Postcard from Lisboa (Lisbon)

To Mocha, Granddaddy, and Amelia Ann:  Lisbon is a beautiful city.  The sun has been out, and all of the buildings are different colors.  We have thoroughly enjoyed.  Here the people look and act like people, and they treat us like people.  We celebrated New Year's Eve with some of their excellent wine.  Tomorrow we go to Madrid and the next day Stuttgart.  It's been grand.  Marion

And this begs the question - if they weren't treated like people before, just what were they treated like?  Aliens?  Animals?  Plants?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Back on the ranch in Straubing

February 2, 1954

Well, we’re back.  No snow, but it’s mighty cold – somewhere between 0° and 5°.  The hairs in your nose even freeze.

Saturday night we went to the Casa Carioca – 75 cents cover charge.  It’s run by the army too.  It’s a very nice night club.  We had dinner and then watched the ice show – “Hello Again”.  Parts from different venues.  ‘Twas very good.

Sunday afternoon we went on an army tour to Oberammergau where we saw the Passion Play theater – open air.  The play is produced every 10 years since 1633.  The entire cast is taken from the village – no outsiders.  One performance lasts 7 hours with 2 hours for lunch.  The play is about Holy Week – Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday.  All natural – no makeup, mikes, etc.  Saw some of the many costumes too.

Oberammergau

Then went to Linderhof – one of Ludwig’s castles.  Smallest but only one completed.  Very ornate inside.

Linderhof Castle mirror room

Ettal Monastery – built in 1330 by Ludwig.  Brewery is behind it.  The original burned in 1770’s and has been rebuilt on original foundations.

 

Ettal Monastery near Linderhof

February 8, 1954

Well it’s snowing again, and it’s really snowing.

Last Friday Louie Ande and I went to see Moulin Rouge.  I was kind of disappointed.  Then later Willie and I went down to a Fasching party the policemen had.  It was really something.  [Wow, what a wild woman!  Sounds like she had two dates in one night!  That hussy.  ;-) ]

Saturday night I went with Willie to the 1^st battalion dinner party and then to the dance.  They really were grand.  Afterwards a gang of us went downtown.  We rode with Doc Triete.  That was one of the wildest rides I have ever had.  It took us forever to get there and back.  When we came back through the gate Doc told the guard to check AGO cards because he knew I didn’t have mine.  Thank goodness the window wouldn’t work or I’d probably still be in the guard house.

Yesterday I went to June and Tug Tuggle’s for dinner.  They had asked Louie too.  It sho’ was a mighty fine dinner.  We stayed through supper too.  I certainly did enjoy it!  [Sounds like around this time, Mother was juggling Louie and Daddy.  I guess it never hurts to feel like you're a hot commodity!]

February 20, 1954

One night last week I went down to Sara and Ken’s for dinner and spent the night.  Thursday night Lock and Tami Ireland asked several of us over for dinner.  ‘Twas mighty good.

Last Friday a bunch of us went to see From Here to Eternity.  It was a good movie, not like the book.

Saturday night was the Valentine Day dance.  I went with Willie and had a grand time.  [Yay!  Her Valentine's date was with Daddy.]

Sunday we just messed around and looked at my slides.  [This reminds me of a trip I took with my friend Shellay and a friend of hers to Daytona Beach.  Shellay had a Polaroid camera that had those pictures that came out of the camera and gradually developed into your picture.  She took tons of pictures during that trip and it never failed that at night when we got back to the room or during the afternoon when we were laying out at the pool that we would pull out "the pictures" and relive our trip to date.  Good times!]

Wednesday Ray Roth’s wife, Janice, came in.  We had a party at the Ireland’s for her.

Then Thursday night Doc and I went down to Sara and Ken’s.  He cooked steaks for us and string beans and salad.  It was wonderful.  Friday night Icke 6’s wife, Ruth LaFond, came in.  Went with Willie to their house to a party for her.  Byron Whitesides’ wife is supposed to come in tomorrow.  If these battalion wives don’t quit coming in!  [Sounds like every time a wife came in town, there was a party.  I don't think Mother really minded though.  ;-)]

             This afternoon we played bridge.  Then tonight there was an informal dance.  Willie Moore, Rick Tuite, Bob Walker and I went.  Had a fine time.

This is really a grand place with a wonderful bunch of people.

By the way.  Heard that General Cramer died today.  He was just down here this week on an inspection.  That’s really something.

February 23, 1954

Yesterday Sarah Doughtery, Tami Ireland and I went to Munchen with Doc Treite.  Saw the figures come out on the Rathaus.  Then we went to the Ratskeller for lunch.

Rathaus in Munchen

Another view of the Rathaus

             After lunch we rode around.  Also walked around and went window shopping.  Saw the Angel of Mercy statue, Koenigsplatz, etc.  Went to the Haus Der Kunst (art museum).  Then we had dinner at an Italian restaurant – Eremitage.  Was wonderful.

Angel of Mercy statue in Munchen

It was a very nice day!  Sunday Willie and I went to a party at the La Fond’s for Byron Whitesides and his wife Wilma.  Afterwards a gang of us went to the Sonnerhof for dinner.  Then we went on down to the Mariandal.  Had a very good time.

February 27, 1954

Last night Doc, Willie, and I went down to the Wittlesbach for dinner.  I saw something I had never seen before – heaters in beer.

March 4, 1954

Last Saturday was the Fasching party here at the club.  I went with Willie and had a grand time.  Tami Ireland, Alice Liley, Pat Allen and I went as Lock Ireland’s harem.  Don Allen was the slave boy.  We had a wonderful time and caused quite a bit of comment.  [No doubt!]

Sunday several of the boys in the BOQ had an open house.  It lasted all afternoon and was a fine party.

Last night a bunch of us went down to the Mariandal and the Prince Alfonse.  We ended up making roll call.

Tonight Willie, Doc, Bob Walker and I went down to Flo and Bob Wofford’s for dinner.  Pat Allen had made spaghetti and it was grand.

This morning there was a USAREUR alert and the buses didn’t get to the school until 10:30.  This afternoon we met with Col. Blasé and he told us what to do in case they ever do pull the chain.  I am to be on one of the first vehicles out and am supposed to help the driver – classified info.  [Not anymore!  LOL]

Women's Work

As you know, my mother was a teacher when she went to Germany for this big adventure.  In fact, you could say that my mother had 3 "careers", back in the days before changing careers was popular.  Her first career was teaching.  She taught mostly first grade, although I think she taught second grade one year.  But first grade was her favorite.  She never intended to work after she got married.  She did tell me that she asked Daddy if he wanted her to work and that he said no.  I feel very confident that she wanted to run off by herself and jump up and down like a child with glee!

Her second "career" was as a wife and mother.  I know she didn't enjoy the housewife aspect of this job, but all she really ever wanted to be was a wife and mother and she did only that for a very long time.

Her third career was working in the cafeteria at Stone Mountain High School with her best friend and neighbor Dolly Snyder.  She started as one of the ladies that collected the money and worked her way up to being Mrs. Snyder's assistant.  I don't know that we needed the money, but as my brothers and I got older I think it gave her something to do with her day.  And after Daddy died, I think it became a bit of a lifeline for her.  A place to go and something to do that kept her from sitting home grieving.

I always wanted to be somebody.  I spent my life wanting to “be” somebody.  Somebody that made money, somebody that was important.  I remember wanting to be a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist.  I think part of it was that I always saw myself escaping where I was in life.

I can remember when I was a little girl and I would lay in bed thinking maybe I would wake up the next morning and be someone else, be someplace else.  And when I would wake up in the morning I would lay there with my eyes still closed thinking today would be the day when I would wake up in a different house, with different parents, as an only child, in a mansion, with everything my heart desired.  But when I opened my eyes I was still in the same room I’d gone to sleep in the night before, in the same house I had lived in for years, with the same family that disappointed some very deep place in my soul.

What I had was never enough.  There was always such a yearning inside me for more, even as a young child.  I used to write when I was young.  It was never good stuff.  It was always some take off on some TV show I liked or some other story that enchanted me.  I always put myself in it, never as myself, but as who I wanted to be.  Someone pretty, well-loved, smart, funny, accomplished.  I was always the romantic female lead even when I was too young and inexperienced to know what that meant.  The handsomest man was always in love with me.  I was the center of the story.  Always.

So when my mother would talk to me about what I was going to be when I grew up, I was always disappointed in the direction those conversations took.  She wanted me to be a teacher, like her.  The appeal, for her, was that “the children always love you” and “you have the same schedule as the children”, meaning summers off and the same holidays they got.  But I didn’t really want to be a teacher.  I didn’t want to be my mother, was really what that was about.  But even back then, long before “women’s lib”, I knew that I didn’t want to be pigeonholed into a “woman’s job”.  I wanted to be able to do anything.  And back in those days I thought I could.

When I wanted to be a doctor or dentist, my mother tried to talk me into being a nurse.  Another of those women’s jobs.  The funny thing was that I was always squeamish about blood; not really conducive to being a nurse or a doctor.  When she saw me writing, she even suggested being a journalist.  Another career path I dismissed as not paying enough or having the right level of prestige.

Really and truly, I think my mother was hoping I’d pick some job or career that would give me something to do until I got married and started a family.  Because that was what she really wanted for me.  She didn’t believe that women who were married and had children should work; they should stay at home.  We had many a bitter argument over that.  I couldn’t see myself being a stay at home wife and mother.  I knew I needed more than that in my life.  In her mind, anything I did with my life after college was just “until you get married”.  She didn’t think I needed to move out of the house until I got married.  I didn’t need to buy furniture until I got married.  I asked her once “what if I don’t get married?”  She thought that was just silly talk.  I wasn’t so sure, in those days.  But that’s what she had done.  She lived at home, except for the year she was in Germany, until she got married.  She didn’t buy furniture until she got married.  Everything was just a place holder until she got married.  That truly was her goal in life, whereas mine was to be successful in my career, to have as much fun as was legal, and to party all the time.

When I went off to college I still wanted to be a doctor.  But when I heard about the course work during orientation – lots of science and math – I knew that wasn’t for me.  So I changed majors to business, mainly because I believed that was a major that would lead to an actual job.  And then struggled with just what my actual direction would be.  At first it was accounting, then marketing, and finally management.  I think my mother was still hoping I’d come to my senses and choose some marriage and child friendly job, but in those days I wasn’t thinking as much about getting married or having children.  I always appreciated that my father told me I could be anything I wanted to be.  Period.  My mother seemed to always want to add “as long as it’s teaching or nursing”.

I actually allowed my father to pick what I would major in.  When I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do, he was the one that suggested Human Resources.  Actually it was “Personnel” back then.  But that was what he had majored in and he thought I would like it.  So that was what I did.  And I was fortunate to be able to get into “Personnel” within 6 months of graduating from college.  I had gone to work in a management training program at a retailer and, since I wasn’t well suited for merchandising, I was fortunate that there was a store Personnel Manager position open for me.  Now, to be fair, there are aspects of HR that I like and that I do pretty well.  But I really don’t like dealing with the people.  I really don’t like dealing with the people issues.  I’d rather create a compensation plan or design a benefits strategy.  And now I feel kind of stuck in a career and in a role that isn’t where I really should be.

I always thought of my mother as not being very ambitious.  She never really aspired to much.  She was content being a first grade teacher, which I thought was horribly boring.  And she loved being a wife and mother.  I think what it really boiled down to was that I didn’t want to grow up to be my mother.  So I rejected out of hand all the things she held dear.

When I look back on this from my current perspective, I feel like I shortchanged myself.  I still wouldn’t have wanted to be a teacher or a nurse, but I do feel like I went down a career path that, while I could do it well, wasn’t really where my path should have led me at all.  And because I didn’t choose well when it came to relationships, I didn’t end up as a wife either, at least not long term.  And I never became a mother.

To have ended up more like my mother actually wouldn’t have been as bad as I had once imagined.  My mother had a job for a number of years that she loved.  She got to combine it with the adventure of a lifetime when she went to Germany for a year.  And she met and married the love of her life and had an incredibly happy marriage and raised four children.  Which was really all she wanted to do. 

For many years I thought that was the biggest waste of a life.  But here I am, not really fulfilled, not married, no children, not pursuing my passion.  And not totally sure what that passion is.  But I do know for sure that what my mother had and the life she lived was worth pursuing.  She had a great life.  She was loved, as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter and sister, and as a friend.  She cared about other people and she was kind and giving.  She lived the life she always imagined for herself.  She and my father weren’t rich, but they were comfortable.  And it was enough for her.  She didn’t aspire for more than she had, because she had the things that really mattered.

I wonder what would have happened if I’d set my sights just a little lower.  If I hadn’t cared so much about material things and money.  What if I had pursued that love of writing years ago?  I still don’t think I would have wanted to be a journalist, but maybe I would have tried a writing career back when I was young enough to have been really successful at it.  I think that would have made me happy.  And fulfilled.  And then maybe I would have had the life my mother did – filled with love and acceptance.  I was wrong not to have listened more to her.  I was wrong to have thought that she was the antithesis of me.  Although we were different women in many ways, deep down I really wanted what she had – I wish that I had been open enough to have learned from her. 

The long and winding road....

January 3, 1954

Here we are on the next to the last lap of a wonderful trip – flying from Madrid to Stuttgart.  Then we start fighting the trains.

We got into Madrid yesterday about noon.  After lunch we supposedly went sightseeing.  Our guide hardly opened his mouth so we might have seen something but didn’t know it.  We did go to the Prado Museum – an art gallery.  [An art museum??  Oh my.  Um, Mother, the Prado is one of the great museums of Europe!  It is, by the way, one of the places I visited on my first trip to Spain with Paul, Beth and the boys.  It was wonderful, but we went the day I landed in Madrid and I was so tired by the time we were done.  I even fell asleep sitting on a bench outside the gift shop!]  We saw some of the Goya’s and Greco’s pictures.  We also saw one by Vasquez (Velazquez?) that had a mirror in front in such a way that the mirror gave a 3D effect.

Madrid in front of Prado Museum

My picture of the Prado from October 2010

Madrid was just another large city.  [True, but a fascinating large city.]

Madrid from Hotel

             I ran into a boy in the hotel – Bob Kazrir – that we had met on the train to Rome.  He took me out on the town.  You don’t eat until 10 and you don’t go out until at least 11.  First we went to the Rex which had two orchestras.  It was a nice little place – I liked it.  Then we went to the Erica which Bob said was one of the local dives.  It’s plush compared to Straubing.  It was just a bar with music – very nice.  Then we went to the Pasapoga which is supposed to be it in Madrid.  It really was swank and had a grand floor show.  We got home just about time to get up for breakfast this morning, but I really had a grand time.  [That party animal!  She is right, though, about dinner time in Spain being late.]

This morning we went to Toledo.  It is the oldest city in Spain and was the capital in the 16^th century during the Roman Empire.  It is known as the home of Kings.  It is an old walled city and was cold as blazes.

Toledo Spain

My picture of Toledo

We went in Greco’s house here.  Typical 16^th century Spanish house – courtyard inside.  He was Greek and painted elongated bodies.

Grecos' House in Toledo

There is also a cathedral there which we didn’t see.  It is supposedly the largest and most beautiful in Spain.  We had lunch there.  Now we are on our way.  We do stop in Lyon, France to refuel.  [We took a day trip to Toledo.  We did not visit Greco's home, but we did go to the cathedral.  And it is spectacular!]

Burro in front of church in Toledo

On the road to the cathedral in Toledo, which is in the background

January 12, 1954

We did get back.  We had to circle the field in Stuttgart about an hour because something had happened to the radio and we couldn’t receive landing instructions.  It had been snowing the night before.  That meant that everyone missed the midnight train, so almost everyone was late to school.  We finally got back about 1130 hours Monday after going all over this part of the country.

Guess what!  Right after we got back they picked up one of the Germans in detachment headquarters because he is a Communist.  He was working in a very important position.  They had been watching him for a couple of months.  They picked up someone on the border a couple of months ago.  All of the information they got then pointed at this man.  That’s really something!  [And again - should they have told this woman all this stuff??  She's a gossipy one, that Marion Hunter.]

Saturday was the beginning of Fasching (the pre-Lenten Carnival season, which begins in Germany on January 11), so Don and I went to town to celebrate it.  Everyone was out!

Gasthaus in Straubing - maybe where they celebrated?

Sunday night there was a square dance at the Service Club.  It sho’ was fun.  Afterwards the band came over to the club, and we really had a party.

            It has really been snowing here – almost every day for a week.  They say it is the worst in a long time, but then all of Europe is being snowed in.  They had to call off school yesterday because of it and that is really something here.  But they send these children out at recess regardless of the weather.  We did get a ride to school today in a jeep – my first jeep ride – windshields up, thank goodness!  It’s mighty hard walking in this!

Snow from Mother's School Window

Sunday afternoon the companies all had to go out and move their tanks so the tracks wouldn’t freeze – we had a small blizzard.  I have really never seen anything like this.  [Mother did not like snow, so I'm pretty sure she was fit to be tied by this.]

January 24, 1954

Last Friday – a week ago – there was a big Fasching party downtown.  The German personnel here put it on.  First we went to Lock Ireland’s and then on to the party.  More fun!  Then Saturday afternoon we sat around out here and played bridge.  A bunch of us went into town to make goulash over at Lock’s.  They called an “alert” so Sara Dougherty and I cooked while they were gone.  They came back about 1 AM and we ate.  I spent the night with Sara and Ken.  We just messed around all day Sunday.  Then we came out here to the Italian dinner.  After that we had to initiate Sara – we took her in for roll call.

Wednesday night was bingo and a party afterwards.

Friday night I spent the night with Sara and Ken again.  So did Paul Otis.  Lock’s wife came in Friday, so we all went over to welcome her – about 60 of us.  Sho’ was fun!  Then we came home and cooked.

Yesterday afternoon Sara, Doc and I went to town and took pictures of Straubing.

Main Street of Straubing

             Today has just been a lazy day.

Mother in her room being lazy

January 30, 1954

Last night we got the train about 1800 for Garmisch.  We are staying at the Sheridan Plaza – an army hotel – for $1 a night.  This army recreation business is really something.  They provide free bus service, etc. everywhere.  [I can't remember the name of the Army hotel that Debbie and I stayed in in Garmisch, but Mother is right - the army/air force recreation business is really something.  They also sponsored tours of local sights.  We went to Garmisch in the summer, so our trips were to the castles in the area, as well as a church with a weeping Christ statue on the crucifix.]

Hotel in Garmisch

This morning we walked up to Holiday Hills because the bus never did come.  We got a complete ski outfit for the day for 25 cents and a 2 hour lesson for 25 cents.  You should see me skiing.  Sho’ is fun but I surely did get tired.  We ate lunch in their snack bar.  Then skied a little this afternoon.  Afterwards we went shopping.  Tonight we are going to the Casa Carioca.  It is sort of a night club with an ice show run by the army.

Holiday Hills Garmisch

Mother, the unlikely snow bunny!

Garmisch is so picturesque.  It is covered with snow and is beautiful.  Just like a ski resort ought to look.  It has snowed all day today.

In Garmisch

Linderhof Castle

Ettal Monastery near Linderhof Castle

Garmisch