuesday I leave.

Got to get my stuff together now – packers come tomorrow at 0800!

July 27, 1954

Saturday they packed my things.  That morning the Martins left.  Then that afternoon a bunch of us sat around and chatted.  Saturday night the Tuites, the Tuggles, and I went over to the Ireland’s for dinner.  Afterwards I spent the night with the Tuggles.  Sunday afternoon I went into Peg and Bob Kelly’s for lunch.  Then we went to the baseball game and back to their house for supper.  Afterwards we went over to the Verboshes for drinks – Kellys, Tuggles, Lilly’s, Amy Randall, and Janie Flynn.  [What a whirlwind of activity in just a few short days!  All the parties!  Parties do make the world go round, don't they?]

Monday June and I went to Nuremberg for my final doings.  That night went over to Pat and Don’s for dinner – Kelly’s and Tuggle’s.

This morning I left for Frankfurt.  We got in about 1700.  We sat in the billeting office until after 8 waiting for rooms.

One other teacher and I are staying at the Park Sanitorium Hotel in Bad Homberg.  It looks like Am. Express reservations!!!

Mike Molloy greeted me at the billeting office – they are still here!

Surely do miss Willie!!!  [I wonder if they had already talked about getting married.  I wonder if she cried.]

 

July 28, 1954

This morning I went into Frankfurt to see Nora and Mike.  After going several places and waiting around for Carlton most of the day, I found out they got out sometime late last night.  People are coming and going continually here all day and night.  Wonder when our time will be!

August 2, 1954

Last Wednesday night (28^th), they came knocking about 20 ‘til 11 and said be down in the lobby by 2300.

They took us into Frankfurt for our baggage check.  Then we went to Rhine Main where we converted our money for dollar instruments and went through customs, etc.  We took off at 0330 the 29^th.  We flew on Trans Ocean in a cargo plane which wasn’t very comfortable.  We landed at Iceland where it was certainly windy.  Had lunch there.  Then we went to Gander for supper.  We took off in a storm.  We landed at Idlewild at 0330 EST.  It took us 30 hours.  [These days you could fly from Frankfurt to NYC in about 8 hours and non-stop!  Heck, you could probably fly non-stop to Charlotte in about 10.  I can't imagine all those stops and it all taking more than a full day!  At least she got to fly and didn't have to take a ship back.] You might know I would get on the slowest thing going.  We had to process at Idlewild and then go to Ft. Hamilton.  We got there around 0600 and couldn’t finish our processing until 0900, so we just sat around.  Finally we finished, and I got transportation into Penn Station.  Saw Mike Molloy again as I was going out through the gate.  After I had gotten my ticket, I went out to Dink Ware’s for lunch.  Then I got the Zagat at 1400 and got into Charlotte at 0200 Saturday morning the 31^st.  I sho’ do miss Straubing but it certainly is nice to be home and see everybody.

Plane Mother flew in from Frankfurt to NY

 

And of course she must take a picture of leaving Iceland!

End of my European tour!  It was grand!!!

And so it's all over.  But there's still more to discuss so stay tuned!

Party all the time, party all the time!

July 10, 1954

Flooding near Straubing

And more of the flooding

Well, this is the 4^th day in a row that it has been raining without stopping.  It has been raining off and on for the last couple of weeks.  Straubing is okay but everything around it is flooded.  1^st Bn. is having to evacuate people around here and send out patrols.  They look like they are moving out on an alert.  In fact they are alerted.

         Last night Willie and I went down to the Tuggles to dinner.  ‘Twas most enjoyable.

         The night before Bob Walker and I had a party.  We finally ended up downtown.

Party time at the Officers Club

 July 12, 1954

The sun has finally come out, and it is beautiful, but there is still danger.  In fact there was an emergency drop made last night of sandbags.  The planes made about 20 passes apiece at the field.  The Donau (this is actually the German spelling for Danube) is up to 6.2 and 6.4 is the peak.

Saturday night Louie and I went to a dinner party for Chaplain and Mrs. Reahm at the Platkins. ‘Twas very good.  [Harumph!  That durn Louie again.]

Wild promotion party

Yesterday we just messed around.  Tonight Willie and I are going over to Pat’s and Noble’s to see my pictures of England.  Tomorrow we go to the Tuite’s to dinner.

July 14, 1954

Last night Jim Ashworth made Capt. so there was a promotion party.  Afterwards we went to the Tuite’s to dinner.  So did Lock and Tami.  A fine party was had by all.

Another crazy promotion party!

        This morning I got waked up again, so I went down to look at the Donau.  It is really high, but I believe that it has already hit the crest.

More flooding near Straubing

July 19, 1954

Saturday afternoon Willie and I went downtown shopping.  Then we had dinner at the Wittlesbach (in Berchtesgaden).  We came back out to the club to the dance.

        Yesterday there was a cocktail party for the Martins, Verboshes, Willie and me.  [Good grief - all these parties!  And some are for her!  This one is the interesting one though - clearly she and Daddy are quite a couple if they are being feted at one of the parties.]

Afterwards a bunch of us went over to the Randall’s.

Heading over to the Randalls for more, you guessed it, partying!

Today I have started things going so that I can clear.

         It was interesting to read about the flooding around Straubing.  Luckily I have never actually been in a flood, but there has been flooding in Atlanta and Georgia.  Back in 1994, Tropical Storm Alberto moved up through western Georgia and stalled out.  My recollection is of days and days of rain that just seemed to never let up.  I was living on the west side of Atlanta then and there was a storm creek that ran along the edge of our property.  During that period of time, I remember that creek rising perilously close to the edge.  I wondered if it might spill over and flood our yard, although it never did.  The real flooding happened downstream from Atlanta, into Macon and down in to Albany and Americus.  I can remember the news stories talking about what time flooding would hit certain communities.  That seemed amazing, that they would know it with that level of certainty.

               My best friend lives in Houston, Texas, where they often get tropical weather.  One year they had a tropical storm that stalled over the city and caused immense flooding.  I remember seeing pictures of the interstates flooded.  I worried about her – she didn’t get flooded, but a friend’s house did.  I recall her telling me that she would peek out her window to see how high the water was getting and that it came up about halfway into her yard.  She went around putting towels against the doors, an act she said later would have been futile had there been real flooding at her house.  She learned that what she should have done was move things upstairs.

               In 2009, Atlanta was at the end of a 3 year drought.  The rivers were down.  The lakes were so far down that docks were completely exposed and left on dry land.  There were all kinds of water restrictions.  Everything was dying.  Then the rains started in mid-September.  And it rained and rained and rained.  On September 19 the rain became a deluge.  The intersection of I-85 and I-285 on the north side of town, called Spaghetti Junction, was shut down with a foot of water.  The news stories started about people who had driven into flooded roadways and been swept away to their deaths.  And it rained and rained.  Interstates were flooded and overrun with water.  On the west side of town, the Chattahoochee River ran over I-20, effectively cutting it off from the rest of Atlanta.  The river covered 285 on the west side of town as well.  Students were evacuated from an elementary school which eventually was flooded to its roof.  Whole neighborhoods were flooded.  They called it a 500 year flood event.  I had never seen anything quite like it.  It seemed amazing that it would be happening in Atlanta.

               We have all kinds of crazy weather here, but floods aren’t the norm.  Certain neighborhoods along certain creeks will regularly flood, but the kind of flooding we had that September was not the norm.

A little Viennese Waltz

July 1, 1954

Yesterday I overslept and we almost missed the train, but we made it.  We got to Vienna about 2:00 and are staying at the Hotel Bellevue (this is still there; in the city center).  We wandered around yesterday afternoon.  Then last night we went to the Reichenberger Griechenbeisl for dinner.  It is the oldest restaurant in Vienna – 1450 (actually 1447, but it’s still there!).  Willie told us to go and go downstairs.  It really has atmosphere.  One room has signatures all over the ceiling – Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss, Mark Twain, etc.  Columbus supposedly ate there just before he sailed.  Anyway we enjoyed it very much.

Fountain in Vienna

Beethoven's House in Vienna

Town Hall - Vienna

Pat Allen, Flo Wofford, June Tuggle - Mother's gang - in their jammies at the hotel

This morning we went to see the changing of the guard.  The French took over from the English and that was something to see.  All four powers were represented in the receiving stand.  First the English band played and then the French.  Then the English marched on and next the French.  The English and French came out and saluted each other.  Then they changed the flags.  There were many Russian soldiers around, and their uniforms were filthy.  They were the sloppiest looking things.

Flags of the 4 Powers - British, French, Russian, and ?? (maybe American?)

Changing of the British Guard

Changing of the French Guard

And now the British and the French - do si do

And finally, those sloppy Russians

The Russian Officers Club - wonder if it was sloppy too?

We went to the PX and Clothing store.  Had lunch at Falstaff.  This afternoon we went on a sightseeing tour.  We saw the Ring and the outskirts of Vienna.  We passed lots of places where Beethoven lived and Schubert.  We stopped in one little village for wine (Heiligenstadt).  The places that sell their own wine are marked with pine over the door.

The Vienna Gardens at the Palace

Village where Beethoven lived

Wine house

        Then we drove through the Soviet Sector to the Vienna Woods.  We stopped on one hill (last hill of the Vienna Woods) – Leopoldberg – for the view of Vienna and the Danube.  It was very pretty.  Then we went to another one for tea.

The Vienna Woods

Through the Russian Zone to the Vienna Woods

We went to the Czardasfürten for dinner.  It is a Hungarian restaurant and has atmosphere that won’t quit.  We had the shepherd’s dish and it was grand.

I took a bath last here last night and that is the first time that I have ever dried off with a sheet!!

July 2, 1954

This morning we went on a sightseeing tour of the city.  Vienna really must have been hit during the war.  We saw lots of statues to the great composers from here.  We went to Hero’s Square which is where we saw the changing of the guard yesterday.  The Imperial Palace is here.

The girls  - Pat, Flo, and June - shopping

We went in Capuchin Church and saw the imperial mantle.  Then we went through the apartments at the Palace of Schönbrunn – 1757.  This was the summer residence of the emperor.

The weather has been real bad today – nothing but rain.  (Also saw 1^st Russian tank to enter Vienna.)

July 6, 1954

Saturday morning in Vienna we just wandered around and looked in the shops.  That afternoon we got the train back.  I have never seen as many people in my life.

        There was a dance here, so Willie and I went when I got back.

Willie - at a party, I'm sure!

Sunday the 4^th we went to the movie and baseball game.  Then we went over to the Verbashes and had a party.  [A party!  What a shocker!  LOL]  We finally ended up downtown.

Yesterday we just messed around here.

I found out today that I am to fly home the 27^th, so I have started my shots and packing.

And a postcard from Vienna to Mocha, Granddaddy and Mee Ann:

Right now it's raining cats and dogs, and we are just going on a sight seeing tour of the city.  Yesterday we saw the changing of the guards.  The French took over from the British.  Saw lots of Russian soldiers around, and they certainly were sloppy looking.