Grandma and the Prince - Part 28

Here is the second installment of Grandpa Larry's World War I reminiscence. He called it "Under Sealed Orders" and the words that follow are all his. (Not too bad for a man with a sixth grade education!)

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Part II

We entered the harbor without our identity code flag flying and dropped anchor near the dock section of the city of Halifax. There was no more to moor ship, so it was evident that we would (inaudible) one anchor with no intention of staying in port long. No one came near us. The Union Jack was raised on the jackstaff at the bow and the ensign was rised at the stern, which is the usual procedure in port – also, the Marine guards were posted at various places on deck.

A little later, the Captain’s Gig was lowered away and the Captain, accompanied by Lieutenant Commander Stiles, the ship’s First Lieutenant, went ashore. The scuttlebutt was quiet. I guess everybody had run out of ideas. A little after dark, our big canopy-covered motor sailor was lowered away and sent ashore. That evening, after the boatswain’s mate had piped standby and pipe down hammocks, I stretched my hammock on my billet, unlashed it, and prepared it for the night. I then listened to the band play some nice music for while, then as I had no watch that night, I turned in for a good night’s sleep.

The next morning, after reveille and breakfast, we heaved in the anchor and got underway. I soon heard by the usual grapevine that four men had come aboard with the Captain in the gig and the motor sailor had brought several more men and a large amount of luggage. We heard later that after we had left port and little more than cleared the harbor and headed out in the open sea that a load of TNT had blown up in the harbor, not far from where we had been anchored. It had devastated about (inaudible) the shipping in the harbor and great damage to the city of Halifax itself. I soon found out who our guests were. The men who came on the motor sailor were aides and secretaries, and the four who came in the Captain’s gig were Colonel House, who was the advisor/confidante of President Wilson; General Bliss of the Army high command in Washington; Admiral Benson of the Navy high command; and a tall, handsome young civilian who was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Josephus Daniels. Fourteen years later, this young man was destined to be President of the United States. You don’t have to ask his name, do you, Barbara?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

We heard later that they had arrived in Halifax from the United States on a freight train in boxcars. The men were in disguise. Halifax officials were not aware of the maneuvers which were handled by our Intelligence men. We also found out that it had been learned that the German high command was starting to crack at the seams, and that these men were the mission being sent to negotiate the armistice when the time came.

The Huntington had been selected for this mission and it was a good choice. We had our job to do and that was to get these people quickly and safely to their destination which was, of course, top secret. Our ship was good for the job, well-armed, quite fast for those times, well-commanded with a well-trained experienced crew. The only things we had to look out for were the subs, of course, of which there were many – and big German battleships, but they did not come out into the open seas until the Battle of Jutland.

I had recently been promoted and was in charge of a section of the boat deck which included the base of the cage mast (inaudible) the Bridge and also #1 smoke stack. I was usually there during working hours when I was not on gun watch. I noticed that some of the mission seemed to like being around the cage mast. I happened to be talking to the Jimmy Legs in charge of the Lucky Bag and he had an idea. There were a number of folding chairs in the Lucky Bag which had probably been used at some function aboard the ship before the war and had not been taken off. Anyway, they were brought up and placed in the Bull Ring below the cage mast. The guests took advantage of them in nice weather and seemed to enjoy sitting there in the Bull Ring, talking. I came in contact quite a bit during the crossing and was able to get a number of pictures of them taken by the ship’s photographer. It seemed strange to see them there. They represented the highest power in the United States. The pictures were lost years later in Brooklyn when we were robbed. The crossing proved to be uneventful, except for two or three submarine alerts but nothing came of them.

I guess I should explain a few things. First, Jimmy Legs is the nickname of the Master at Arms. There were a number of them and they have charge of the unruly who, in such cases, can’t be handled by the petty officers of the sections. They have charge of the brig and bringing the culprit before the Captain’s mast, deck court, summary court-martial, and even general court-martial, although that is infrequent as most general courts are held on shore.

The Lucky Bag is a compartment below decks where everything lost, strayed, stolen, or misplaced finds its way and may be recovered if properly identified by its owner. When a large amount of unclaimed articles are accumulated, the Master at Arms in charge holds a sale. The articles are stamped “Lucky Bag” and sold to the highest bidder. The theory is that the funds received go to the crew’s entertainment fund, but I would not swear to that. I would like to say that a big warship of the World War I era was no luxury liner. No way. Its decks above and below were always cleared. There was no place to sit down, the folding tables and benches were placed in racks in the overhead as soon as the meal was completed and cleared up. At sea we wore life belts 24 hours a day and never broke out our hammocks. I had no bedding at any time. We slept on the deck and you can believe it was hard. Most slept on the gun deck because it was warm in the cold weather. In addition to this spartan way of life, we were allowed a half-bucket of water a day with which to wash our faces, teeth, shave, and take a sponge bath. We used the rest to scrub clothing. Anything that was left went into a community bucket for the purpose of scrubbing paint work. If we wished to sit down for any purpose, we would get our ditty box from a rack to use for a seat. This was a box about 10 inches wide and 10 inches high and maybe 14 inches long with a lock on it. We kept our personal belongs in there: tobacco, soap, shaving gear, writing paper, maybe a picture of a girl friend or family or such.

(to be continued)

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He was begotten in the galley and born under a gun. Every hair was a rope yarn, every finger a fish-hook, every tooth a marline-spike, and his blood right good Stockholm tar.
--Naval Epitaph


PS: I'm Barbara Bretton and you can find me here and here. Leave a comment behind and you'll be automatically entered in a drawing. The winner will receive signed copies of CASTING SPELLS, LACED WITH MAGIC, and SPUN BY SORCERY and a little sweet surprise.

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Grandma & The Prince - Part 17

That's the 1930 Census for Glen Cove, Long Island. Look down near the bottom of the form and you'll see Max Glassberg, his wife and children, Edith Morgan and her son, and Charles Dimler. Grandma's secret laid out for everyone to see if I'd only known where to look.

Sometimes the answers are right there in front of you but you're not asking the right question.

You already know my Grandma El loved to share her stories. Sometimes she shared them in embarrassingly intimate detail. But who knew she left out the best story of all.

The thing is, all families have secrets. My best friend used to tell me wonderful stories about her big extended Italian family. Love and death and family fights, all the stuff that I, a budding novelist, soaked up like a human sponge. But there was one story I found impossible to believe. It seemed her cousin Annette grew up as the spoiled, happy, only child of my friend's Aunt Fran and Uncle Bill. Annette knew chapter and verse about the day she was born, how much her parents wanted her, how she looked like her mom but acted like her dad. The usual loving details we all hear when growing up.

Except for one thing: Annette only knew part of the story. It turned out Annette wasn't Fran and Bill's biological daughter: she was the daughter of Fran's baby sister Anita who had "gotten in trouble" at 15 and given birth to Annette who was adopted immediately by Fran and Bill and claimed as their own biological child. How they managed that in a tightknit, gossipy neighborhood is anybody's guess--especially since everyone in both families knew the truth.

I mean, even I knew the truth and I was just a friend.

Well, one day somebody let something slip and Annette found out the truth. She was twenty-seven years old and devastated. Her entire world had been turned upside down and she no longer knew who she was or where she belonged.

Oh, I had so many problems with that story. Who could keep a secret for so long? You mean, nobody in that family even hinted at The Big Secret over the years? Was Annette really that surprised or had she pushed her suspicions to the back of her mind and ignored them? I mean, how could you not suspect something was brewing? Besides, she was still Annette. Her parents were still the couple who loved and raised her. Why all the drama?

It took awhile but I found out the hard way.

I sold my first book in 1982 and the experience was everything you'd hope it would be. My family was ecstatic for me and a few weeks after I got The Call, my mom put together a celebratory dinner for me at their apartment in Queens. Grandma El was there, of course, and so was my Grandpa Larry. (Remember their romance back in the 50s? My dad's mom and my mom's dad--oy!) My aunt Mona was there too (El's daughter) and like the rest of us she enjoyed the champagne. Maybe a little too much because at one point she lifted her glass and said, "I could say something right now that would blow this family apart." Which struck me as utterly ridiculous--so ridiculous that I started to laugh right there. Everyone laughed with me and the moment passed but for some reason I never quite forgot it.

Now cut to early 2001. My dad was in the last stages of his battle with colon cancer when my healthy, never sick mother was diagnosed in late March with pancreatic cancer and died less than six weeks later. I don't have to tell you what that did to our family, especially to my dad. My husband and I did everything we could to help him through it but his grief was devastating. Mostly all we could do was be there for him and hope it helped at least a little. About ten days after my mother died, I took my dad out for breakfast at the diner and then we went back to his place to watch tv and talk. He was at that stage of grief where he would suddenly burst into heart-wrenching tears then snap out of it a second later. Totally uncontrollable, a little unnerving, but very much to be expected.

So when he started to cry as I made him a cup of coffee I wasn't surprised. But then when I sat down and he took my hand and said, "I have something to tell you. You might hate me when I'm done and I understand. We did the best we could but--" and then started crying again--well, my imagination went in a million different directions. Mostly I had the most awful feeling that I wasn't my mother's daughter. She'd lost babies before me and after me. I'd never seen a photo of her pregnant with me. I looked so much like my father it was almost scary.

"Oh God," I said, my voice trembling. "Mommy didn't give birth to me, did she?"

He looked at me for a second before a little smile broke through. "She definitely gave birth to you."

Where was this going? "You didn't have an affair, did you?"

He started crying again and I'll tell you I died a little inside. Some things you just don't want to know.

"It's nothing like that," he said. "It's about Grandma."

"Grandma? Grandma's been dead for twelve years." Why would some secret about Grandma El make him cry today?

And then he told me the truth they'd all be hiding since 1935: Grandma's first husband wasn't her adored Bert Fuller, the rich man's son from Halifax who adored her right back.

Her first husband was a 25-years-older Romanian Jewish tailor named Max who lost his business, his savings, his hope during the Depression and left his family while he went away in search for work.

"Abandoned us," is the way my dad put it, but without bitterness or irony. It was the Depression. These things happened. Marriages broke apart. Families crumbled. Dreams were destroyed.

"So why the secrecy?" I asked my dad as I tried to take in my new reality. "I know Grandma wasn't anti-Semitic. Why didn't she ever tell me?"

But, as you'll find out next month, some secrets take on a life of their own.


<==My Uncle Cass behind the wheel of some fancy-schmancy car on the North Shore (Gatsby territory) of Long Island


PS: I'm Barbara Bretton and I can be found here and here and on Facebook too. SPUN BY SORCERY, the third book in my Sugar Maple series of magic-and-knitting books will be on the stands in November.