Harry’s interview with WWII Oral History Project

In his interview with the World War II Oral History Project, Harry recalled that Aug. 15, 1945, was the day President Truman announced the end of the war. He also mentioned another reason for the date’s significance, as you’ll see in the transcript on this page. I first heard the interview after Harry died, on a CD our family obtained from the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. Later I found the audio cassette tape Harry had saved from the interview, which took place in his Leisure World apartment community in Silver Spring, MD.


Murray: This is August 28, 2007, Leisure World of Maryland Oral History Project of World War II. We’re interviewing Harry Zubkoff, who was born June 16, 1921. He served in the Army becoming a Staff Sergeant. My name’s Murray Seeger. I’m helped by Adel Schwartz.

Well Harry, you told us you’re from Buffalo, North Buffalo. I’m from the south side of Buffalo, about 15 miles. [Both chuckle.] Where were you on December 7, 1941?

Harry: I was working for the Bell Aircraft Corporation. We were already on a three-shift program there producing airplanes, mostly for sale to Russia.

Murray: This is also North Buffalo?

Harry: Yes, Bell Aircraft plant on Elmwood near Hertel.

Murray: Yes, my mother went there part time as an inspector.

Photos on this page from Harry’s Army album and files

Harry: How ’bout that.

Murray: How ’bout that. And you were 20 years old. And what was your skill, what was your training?

Harry: I had spent six or eight months at the Burgard Vocational School learning how to do things like riveting and soldering and valving and all of that, the kind of skills they were looking for in the war plants. And I went to work at Bell in the fall of 1939.

Murray: Now they were making a fighter plane at that time, right?

Harry: Yes.

Murray: What was it called?

Harry: It was called the Airacobra P-39.

Murray: Right, and you said they’re largely being sold to Russia at that time.

Harry: Yes, they were. It was an unusual design aircraft because it did not have an engine in front; it had an engine right underneath the pilot in the middle of the airplane.

Murray: And it had a cannon in the front nose.

Harry: And a cannon in the front, right.

Murray: I remember that. And on the other side of Buffalo they were making the P-40s.

Harry: That’s right, at Curtiss.

Murray: Yep, Curtiss-Wright. Now, were you working on December 7th, you think?

Harry: Yes, we were working. They had a loud speaker in the plant. Around noon or 1:00 I think it was, the loud speaker came on and there was an announcement that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor. Everybody stopped working for a few minutes, and a dozen guys – within my sight – dropped all their equipment and said they’re going down to enlist.

Murray: Oh my goodness.


Harry: There was a general exodus almost every day from that point on; men were getting up, going out, and enlisting right away.

Murray: Amazing reaction.

Harry: It was.

Murray: Did you know where Pearl Harbor was?

Harry: At the time I didn’t, no, but I found out soon afterwards.

Murray: Now what was your family situation at that time?

Harry: Well, let’s say this. My parents were both terminally ill. I was the only breadwinner in the family, and I was working and taking care of both my mother and father. I had two married sisters living in Buffalo, and they pitched in as much as they could, but they both had little children, and you know, times were tough, it was the Depression, and their husbands were not making much money, so they really couldn’t help. So, that’s what I was doing.

Murray: Now, you registered for the draft at this point.

Harry: Oh yes.

Murray: Were you called up?

Harry: I was deferred because I was working at a war plant.

Murray: And you were also support for your parents I would think.

Harry: Well, I don’t know if that entered in to their calculations.

Murray: Ok. Did you continue working? When did you actually enter into the service?

Harry: July 1945.

Murray: Now were you drafted at that point?

Harry: Yeah, we were all – maybe 10 or 12 thousand were laid off in January 1945. Contracts expired; the company was, say, contracting.

Murray: That plane wasn’t very successful.

Harry: No, it wasn’t used by Americans.

Murray: The Air Force didn’t like it very much.

Harry: No.

Murray: Now the war in Europe was over.

Harry: That’s right.

Murray: And you’re called in. Where did they send you?

Harry: They sent me to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, for basic training. Mind you, I wanted to get
into the Air Force. I had a private pilot license.

Murray: My goodness.

Harry: But the Air Force didn’t need people anymore, so they put me in with combat engineers for basic training.

Murray: You think it was for your mechanical skills?

Harry: Probably.

Murray: Where did you go for basic training for combat engineers?

Harry: Camp Claiborne, Louisiana.

Murray: Oh, Ok, I’m sorry, I thought that was another camp. Sixteen weeks?

Harry: Sixteen weeks.

Murray: And from there?

Harry: From there, they yanked me out of there just before the group was going overseas. We were supposed to go to the Pacific.

Murray: Yeah, you would have been part of the Army invading Japan presumably.

Harry: Right.

Murray: And, do you remember where you were when the bomb was dropped?

Harry: Yeah, that was in September, no, the bombs were dropped in August, and I was in Louisiana.

Murray: You were sweating it out in Louisiana. And the Armistice Truce was signed in September?

Harry: It was signed early in September. As a coincidence, I had been married on August 15th, 1943. On August 15th, 1945, when I was in Louisiana, President Truman announced that the war is officially over. But it wasn’t signed in Japan until later, in September.

Murray: Right. Your service was supposed to be what, the duration and six months?

Harry: Yes.

Murray: But you have to have points?

Harry: Well, I didn’t have any points.

Murray: And from Louisiana, where did they ship you?

Harry: They sent me to Baltimore, to go to intelligence school. Fort Holabird in Baltimore. I went to intelligence school for three or four months, then they shipped me out to France.

Fort Holabird, Baltimore, 1946

Murray: Now what kind of intelligence were you supposed to be doing?

Harry: Counterintelligence.

Murray: Now you’re going to interview people?

Harry: Yes.

Murray: Do you have a language?

Harry: They taught me German. And theoretically I was fairly fluent in German.

Murray: Sprichst du Deutsch?

Harry: Not anymore. You know, when was that, 60 years ago or so? I haven’t used it since I got out.

Murray: So you finished at Fort Holabird and you’re shipped out to France?

Harry: First to France, then to Germany.

Murray: And where were you stationed there?
 
Harry: In Germany for a while in Stuttgart [?], then in a little provincial town called Buchen, not far from Stuttgart, not far from a famous resort called Vadmerventine [?].

Murray: Now what is your job?

Harry: Well, you know, the basic job of counterintelligence was to investigate cases of sabotage, espionage, subversive activities, that sort of thing. But we, basically we were being used at the time for two purposes. One, to trace down wanted Nazi war criminals and to get evidence against them for use in war crimes trials. And the other one was to help build up a network of people who would continue to provide us with information. And, we were worried at the time about the increasing hostility with Russia. In the intelligence business, we were taught so much about the Nazi paramilitary organizations and all of their political organizations, etcetera, and we started taking lessons in the same things in regards to the Russians and the communists. So we were working on both trying to figure out what the communists were doing and also tracing Nazi war criminals.

Murray: Had you been promoted by now?

Harry: Just normal promotions, Corporal and Sergeant. They wanted me to go to officer candidate school, but I didn’t want to commit myself to a longer term in the Army.

Murray: But you must have impressed some people, you must have done well whatever you were doing.

Harry: Well, in those Army aptitute tests. And of course all the reports I wrote were models of English composition.

Murray: That’s because of the good education in Buffalo public schools.

Harry: I got to tell you that some of the officers couldn’t read or write English in my view.

Murray: You stationed in this small town in Germany all the time and traveling around?
How far away did you get?

Harry: I was sent on several missions. I spent some time in a DP camp trying to find these couple infiltrators.

Murray: Did you have some identified or just smelling around?

Harry: Smelling around mostly. Well we did have a few.

Murray: Was that over in the east part of Germany, toward Munich or in that area?

Harry: Yea, we were in Munich. There were Displaced Persons camps all over the area. I spent some time in one near Dachau, the concentration camp at Dachau. It set up a DP camp mainly for Jewish people, who couldn’t tell the difference between that and the concentration camps.

Murray: Right.


Harry: And I had a lot of interaction with them, who found that American Jewish soldiers were a breed apart.

Murray: Good or bad?

Harry: Good.

Murray: They didn’t think the other American troops were sympathetic or understood the problem?

Harry: Well, they didn’t know that Jewish people could be warriors or in the Army.

Murray: Did you speak Yiddish?

Harry: I had a little Yiddish. And German is largely or partly based on Yiddish.

Murray: That’s right. So how long was this duty?

Harry: A year.

Murray: Did you find it interesting?

Harry: Oh, fascinating. Now did you ever hear of the Jewish Brigade from Palestine? There were some Jewish guys in the Jewish brigade who wrote a book [book based on them] about their experiences. They were also chasing Nazi war criminals and finding them and killing them. And there was a period of time when my superiors were wondering if I was one of the guys who was finding them and killing them.

Murray: Now is this one of the times when you felt your officers were not sure about Jewish soldiers?

Harry: Not my officers, no, but others in the military government. You know, intelligence and military government were at odds with each other ...

Murray: Right from the get-go.

Harry: Right. And they did a lot of things that the intelligence community really wasn’t happy with. You may have heard how they brought over all the Nazi scientists, and we were against that.

Murray: I think the same thing in trying to fit them in the post war government.

Harry: True. We had started out with a de-nazification program and found out that many of the ex-nazis were being placed in responsible jobs.

Murray: Experienced bureaucrats.

Harry: Right.


Murray: I lived in Germany, I was a reporter in Germany. And this was still being talked about a long time afterwards. So you were there a year. Then what happened to you?

Harry: I came back, got discharged.

Murray: Got your points?

Harry: I guess so. It was after a year and a half they brought me home.

Murray: Where’d you muster out?

Harry: New Jersey.

Murray: Did you go back to Buffalo. Did you use the GI Bill at all?

Harry: Yes. I did, I used the GI Bill to get a commercial pilot’s license. I was working as a flight instructor and commercial pilot for a small aviation school in Buffalo called Mastercraft Aviation – until 1949, when we no longer had any students. The whole bottom dropped out of that aviation market. The post-war world was going to be a flying one, but it didn’t develop that way. And a friend of mine from the intelligence community called me and said we just got a new organization called the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, and I’d like you come down and work for us.

Murray: That was brand new. Harry Truman did sign the papers for that.

Harry: Right. So I came to Washington, and they wanted to hire me, but what they wanted me to do was go overseas and be a spook. Now I had a brand new baby boy, and my wife didn’t want me to go overseas, I didn’t want go. So I turned the job down.

Murray: What did you do then?

Harry: I got a job at the Veterans Administration, and worked there for a year. And then I got a job with the Air Force in the Pentagon, a 90-day job with the Air Force. That was in 1950. And 36 years later I retired. A long 90 days.

Murray: What kind of work did you do?

Harry: It was the best job in the world. What I did in the Pentagon was put together compilations of news clippings about military affairs which grew and grew as more and more people were writing about the Department of Defense.

Murray: Did you have to get up at 4 in the morning?

Harry: Well, I did, actually at 2. We called it the Current News. Subsequently the earliest edition became the Early Bird edition. It’s still in existence.

Murray: It’s famous.

Harry: Yeah, and I was famous for a while.

Murray: Did you have any uniformed working for you?

Harry: In the beginning we had uniformed people, but, around the mid-1950s, early ’60s, till then we had uniformed people. As our job expanded see, we did more than put out news clippings. We also were writing speeches for the Secretary of the Air Force and also for the Secretary of Defense. So I had a small research outfit, mainly writers, and they were military people. Around the mid-’60s, they took all the military out, put them in a separate division. It was all civilian. I was the chief of that division from about the mid-’60s to the mid-’80s when I retired.

Murray: Well thank you very much, Harry. It’s a marvelous story. I appreciate your coming in.


I Googled the interviewer, Murray Seeger. He was a seasoned journalist and wrote the book “Discovering Russia: 200 years of American Journalism”. He passed away three years before Harry, at age 82.

Harry the correspondent

My dad answers questions I never asked him, in the following four communications he wrote in his elderly years. Each reveals an activity or feelings from his past, and each offers a bit of advice to someone who was special in his life. So, to everyone ever touched by – or just curious about – Harry’s communications, please enjoy!


Concerts at the beach

February 2014
Dear [Cousin],

It’s so nice to get emails like this with news about the family. I’ve been thinking about all the [cousin’s family], too, especially since I saw those photos of the ice caves at Crystal Beach. Everybody who ever grew up in Buffalo had to have gone to Crystal Beach. I have lots of memories about the Beach, and about the dance hall where the big bands of the 1930s and early ’40s used to play. In fact, it was the memories of some of their performances – Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and other orchestras, that motivated me to write a series of articles about the music of the WW II Era for the newspaper in Leisure World.

Now I’m in Riderwood, another development populated by old folks like me, and I have a whole new audience for these articles, since everybody here remembers that music. I just wanted you to know that I’m okay and adjusting to my new circumstances. Email exchanges like this are so welcome and so helpful. It’s so much easier to keep in touch this way than by the antiquated method of writing letters and sending them by snail mail. Keep them coming.

Love,
HZ  

Too bad the Riderwood newsletter rejected his idea for the music column.


Retirement advice

January 2008
Dear Ron:

I deeply regret that Jeanette and I had to leave the celebration Friday before we got a chance to see you and shake your hand. And I can’t tell you how honored and flattered I was that you took the time personally to arrange matters to make it easier for us to attend. I used to think that the 36 years I spent in my job at the Pentagon (plus service in the Army in WW II for a total of almost 40 years of government service) was more than enough for anyone, but your 50 plus years, and Wilma’s, too (for a total of around 100 years) whew!! … Anyway, Ron, I wanted to express my heartfelt appreciation for inviting us and taking the time and trouble to make special arrangements.

Now, a word of advice from an older retiree – do not, repeat do not wait till you finish any projects at home such as remodeling or renovating, etc. before traveling or vacationing. Start booking cruises and other travels as soon as you can, while you both have the strength and stamina to enjoy them. The longer you wait, the tougher it gets to travel. So do it now. And enjoy each other for leisurely breakfasts, lunches and dinners, which, I suspect, you haven’t done very often over the past 50 years.

As for remodeling, I waited till I was 85 before I decided that our big house was too much for the two of us to handle. So we sold out and moved into a nice big apartment which, even though it’s much smaller than any house, relieves us of the problems of maintenance and upkeep and endless chores, as well as stairs up and stairs down etc. It was almost too late, because even though our kids and grandkids and nephew and niece and others helped a lot, it was nevertheless a great physical hardship. I should have done it ten years earlier, when I was 75 and still fit enough to stand the strain.

I feel almost like a member of your family, a cousin, maybe, because Meredith is like my second daughter, the one I never had but always wanted, and I love her.

Anyway, Ron and Wilma, congratulations and best wishes for the best years of your life, the ones starting now.

HZ


Reaction to criticism

February 2007

This is too long to put into an email message, so it will be a letter, instead, with enclosures for you to read at your leisure. I’m writing it over a period of days with additions from time to time as they occur to me. I’ll start by saying I’m sorry you’re disappointed in me, but that’s your problem, not mine. I dunno why I’m perplexing to you. I’m a simple, straight- speaking guy, much like you, but maybe because I’m some 20-odd years older than you, I’m more tolerant, less opinionated, more accepting of people whose opinions differ from mine. Maybe, too, it’s because I don’t have the energy or the stomach to argue with people who disagree with me. I don’t feel as strongly as I used to feel that I have to justify my beliefs or argue the rightness of my convictions. And I don’t feel as strongly as I used to feel that people whose views differ from mine are necessarily wrong. Sometimes they’re right and I’m wrong. And I’m more willing than I used to be to examine the other guy’s views and to accept the fact that he is honest in his beliefs as I am in mine. 
   
I suspect that you’re disappointed in me because I haven’t been making substantial comments on the articles circulating in our round table. Or maybe you want more of my comments on my years in the Pentagon, which could maybe shed more light on what’s going on right now? Maybe you just want more of my views on politics, or government, or the Iraq war, or the Democratic or Republican parties? Views that are based on my experience in government? 
   
The problem is that I feel about my Pentagon years and the work that I did there much the same as I feel about my WW II years and my wartime experience. It’s all in the past, no longer pertinent, not something I want to dwell on any more. I know that some people never grow out of their wartime experience or their worktime experience. They want to relive those times all the time. I can understand that, but I think it’s because they have nothing new to occupy their minds, so they just want to live in the past. Some people never outgrow high school, either. But I don’t want to live in the past. I’m fully occupied with the present and the future. WW II is more than 60 years in the past. My retirement from the Pentagon is more than 20 years in the past. The world and I are now absorbed in the problems of the present.

So, let’s talk about the present. We have gone through the traumatic experience this past year of downsizing, moving from a big house to a small apartment. We’ve been here now since last August and have finally begun to settle in and get the apartment close to the shape we want it in. One of the three bedrooms has been converted into an office with built-ins to house our files, books, records, tapes and CDs, as well as the computer. One, of course is our bedroom and the third is our den/lounge, TV room, spare guest room. Now we’re starting to get involved in community activities. Jeanette is involved in a couple of women’s groups. I have volunteered to serve on two committees, both of which involve a few hours of work each week. Then, too, we go to lectures, social affairs, synagogue affairs and services. I got into a weekly poker game, too.
   
Aside from all that, I agreed to write some articles for a monthly discussion group, dealing mainly with Jewish affairs and Holocaust history. Enclosed are a few things to read about a Holocaust project that is taking a good deal of my time and interest. These are not the kinds of things that I would expect our round-table group to be interested in. The problem is that they do not leave me much time to comment extensively on matters or articles for our round table, and I’m sorry about that. I still send articles for you all to read and read the articles that you all send me, but as far as I can see, the discussion part of our exchange has diminished considerably. I’m not the only one whose volume of comment has shrunk. 
   
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I’m trying to cram a lot of activity into living in the present. I’ll be 86 in a few months – in June, to be exact, and the odds are that I really don’t have many more years ahead of me. I would rather think about and devote my creative energies to present-day matters than to spend my remaining time remembering the past. 

   
Communication king

August 2005
Dear [Cousin],

When I saw this TIME magazine cover, I immediately thought of you, since you will be thirteen years old in less than a year. The article inside also made me think of you. So, in case you haven’t seen it, I thought I’d send it to you. I enjoyed reading it and I’m sure you will, too. About 15 or 20 years ago, I helped with a similar article for Newsweek magazine on teen-agers, mostly 16 to 19-year-olds, and I learned a lot then about young people. The trouble with growing old is that we forget what it was like to be young. That’s why you have to keep reminding your parents that you have thoughts and feelings and yearnings and wishes, just as they did once and probably still do. The important thing is to communicate to them and with them, which means simply to talk to them and explain how you feel about things. You’d be surprised, I’ll bet, to see how interested they are to hear your views on everything.                                    

With love,                                            
Your 900-year-old cousin (He was really 84.)

Copyright 2017, Elaine Blackman

Harry wrote novels, too

Harry in the early 1960s

Last year on this blog, I posted a slew of unpublished short stories Harry wrote during his life. Most I discovered in his boxed paper files, a few on his computer. He also left behind hard-copy versions of never-published fictional novels; or in some cases, partial versions. Several he may have drafted in the 1950s, when his Army experience was still fresh in his mind, and perhaps edited in the ’60s or later. To give you a taste of one, here’s the synopsis from his book proposal, plus the first few paragraphs of the novel’s introduction.

The book proposal

Synopsis

Clarence Webster, a commercial pilot and flight instructor before the war, joined the Army shortly before Pearl Harbor and eventually was assigned to fly artillery spotting missions and light liaison planes in the combat zone. When his unarmed plane is shot down and he is wounded and temporarily grounded, he is transferred to the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. After the war ends he responds to an urgent appeal by the Army to stay on as an intelligence agent with the military occupation forces, at least for another year. Though he is eligible to return home, he agrees to stay, and subsequently extend the year for an additional six months. He finally returns to the States in December, 1946.

The story takes place in two main time periods – the last nine months of 1947 when he is a civilian in the States, and the last nine months of 1946, when he is winding up his tour of active duty in Germany. Like all veterans, he has had his fill of war, and of the Army, and of man’s cynicism and seeming inability to learn the bitter lessons of the war. He has returned to his pre-war profession as a flight instructor, but he is restless and dissatisfied, searching for some new answers, trying to “find himself”.

Though he is engaged to the “girl back home”, he cannot forget the girl he loved in Germany, even though she had betrayed his love. On the horizon is the growing threat which communism poses in a world hungry for peace and generally unaware of the full extent of the menace. A few people see the danger, but too few are doing anything about it. What, he asks himself, can one man do to help provide a greater measure of security for his country? In the end he breaks his engagement and joins the Air Force. Oddly enough he goes back into uniform for precisely the same reasons he joined up before World War II started, because his country is at war with the enemy – only the war has not yet been declared.

The writing makes extensive use of the flashback technique, contrasting his experiences and reactions during the last nine months of 1947 in Buffalo (the present) with his experiences and reactions during the last nine months of 1946 in Germany (the past), with occasional glimpses into his more distant past. The two women in his life are seen through his eyes, as well as the manner in which they help to shape his character and the effect they have upon his decisions. Though basically a love-adventure story, this is also a novel of a time so unique in American experience that it can never be fully recaptured on paper. It points up the conflict between one man’s desire for freedom and individuality, and that man’s concept of responsibility and obligation.

Introduction

The world of April 1947 was a curious place and a curious time. It was a time of tension and a time of relaxation. It was a time of anxiety and insecurity, and still, a time of hopefulness and aspiration. The aftermath of World War II was still being felt, strongly in some parts of the world, perhaps somewhat dimly in the United States. It was as though the war, like a giant hand from nowhere, had picked up the world by the neck and the seat of the pants and shaken it up a little, and the loose change had dropped out of its pockets and the buttons popped off its vest and everything was all jumbled up and confused and the pieces were still falling back but not in their proper places.

Of course, the confusion was where it had always been, in the minds of men. There was still a residual interest in the war, but it was too early to take an historical interest and besides, there were more important things to do – make money, mainly. So many odd and contradictory things were happening that reading the newspapers was almost frustrating and you could only keep track of the things that interested you.

In Germany, for example, the American Military Government, AMG for short, had just revealed that 3,278,000 of 11,825,000 Germans questioned in the U.S. zone were chargeable for Nazi activities.

This was one area in which Clarence Webster kept himself informed. He had more than a passing interest, too, in the eventual outcome of all the war crimes trials and the ultimate destiny of the men involved. In April, Rudolf Hoess was hanged at the Oswiecim extermination camp in Poland where 4,000,000 persons had been executed at his command. Gernand de Brinson, Vichy Ambassador to the German occupying forces in Paris, was executed as a traitor by the firing squad in Forte de Montrouge, near Paris. Field Marshal Erhard Milch, who built up the Luftwaffe and was Hermann Goering’s chief deputy, was sentenced to life imprisonment for slave labor activited by a U.S. court in Nuremberg. Dr. Hjalmar Schact, on trial before a German denazification court in Stuttgart, denied having been a “major Nazi offender” and said he took part in 4 anti-Hitler plots from 1938 to 1944. Both Carmen Maria Mory and Dr. Percy Treite, under death sentence for the Ravensbrueck concentration camp murders, committed suicide. And Herbert Backe, Nazi Food & Agriculture Minister, hanged himself in a Nuremberg jail. ...
  
Copyright 2017, Elaine Blackman

Harry’s wit and wisdom in more random letters

If you have enjoyed the letters Harry wrote in several earlier posts on this blog, you’ll like the following letters, too, also recovered from his computer files. They add humorous and thoughtful details to what we know about his personal life. And, they further prove that he could write about anything.






January 1991 – Undergraduate Advising Center, University of Maryland

Dear Wendy:

Your letter of January 28 came as somewhat of a shock to me, since you indicated that I had a “difficult” semester in the fall. As a Golden ID Student, I audited a course in Modern Military History (History 224) and I must say I enjoyed every minute of it. Not only did I not have a “difficult” time, I had a truly delightful time. I found the course both informative and entertaining, while the Professor, Dr. David Trask, and his Teaching Assistant, Paul Moreno, both displayed a depth of knowledge that added immeasurably to the texts we studied. Indeed, I came away from the course with a feeling of satisfaction at a semester well spent and a sense of accomplishment at subject matter well learned.

You will understand, therefore, why I was at a loss when your letter suggested that I consider repeating the course or perhaps attending a workshop on “Recovering from a Bad Semester.” You also suggested that I consult my “assigned advisor”. I’d be happy to do so, except that I didn’t know I had one. Did I get one somehow while I was having a “difficult” semester? In any case, I am currently auditing the follow-up course, History 225, and I will be most pleased if this semester turns out to be as “difficult” as the fall semester.

I don’t really mean to be facetious, but I’d be very interested in hearing what bureaucratic procedure or what legal requirement prompted you to send me that letter.         


June 1991 – Richard Cohen, The Washington Post

Dear Mr. Cohen:

As a man of relatively modest stature, at five feet five inches, even more modest than yours, I truly appreciated your column entitled “Selling Us Short” in the Washington Post Magazine of 9 June. You did, however, inadvertently, I’m sure, forget to mention one other problem. In addition to the problem with shoes, which you described so eloquently, there is also the problem of men’s socks.

I refer, of course, to the monstrous hoax perpetrated on the male population of modest size by all the manufacturers of men’s socks who advertise that one size fits all – size 10-13. This is an obvious lie, and surely a violation of the law that prohibits false advertising. It may very well also be a violation of the anti-trust laws, since all the manufacturers seem to have entered into a conspiracy to hoodwink men with this “one-size” scam. Not only are those socks too big to begin with – the heel comes midway up my ankle – but it is my observation that socks are the only male garments that do not shrink but rather grow with each washing.

As a result of this nefarious practice, I and many others I know are reduced to shopping for socks, furtively, to be sure, either in the Boy’s Department or the Women’s Department, where size 9-11 is available. Unfortunately, neither the Boy’s nor the Women’s Departments carry socks of a quality and style equal to those in the Men’s Department. So I want to go on record as endorsing your call for men of modest size to rise up and rebel against the clothing manufacturers of America and their unfair sizing policies, as well as their unfair pricing policies. The trouble is, almost all of them are now in Taiwan, or South Korea, or China, or Hong Kong, or Indonesia, or Latin America, or Eastern Europe – or almost anywhere but the United States.


29 November 1991 – National Geographic Society, Washington, DC

Dear Bob:

It was very thoughtful of you to send me a copy of your December issue, and I can’t tell you how pleased I was to receive it. The pictures and the maps are phenomenal; Allen’s accompanying commentary is outstanding. Over the past fifty years I’ve read hundreds of articles and dozens of books about Pearl Harbor, but nothing I have ever seen presents so clear and graphic a summary of that event as this issue of the National Geographic magazine.

I recall very well where I was on that fateful day. I was working for one of the so-called war plants – the Bell Aircraft Corporation in Buffalo, New York – which was on a three-shift schedule at the time. Everybody knew that we could not stay out of the war in Europe forever, and that a war with Japan was probably inevitable, too. We were producing airplanes, mainly for the Russians for lend-lease, but also, we hoped, for eventual use by our own Air Corps.

It was Sunday afternoon with the plant going full blast when the loudspeakers came on with the announcement about the attack on Pearl Harbor. The grim certainty that this meant war only confirmed our fears, and when President Roosevelt announced that the Congress had declared war a couple days later, it was almost an anticlimax. I decided right then and there that I would devote my life to serving my country and, aside from my military service during the war, that’s exactly what I did as best I could as a civilian for almost forty years.

It’s hard to believe that the attack on Pearl Harbor took place fifty years ago. (It’s also hard to believe that I am seventy years old.) And it’s equally hard to believe that the Japanese are so sensitive about the subject. December 7 ought to be a day of remembrance in Japan, as well as in the United States. If they had any public relations sense at all, instead of withdrawing their advertising ($1.8 million from National Geographic alone, according to the Wash. Post), they would increase their allocations to help fund such retrospectives. Indeed, I believe that a properly planned and executed public relations campaign centered around the Pearl Harbor experience could very well help bring our two countries closer together. As it is, the Japanese seem to be fostering the impression that they would gladly do it all over again in a 1990s kind of way – not militarily, but economically.

Ah well, that’s neither here nor there. Thanks again, Bob, I really do appreciate your thoughtfulness.

Copyright 2016, Elaine Blackman

Alongside the women at the airplane factory

Harry in 2000 and 1943.

He was always a feminist to me.

In May 2000, my dad emailed a friend about his work at Bell Aircraft Corp before he joined the Army during WWII. I discovered this in his computer files. I, for one, didn’t know he had his own “Rosie the Riveter” story, but I always called him a feminist! Little did Harry know, this simple email would give us a personal history lesson and set an example for writing down our thoughts and experiences.


From 1939 until I went into the Army in 1943, I worked for the Bell Aircraft Corp in Buffalo and Niagara Falls. In the beginning, there were around 200 employees engaged in the business of building aircraft, of whom about 50 were engineers/designers, and the rest, like me, were factory workers doing the assembling, riveting, bolting, screwing, etc., physical factory work.

There were also a few women, secretaries, bookkeepers, etc., whom the men all whistled at whenever they caught a glimpse of them walking by. Halfway through 1940, when the draft started taking men away in droves, the war industry underwent an explosive expansion, and that’s when women were actively sought and encouraged to enter the factory work force. (Initially, men were drafted for one year, but when the war started for us at the end of 1941, the draft was for one year plus the duration, which turned out to be for four more years.) Actually, between mid-1940 and mid-1941, some 10,000 people were added to the workforce at Bell, and the same thing was going on in war plants all over the country. Some were older men, too old for the draft, and others who left lesser-paying jobs to work in the defense industries, but most were women, thousands of them. 

By mid-1941, I was an old pro in the factory, at the ripe old age of 20. So I was made a foreman in the factory, mainly because most of the guys were being drafted so fast that I was getting seniority, and of course I had to teach the women how to do the required jobs – riveting, bolting, screwing and even how to use the tools, most of which operated on pneumatic (air) power rather than electricity. My section specialized in wings, flaps and ailerons, and part of the job required someone to crawl inside the wings to hold rivets on the inside, so size was important. Being small, I was able to do this, and the women were even better – smaller and agile. I got along well with them, though most of the men were merciless in harassing them. This was long before sexual harassment entered the vocabulary and I really felt sorry for the women and embarrassed by the crudeness of the men.

What became apparent, though, is that the women could do these jobs as well as or better than the men, and they were proving it every day in all the sections of the factory. By the time I left for the Army in the fall of ’43, there were 25,000 people working there, and maybe 20,000 of them were women. Mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, grandmothers, sweethearts, even a few lesbians, according to the men who said they could recognize these things. All white, though, no blacks. We had a sizable number of black men, which was a departure for American industry at that time, but no black women. The country was still a segregated society then, and we haven’t made a lot of progress since then, either. 

Anyway, I found the women to be smart, willing to learn, willing to work, willing to suffer humiliation and harassment, and willing to help in the war effort and to bring their men home quicker. They came in all sizes and shapes and temperaments and personalities, and I did my best to make them feel welcome and appreciated. I kept telling them that as soon as they became proficient at their jobs, I was going to go fight for them.
                                               
Copyright 2016, Elaine Blackman

Photo from Airport Journals

Look closely at the thin, balding man on the right side of the photo, just behind the man stooping on the plane’s wing. (Click on photo to enlarge.) It sure looks like Harry’s back. The photo caption on the Airport Journals website reads: "Workers are busy on the P-39 Airacobra assembly line at Bell Aircraft’s Niagara Falls plant. By the time the war ended, Bell had produced 9,584 P-39s. A few examples managed to survive; at last count, three were still flying."

'Love and Baseball' -- a short story

Author Harry Zubkoff

The following story is the only one I found in Harry’s files with a double byline. Evidently he wrote it with a friend or colleague named Lloyd Harrington. The address at the top of each typewritten page is Harry’s, where he lived in his hometown Buffalo, N.Y., until 1949.

It feels almost eerie to discover stories my dad wrote at age 20-something, in the 1940s, when a man whistling at a girl was normal and accepted behavior. As I’ve learned in the past year, his fictions through the 1960s reflect stereotypes of women; that was life then. And yet, as far back as 1964, I had a sense my dad promoted equality. That’s the year he cheered my run for 6th-grade class president, coaching me as I stood on a stool and practiced my campaign speech. 

As for this blog, I considered not posting Harry’s stories that flaunt old-school attitudes. Now, however, I think it’s cool to share all of his stories from so long ago, never published or widely shared. As my more recent speech-writing coach says: It’s about memories, it’s about history, it’s about life.

At the end of our first day in the tiny Texas-Mexico border town of El Grande, I had two problems. One was selling advertising for the baseball park. Two was trying to arrange an unfair distribution of the merchandise accounts between Harry and myself.

The second morning I looked up from my breakfast in the hotel restaurant and saw my third problem. Her name was Lupita.

What a doll! What a dish! For a minute I was blinded, positively blinded. I had been conquered by beautiful waitresses before, but never anything like this. I wish I could say that she felt the same way, but the truth is, her only interest was in whether I wanted a second cup of coffee.

“Harry,” I demanded of my campaign partner, “did you see that?”

“Did I see what,” said Harry, his nose buried in yesterday’s newspaper.

“Jumpin’ Jupiter man, the girl, our waitress.”

Leisurely he turned, the bald spot on his head reflecting the Texas sun flooding through the windows on our right.

“Very nice,” he remarked, and turned back to his ham and eggs.

Understatement was one of Harry’s characteristics, but this time he had overdone it. I thought maybe he was blind, at first, but I changed my mind when he calmly dropped a nickel beside the quarter tip I left on the table.

“After all, Lloyd,” he said, “don’t you think thirty cents is a big enough tip on a dollar check?”

I bought an expensive hand-painted tie that day and wore it with my best suit that night, but of course, it was Lupe’s night off. So I wore them both the next morning for breakfast, plus a white carnation from the flower shop in the lobby, and was irritated when Harry showed up in a pair of Army slacks and a sport shirt.

Ordinarily I have no trouble expressing myself, especially to pretty girls, but when Lupe took our orders I was almost tongue-tied, so I just smiled and let Harry order for me.

“Coffee, ham and eggs,” said Harry, shooting a quick glance at me, “for both of us. And a thermometer for my friend.” Wise guy!

Lupe’s answering smile made my hands shake, but it wasn’t until two hours later that I realized she had smiled at Harry. Can you imagine anyone smiling at him when I’m around? Not that I’m a Clark Gable or anything, but I don’t look like something that belongs under a microscope, either, and I have got all my hair.

Increasing the size of my tips during the next few days gave me no satisfaction except that I was able to absorb them on my expense account. Harry gained the only benefit from this frustrating investment on my part. He stopped tipping altogether, but aside from this token recognition, he completely ignored my infatuation for the lovely Lupita.

He was all business. A baseball advertising campaign is a tricky thing, and this was Harry’s first. He was doing well, too, but then he’s a pretty good guy, even if he does look like a little weasel. We had divided up all the business establishments in town, aside from the merchandise accounts, and we were hitting all of them to buy advertising space, either on the fences or in the scorecard. On top of that, we were attending meetings of local organizations, like the Business Men’s League and the Lion’s Club and the Chamber of Commerce, and we were catching workouts of the ball team, writing articles for the paper and making speeches over the radio. We were building up goodwill and selling advertising like mad, and I was trying to keep Harry as busy as possible so that maybe he would forget the merchandise accounts, but no soap. He’s almost as shrewd as I.

In case you’re wondering, the advertising for a baseball park is usually carried out in conjunction with the refreshment concession. The wholesalers who supply the refreshments to the concessionaire are the merchandise accounts. They include the bakery which supplies buns for hots and hamburgs, the people who supply frankfurters and hamburg patties, the candy distributors, the cigarette and soft-drink distributors, the novelty distributors, etc., etc. All those people have a special interest in a baseball park because they make money out of it. They are the gravy accounts for advertising, and they can usually be persuaded to spend more money on baseball advertising than other businesses. Naturally, I wanted to keep as many of those merchandise accounts for myself as possible. After all, I was managing the campaign – on commission.

But I should have known better than to try to pull the wool over Harry’s eyes. The fifth morning at breakfast, he put down his paper, looked through me for a while, and said, “What about the merchandise accounts?” just like that.

I’d been half expecting and half dreading that question, so I wasn’t completely unprepared, just a little shocked.

“Well,” I said, “there are fourteen of them here. What about them?”

“How many do I get?” asked Harry. He didn’t believe in beating around the bush.

“To tell the truth,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about that. You know, Harry, merchandise accounts require a sort of special handling, a different approach. Your selling technique has to be adapted to each one of them, and I don’t think you have enough experience yet to properly sell them as much advertising as they could be persuaded to buy.” There was some truth in what I was saying, but not much. “Anyway, I was going to suggest that you come along and watch me sell the first ten or twelve, and then you take the last couple yourself.”

He was just opening his mouth to say something, something bitter, no doubt, when Lupe brought our coffee. Believe me, I was even happier than usual at seeing her. The timing was perfect.

“Lupita, light of my life,” I smiled at her, “here is a little gift I bring you, a little treasure from Old Mexico, which, by the way, took me three hours to find something nice enough for someone as lovely as you, so won’t you take it with all my love?” All this, mind you, on one breath, like a wounded puppy. I tell you I had it, but bad.

The gift was a beautiful little hand-made silver sombrero pin, which I’d picked up across the border in Mexico the night before, for eight bucks. Lupe picked it up and examined it.

“Very nice,” she said, turning on that dazzling smile of hers, “but Lupe cannot accept.”

“Why not?” I said, “please Lupe, I bought it just for you and I do want you to have it, really. Why can’t you take it?”

“It would not be right,” she said, “Lupe cannot accept.”

“But, Lupe,” I protested.

“Let’s see that thing,” said Harry, stretching out his hand.

Lupe dropped the sombrero in his hand and he studied it for a minute, while Lupe stood there, looking so beautiful and desirable in her silky white blouse and brightly colored skirt that I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“Want to sell it?” said Harry. “I’ll give you what you paid for it.”

“No,” I said crossly, “I bought it for Lupe.”

“But she doesn’t want it,” said Harry, “and you can’t force it on her. Come on, now, why not let me buy it from you? I’ll send it to my wife.”

“I’m sure your wife would like it,” Lupe broke in, “it’s very pretty.”

“Okay, okay,” I threw up my hands in disgust, “you win. Send it to your wife with my compliments.”

Harry grunted and lit a cigarette and Lupe smiled and walked away. I watched her skirt swinging around her tanned legs and was just getting started on an interesting train of thought when Harry spoke again.

“That dame’s got you doing cartwheels,” he said. “Why don’t you take her out some night instead of mooning at her over your meals every day?”

“Take her out?” I almost shouted, “Take her out? What the blue blazes do you think I’ve been trying to do ever since we landed here? Why I’ve tried every trick in the book to get a date with her, and for all she cares I might just as well be a thousand miles away.”

“What’s the matter,” said Harry, “too much local competition?”

It was true that there was plenty of competition. In addition to all the local boys who were after the fair Lupita, she had half the fellows on the baseball team hanging around whenever they could find the time in their crowded training schedule. And, though I hate to admit it, they were mostly younger and better looking than me, too. I consoled myself with the thought that they didn’t seem to be getting to first base, either.

“It’s not that,” I said, a little calmer, “competition never bothered me. It’s just that Lupe is one gal who can’t be dated.”

“Well, now, I wouldn’t say that,” Harry leaned back and blew a stream of smoke at me.

“Oh no?” I growled. “Listen, wise guy, if you think it’s so easy, why don’t you get a date with her?”

“I hadn’t considered it, but it’s an interesting thought. You think I can’t?” he shot at me.

“I’ll bet anything you say you can’t,” I shot back at him, and could have bit my tongue off afterwards, because a huge grin lit his face.

“Like the merchandise accounts, maybe?”

I should have counted to ten, but I didn’t. Instead I tried to salvage what I could. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the desperate feeling that I was being outmaneuvered, that I was bound to lose.

“You date that gal,” I said, “and we’ll split the merchandise accounts fifty-fifty.”

Even then I had underestimated him.

“And let it ride that way,” he spit smoke at me, “for the rest of the towns on our itinerary?”

What could I do? We have five more towns in the league, and all those accounts represented a pretty bundle of potential advertising money, but I agreed. I hated to, but I did.

Well, the first thing Harry did was dash off a little note on one of the paper napkins on the table, and on top of it he placed a fifty-cent tip. Not a fifty-cent coin, or two quarters, or five dimes, but fifty pennies. The rat! It was just as though he had come prepared.

That night when he got back to the hotel he had a big package in his arms, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. He just smiled and got all dressed up and drifted out, package and all. I ate dinner with the rest of the poor Romeos on the ball team, and we all made eyes at Lupe, as usual, and as usual, she disappeared right after the dinner hour. So I went to a movie, and afterwards bought a mystery magazine and took it upstairs to my room, and fell asleep reading it.

The following week, which was our second and last week in El Grande, went the same way. I knew Harry was spending his evenings with Lupe, because he told me so, and he wouldn’t lie about it. But that’s all he told me, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get him to tell me how he’d managed it.

I was beginning to work up a terrific inferiority complex, and it didn’t help much when we totaled up our business on Friday and I discovered that he had sold $3,300 worth of advertising to my $2,900.

“Harry,” I told him that night before he went out, “when the boss sees these reports he’ll do one of two things. He’ll either try to find out what’s wrong with me or he’ll recommend a raise for you. It depends on what I tell him.”

“I’d been meaning to speak to you about that, Lloyd,” said Harry. “Do you think I deserve a raise?” Short and to the point, as always. That’s Harry.

“Yes,” I said, “but I won’t recommend it unless you tell me the secret of your success with Lupe.”

“Okay,” he grinned, “tomorrow, on the plane.”

Our last day in El Grande, and I hated the thought of leaving, even though I knew I’d be back during the summer to check on things. Somehow, I was afraid I would never get to hold Lupe in my arms and tell her how much I adored her.

I had a goodbye speech all ready for her at breakfast, but she wasn’t there. It wasn’t her regular day off.

“Harry,” I said, “where do you suppose Lupe is this morning? I wanted to say goodbye to her.”

“Oh,” said Harry through a mouthful of eggs, “she’ll be at the airport to see us off.”

He didn’t pay any attention, while I tore out a handful of hair. The little weasel!

She was waiting for us at the airport, and with her was a woman who looked young enough to be her sister, but could be no one but her mother. They both kissed Harry, on the cheek, I noticed, and then he introduced me.

“This is my friend, Lloyd,” he said to Lupe’s mother, “who is burning with a thirst which only your lovely daughter can quench.”

For a minute I didn’t realize what he was saying, and when it did sink in, he and Lupe’s mother were off in a corner somewhere and Lupe was standing in front of me blushing and looking like an angel with black hair.

I forgot my speech. I took her in my arms and kissed her.

“Lupe,” I whispered, “Lupe, I adore you.” It was like a dream.

“I know,” she said tenderly.

“I’ll be back in June,” I said, and kissed her again.

I was still in a daze twenty minutes later on the plane while Harry was explaining.

“The note was for her mother,” he was saying. “I bought a pressure cooker and went over to her house and showed her mother how to make chili-con-carne, northern style. After that we got along swell. She even gave me some home-canned peppers to send to my wife.”

Can you tie that? Him showing her how to make chili?

Suddenly a belated thought stiffened me.

“The sombrero,” I glared at him. “She was wearing it.”

“Yeah,” said Harry calmly, “I gave it to her with your compliments. I don’t know why, but that gal’s nuts about you.”

He buried his nose in my mystery magazine and I sank back into my dream.

What a guy!
 

THE END 

Copyright 2016

Elaine Blackman 

'What’s Love?' -- a short story

Author Harry M. Zubkoff in the '70s

Harry's books were his greatest possession. In 2011, he wrote an email to dear friends describing his 2007 move with my mother, from their house to an apartment: “The most traumatic thing about moving for me is that I had to get rid of a thousand books or more, but now I’m starting to accumulate them again.” 

Unfortunately, he parted with hundreds more when he prepared to move again in 2014 to an elderly friendly community. During another painstaking process, my dad (then 92) held up one book at a time, told us (his family) a brief story about it, and decided which pile it should grace – “keep” or “donate.” As for stacks of long-stored boxes, he insisted he “keep them all.” I never imagined that only months later, after he passed away, I’d open those boxes to find unpublished novels, stories, and poems he’d written over a lifetime.
 
In one of those stories, Harry tells a tale of someone else who was making a move, and moving on with his life.

“After all,” said Pop, “what’s love? Is it more important than food? Will it fill an empty stomach?” His face crinkled up as he smiled, and his eyes almost closed.

“Listen,” said Phil, his eyes fixed grimly on the road ahead, “don’t give me any of that curbstone philosophy. Maybe love makes me miserable, but I’m still crazy about her, even if she is marrying that half-baked jerk.”

“Aha!” said Pop. “Then it is love that’s bothering you. You have that look.”

“What look?”

“My boy,” said Pop, “when you’re as old as I, you’ll know what look I mean. What’s your name?”

“Phil. Phil Kimberly. What’s yours?”

“Everybody calls me Pop. How old are you?”

“Twenty-one,” said Phil. “By the way, I really appreciate this lift. It’s a long walk from Chicago to Buffalo.”

“That’s all right,” said Pop. He glanced quickly at Phil, while his big hands guided the truck carefully through the night. “Are you hungry?” He asked softly.

“No,” said Phil.

“Well,” said Pop, “what’s hunger, after all? An emptiness in your stomach. What’s an emptiness? Nothing. So what’s hunger? Nothing! Just the same, wouldn’t you like to stop at the Truck Bar up ahead and have a bite with me?”

“Okay, okay,” said Phil. “I guess maybe I could go for a cup of coffee, at that.”

“Fine,” said Pop. “Anything is better than nothing, especially on an empty stomach.”

* * *

In the lighted restaurant, Phil looked even younger than twenty-one. Only his stubborn jaw kept him from looking like a boy of sixteen.

“Would you like to tell me about her?” said Pop, two sandwiches and two cups of coffee later.

“I don’t know,” said Phil. “There isn’t much to tell. We wrote to each other while I was in Vietnam, and she promised to wait for me. But when I came home, I was broke and I just couldn’t afford to get married. I don’t have a job and I can’t find a job. Now I ask you, would any guy in his right mind get married without a job and no prospects?”

“Some people do,” said Pop, “but go on. What happened?”

“That’s all there is,” said Phil. “I guess she got tired of waiting. Anyway, she told me she decided to marry some guy who was chasing after her all the time I was overseas. A guy with a job who has something to offer, I suppose.”

“I see,” said Pop, “and being the noble young man you are, you decided she’d be better off with him so you ran away. Right?”

“It’s not that so much,” said Phil. “It’s just that all of a sudden I got fed up with being a nobody, without a job and no chance of getting one. So I thought I’d just go to New York and see if I could get a break there.”

“Yeah,” said Pop, I know. You figured to make a quick fortune there and then come back for a visit someday and show her what she could have had if she’d waited for you. Come on, let’s go. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

* * *

It was raining steadily on the steel top of the truck cab, and the wind moaned past the side windows, monotonously, soothingly.

“There’s plenty of room to relax, if you’d like to take a short nap,” said Pop.

“No, thanks,” said Phil. “I don’t feel like sleeping.”

“Ah, well,” said Pop, “after all, what’s sleep? You close your eyes, you stop thinking, your mouth opens, your muscles relax, your heart beats slower, your blood moves slower and it’s almost like being a little bit dead.”

“That’s a nice, morbid thought,” said Phil. “Do you always talk like that?”

“Oh, it’s just a habit, I guess,” Pop shrugged. “Being alone on the road so much gets a guy to thinking. There’s not much else to do but drive my truck – it’s my own, by the way – and think, except when I pick up hitchhikers like you. Then I drive and talk.”

“You think I ran away, don’t you?”

“Well, partly,” said Pop, “but I also think that you don’t love the girl. Not really.”

“Oh, but you’re wrong,” Phil protested. “I do love her. That’s why I left. I don’t mean to be noble exactly, but – well, you know what I mean. Maybe I didn’t think it all out like you did, but you figured it about right back there in the restaurant.”

“No,” said Pop, “you don’t love her. Consider, now, what’s love? It’s a desire for someone. A desire to share your life with someone, to make a home together, to raise a family. Not to leave her, to spend the rest of your life apart. That’s not love. That’s a sacrifice. Maybe not even a sacrifice. It’s probably just your pride that makes you want to run away. Your pride, that won’t let you stay and face her and everyone else.”

“Look,” said Phil, “if you want to give me lectures like that, just stop the truck and I’ll get out and walk.”

He sat back in the seat, his stubborn jaw sticking out at an absurd angle.

Pop laughed.

“That’s your pride speaking again,” he said more gently. “Look, Phil, let me tell you a story. It’s about a guy I knew once. We’ll call him Joe. Joe was in pretty much the same boat you’re in. Oh, he wasn’t a veteran and he didn’t have a problem in adjusting to civilian life after a war, or anything, but he did live through some pretty hard times.

“Anyway, he didn’t have a job when he fell in love. Nice girl, too. But instead of running away, like you, he married her. He really loved her, you see, and couldn’t imagine a life for himself without her.

“Well, they had three kids, and with each one things were a little tougher. Believe me, son, they had a mighty rough time of it. They even lost one child because they just didn’t have enough money for doctors and medicine. But they never stopped loving each other, not once, and today they’re just as happy as anyone would want to be. He still isn’t making much money, but they’re together, and that’s what counts. And if they had it all to do over again, they still wouldn’t do it any differently.”

They were both silent for a moment, lost in thought, while the big truck droned steadily through the night.

Phil broke the silence.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” he said. “Maybe it worked out okay for them, but that doesn’t mean it would for everyone. And besides, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ask a wife of mine to go through so much … hardship. It just wouldn’t be right for me, that’s all.” He wondered if the mythical Joe were Pop himself. But no, Pop wasn’t old enough. He was no more than thirty-five, maybe forty at the most. Still, he did look as though he’d known many hardships in his life. Well, maybe he had.

* * *

He woke up when the truck stopped. It was just getting light out and it had stopped raining.

“Time for breakfast,” said Pop, seeing his eyes open. “You must have been pretty tired.”

“Yeah,” Phil yawned, “guess I was. What time is it?”

“Almost five. You’ve been sleeping over two hours.”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Phil, “about that guy Joe you were talking about. I can’t help wondering how it would have worked out if he hadn’t gotten married right away, if he and his girl had waited till they could afford it.”

“Well,” said Pop, “let’s eat first, and then I’ll tell you another story.”

* * *

The countryside looked freshly washed and the air smelled sweet and clean in the early morning. The big truck seemed to drive itself with only an occasional nudge from Pop’s capable hands. Now he looked older, somehow, or more tired, and his voice was slightly husky as he spoke.

“This guy’s name was Joe, too,” he said, “and like the other Joe, he didn’t have a job either when he fell in love. So he decided to wait. Well, he waited and he waited and because his girl was so fine and understanding about it, almost eight years went by before he realized it. By that time, he was making enough to get married, even by his standards.

“But then a terrible thing happened. You see, after being a bachelor for so long, the thought of marriage suddenly became terrifying to him. What’s even worse, he realized that he didn’t love her after all. Not enough to give up his so-called freedom, anyway.

“On the other hand, he was aware of the sacrifice his girl had made, waiting so long for him, and ruining her chances for another marriage. Who would marry a girl who had been engaged to one man for eight years? And besides, she did love him, or at least she claimed to. No, in all fairness to her, he just couldn’t leave her flat. His conscience just wouldn’t permit it.

“So he married her. And their marriage has not been a happy one. No, it has not been a happy one. They’ve been miserable together, just plain miserable.”

“Well,” said Phil after a moment, “that’s not an encouraging prospect, is it?”

“No.”

“Of course,” Phil went on, half to himself, “that’s kind of carrying it to extremes. After all, who’d expect two people to stay engaged for eight years? I know I certainly wouldn’t ask any girl to do that. I mean, she might want to wait for me, but we wouldn’t be engaged. She’d be free to go out with other guys, too. That way, if someone else came along, she wouldn’t be tied down, so to speak. Anyway, you see my point, don’t you?”

“Sure,” said Pop. “What you’re saying is that it couldn’t happen to you. Maybe to someone else, but not to you.”

“Okay,” said Phil uncomfortably, “have you got any more stories up your sleeve?”

“As a matter of fact,” Pop smiled, “I have. Just by way of variety …”

“I know,” Phil interrupted, “This guy’s name is Joe, too.”

“Yeah,” said Pop, “how did you know? Anyway, this Joe was something like you. Young, very much in love, and not earning enough money to marry on. His girl, her name was Norma, would have married him. She was working, and she could have continued working, but no, he was too proud – or foolish – to let his wife work.

“Well, she waited for a couple years, but when she saw that Joe wasn’t getting any closer to setting the date, she broke it up and told him that she couldn’t wait any longer, that she was going to marry someone else.

“So he ran away, just like you. And for ten years he worked away from home, making a decent living and wondering all the time what happened to Norma. Do you know what the tragedy of his life is? It’s this, that for ten years he wanted nothing so much as to go back to her, but he never had enough nerve. He was a coward.

“For ten long years, his mind was full of her. There never was another girl for him. Many times he almost wrote to her. But he never made it. So for ten years, he lived like half a man. You see, Phil, a man without a woman to love is only half a man. Why, he never even knew if she married the other guy. He only wondered, and wondered, and sometimes in the lonely night, he even cried.”

The truck had reached the outskirts of Buffalo before Phil spoke again.

“I can’t go back,” he said miserably, “I’d feel like a fool.”

“A fool?” said Pop. “What’s a fool? Someone whose pride has been hurt. Nothing more. All of us have been fools at one time or another. All of us have too much pride.”

“Besides,” said Phil, “I’m broke. I can’t go back like this, with nothing to offer her.”

“You have yourself,” said Pop, “and your future. But it won’t be a good future unless you share it with someone.”

“Okay, okay, you win,” Phil sighed, then grinned. “Can I hitch a ride with you on your return trip?”

“No,” said Pop, “I’m not going back – not for a while, anyway.” He smiled, and for an instant he looked almost as young as Phil. “You see,” he added, “I’m getting married today.”

“No kidding!” Phil gasped.

“Yes,” said Pop, “it took me ten years to get back here, but I finally made it. You see, she never did marry that other guy. She’s been waiting for me all this time, and if I’d come home the day after I ran away, we’d have been married ten years by now.

“Someone once said that experience is the name we give to our mistakes, Phil, so don’t make the same mistake I did. You’ll never forgive yourself, not if you really love her.”

“Pop,” said Phil, “I’ll send you an invitation to our wedding. What’s your address?”

“Just send it to Joe and Norma Poppin, care of the Poppin Trucking Company, Chicago.”

“Thanks, thanks Pop, thanks for everything. And I really do love her, too.”

“Well, after all,” said Pop, “what’s love? An extra heartbeat. What’s a heartbeat? Life. So what’s love? Why, it’s life itself! Good luck, Phil.”

THE END

Copyright 2016

Elaine Blackman