Month: October 2024

Those 70ish Girls

Valerie Halla4 Comments

BY VALERIE HALLA

WWII HOLLYWOOD FROM MOM’S VIEW

MY MOM TREASURED THESE OLD PHOTOS IN PALLADIUM FOLDERS SAVING THE PICTURES SAFELY AND ALL THE GOOD TIMES SHE HAD FROM THE 1940’s. THE WAR LOOMED OVER THEIR YOUNG LIVES YET THEY TRIED TO FORGET THE UGLY SIDE OF WAR AND DYING – AT LEAST FOR A SHORT WHILE DANCING AT THE PALLADIUM IN HOLLYWOOD.

MY MOM IN SUNNY CALIFORNIA MAY 7,1944.

When I was growing up in South Dakota, Pennsylvania and California, I heard my mother recalling with a melancholy lilt in her voice about her time in Hollywood during the early 1940’s working in the aircraft industry. She was a young woman from a small, rural area, raised on a farm, quite innocent, bright-eyed and unschooled in the ways of large cities. She headed out west when her country needed wartime workers in the aircraft industry building fighter planes for waging a vicious war. She was also conflicted because she wanted to have a good time trying to forget the dangers our country was facing yet at the same time support the US Allies in a terrible world war. She had a big binder where she had kept War bonds she had purchased to help the cause. She spent all the bonds over the years, but I still have it after she’s been gone for about 17 years. I also still have old photos of her good times blocking out her daily routine and getting to dance to the Big Bands of that era.

I’m writing to show my Mom’s fun outings when my Mom had a turn at a lighter more fun side of her personality, going out for magical evenings in her new temporary home in Hollywood in the turbulent 1940’s. Even when all of the US was under tremendous pressure with young people going to war, my Mom had fun times to relieve the stress. She wasn’t on the farm out in the Plains, nor in the family’s general store anymore. This was an historic time. People were moving with the needs of the country. Movie stars were all over LA, soldiers were everywhere in uniform, seen out and about. The place she went quite often after a long work week was the Palladium on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. It was the center for big bands, big crowds, big names and big times with many young male soldiers and women looking for love. Maybe finding one last happy time before being shipped out to find one’s final fate overseas. You couldn’t plan for life except for maybe one more dance.

Mom got a ride with Murdo, South Dakota friends out to California. Also her sister, Loretta, from Murdo, South Dakota eventually went out there since her husband, Bill, had joined the Army. Their childhood friend, Sugar, joined them in California. Then later my Aunt Loretta gave birth to a baby boy there, our cousin Billy. I’m not sure if Loretta and Bill were in California first or my Mom Ella was. Regardless, Los Angeles and where they lived in north Hollywood particularly, exuded exciting energy from the old 1940’s pictures that I’ve seen. It sounded epic the way my Mom told it.

MY MOM IS ON THE RIGHT, THIRD ONE FROM THE BACK WEARING HER SISTER, LORETTA’S DRESS! SHE WROTE INSIDE THE FOLDER: “BETTY GRABLE AND HARRY JAMES AT TABLE NEAR US.” THAT WAS A BIG DEAL.

MANY GI’S WERE JUST YOUNG KIDS. MOM WAS IN HER LATE TWENTIES HERE.

ANOTHER ADMIRER.

MY MOM SAID SOME OF THESE YOUNG MEN NEVER CAME BACK AFTER SHIPPING OUT TO FIGHT OVERSEAS. IT WAS A SAD PART OF THOSE DAYS ESPECIALLY AFTER THE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR IN 1941.

This was where my parents met and fell in love promising to meet again if my young Marine Dad made it back from fighting in the Pacific. I don’t have pictures of them at the Palladium. I do have decades of pictures and memories of them in my heart.

Those 70ish girls…Still on hold

Mary Francis McNinch2 Comments

The RV trip is still on hold. This sad story is getting old. We’ve waited months to take our trip. It’s getting hard to get a grip.

Computerized parts seem to me aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Give me the old fashioned way. When problems were fixed in just one day.

We long for days filled with travel fun. When motorhomes were made to run. When you turned the key and the motor started. And down the road we soon departed.

Though whoa is we, we’re not giving up. In life, sometimes you have bad luck. We’ll keep the faith that the day will come that the part turns up and the thing will run.

As I write this poem, it dawns on me that we’re as blessed as we can be. We have our health and so much more. There’s so much to be grateful for.

Is a trip what’s meant to be? As  my mother said many times to me. We shall see what we shall see. Whatever will be will be.

(The dealership can’t find the part we need to fix the motorhome. It’s a part that is very seldom needed for repairs. If that makes sense. We still have a wee bit of hope.)

In better times
Still on hold. We’re grateful for our puppy dog.

Those 70ish Girls

Valerie Halla4 Comments

“I’M MELTING, MELTING, MELTING” By Valerie Halla

WAIT TIL YOU MEET SOME WITCHES!

I like the old Judy Garland movie THE WIZARD OF OZ because it’s iconic, especially the part where the wicked witch has water thrown on her and melts away. Don’t you wish our troubles and problems could be that easy to eliminate? I feel like I, too, am gradually melting away. Sometimes I feel like a slew of problems hit me all at once. My plate is full and I can’t eat fast enough, however, don’t throw water on me yet.

I know at 70ish my brain is definitely diminishing. I forget stuff you may have mentioned to me, but I still like hearing old stories from family members and sharing in memories that pop up once in a while. I don’t forget those, the old things. The present isn’t as much fun. Some memories play over and over again in my shrinking brain. I love them. Maybe I have dementia or beginnings of the dreaded “A” word disease. It’s all right though, because my cousin says you meet the nicest people if you get altzheimers. “What did you say your name was ?”

DID YOU CALL ME A DOG!?!

Recently I couldn’t recall the name of the Sanderson Family dog when they lived on the farm outside Murdo in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. My Mom used to talk about that dog getting bit by a rattlesnake and suffering. The poor dog was ill and swollen with the venom. This sad suffering canine creature was lying under their farmhouse porch for days, then eventually recovered miraculously. So that thought led to another thought like cards placed one after the other, in order when playing solitaire. It brought me to my next card, through a feeble fading memory. I recalled the letters my Aunt Helen wrote religiously to my Mom. She would write long letters in her utterly beautiful artistic cursive to my mom. They were loving sisters. They wrote lots of them. Letters were a big deal to their generation. They cherished each written word.

AUNT HELEN, ME, AND MY MOM, ELLA IN CA 1970’s.

I’M GREEN WITH ENVY!

I was lucky to get to read some of the sister’s letters when my Mother lived with us for the last five years of her life. Aunt Helen would always ask my mom in her letters if she remembered the name of the mule their brother, Uncle Wayne, rode into town from the farm to school. We answered every time that we couldn’t think of that dang mule’s name, but Aunt Helen would continue to ask in each subsequent lovely letter. That reminded me that I couldn’t remember their family dog’s name either! I was in the same boat as Aunt Helen and it was maybe named the Titanic. I was sinking fast. Simple animal names escaped us both. Did we ever discover the mule’s name? I don’t think so.

I’m fortunate to have some cousins who follow our Sanderson family history and know the farm dog’s name. I guessed it was Shep. I’ll have to see if I’m right. That card hasn’t been turned over yet.

AUNT ELNA READING A PRECIOUS VALUED LETTER IN MURDO 1971.

Letters play a big part in our family past. I remember Grandma Sanderson writing letters to my mom and asking how I was doing as a child. My name was long and so Grandma simply wrote, “How is VJ doing?” She always kept us abreast of what was happening in Murdo during her time there.

Each of my aunts had their own styles of writing. Aunt Loretta usually typed her letters which were short and oftentimes written on postcards and small scraps of paper. My mom and Aunt Loretta would also swap letters they had received from other family members. These were like jewels to them and pictures that were enclosed were like diamonds. They would send these letters and photos back and forth although I think Aunt Loretta preferred the telephone.

I WILL HANG UP ON YOU WHEN I’M DONE AND YOU WILL BE CAUGHT OFF GUARD.

Aunt Elna wrote in a small hand cramped style cursive. She wrote in cards mostly. She would cram as much as she could into the message even writing along the edges of the text. She might write on the backs of the cards also using every space available. She reported exactly where she had gone, maybe shopping, or uptown to stop in Mack’s Cafe or maybe out to the Hills for a quick vacation with Uncle Jerry. You knew who went and what they did in detail. You got the full scoop as if you were there. She should’ve been a reporter for the Murdo Coyote. “A good time was had by all.”

Looking back, maybe I’m not diminishing at all. Maybe though the people who shaped my childhood and memories are gone, my life is still growing. I keep moving forward. No one has thrown water on me yet. But then Halloween is right around the corner.