On the afternoon of December 12, Fritzi saw him off at the train station, and when he stepped up on the train, he said, “I don’t know when I’ll see you again, pal, so take care of yourself, and write me a letter every once in a while, okay?”
“I will.”
As the train started pulling out, he shouted over the noise of the engine, “Hey, who’s your best friend?”
“You are!” she yelled.
He gave her a thumbs-up, and that was the last glimpse she had of him. When she left the train station, the streets were packed, and she couldn’t get a cab, so she had to walk back to the hotel in the snow. As she walked, she noticed a lot of the store windows had already been decorated for Christmas, and some had been left only half done.
She and Billy had been together for a long time but had made no commitments. She had realized that Billy was not the marrying kind, and evidently, neither was she. But still, she was already feeling a little lost without him. When she got back up to the hotel room, she saw the envelope on the dresser he had left. Inside was a hundred-dollar bill and a note.
Merry Christmas, Squirt. Buy yourself a new hat.
Billy
Fritzi sat on the bed, wondering what she was going to do now. She didn’t want to just hang around, waiting and doing nothing. And damn it to hell, it wasn’t fair. She could fly as well as most of the guys she knew. She had tried to enlist in the army and showed her pilot’s license to the man at the recruiting office, but he informed her that neither the Army Air Corps nor any of the armed services would take female fliers.
“Why not?” she asked. “The plane doesn’t know if it’s a man or a woman flying it.”
“Regulations,” he said. “Now, if you could just step aside and let me get on with my business. We’re at war, little lady, and war’s no place for women.”
One guy standing behind her piped up. “I’ve got a place for you, honey, anytime,” as the other guys laughed.
Fritzi picked up her license and stuck it back in her purse and said, “Well, okay, if that’s how you feel. It’s your loss.” As she walked out, she said, “So long, knuckleheads, see you in the funny papers.” But she was mad and hurt, and when she got back to her room, she sat down and cried her eyes out.
She knew from the magazines that England and Russia were using female pilots to ferry planes, but here, it was a no-go. So that afternoon, she packed up her purple leather flying suit and the rest of her clothes and went home to Pulaski, just in time to say good-bye to Wink. He had been accepted into the Army Air Corps and was being sent to Scott Field in Illinois for training.
Now she had even more reasons to hate the Japs. They had knocked her out of a swell career, Billy and Wink were gone, and she was stuck on the ground for the duration. It was quite a comedown. But flying and doing stunts was all she knew how to do, so after a while, she signed up for the job on the canning line, back at the pickle factory.
LUNCH WITH LENORE
POINT CLEAR, ALABAMA
IT WAS GOING TO BE A VERY HARD DAY. IN THE PAST, SOOKIE AND Lenore had a standing lunch date every Wednesday, and Sookie really couldn’t put it off any longer without causing even more trouble. Lenore had already left a picture of herself in Sookie’s mailbox with a note attached. “In case you have forgotten, this is your mother. Where are you?!”
Sookie sighed and looked at the clock and dialed the phone. After a moment, her mother picked up. “Hello, this is Lenore. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking, please?”
“It’s me, Mother.”
“Oh … hello, you.”
“How was your water therapy?”
“Very wet. Where are you?”
“I’m at home, why?”
“I thought maybe you had moved to China. Are we finally going to lunch today? Or have you called to tell me you have suddenly come down with some other mysterious disease?”
“No, Mother, we are going to lunch. Where do you want to go?”
“Oh, I don’t care. You pick.”
“Well, how about the Fairhope Inn?”
“No, I’m tired of that.”
“Okay. The Bay Café?”
“No, let’s go to the Colony. I’m in the mood for crab cakes.”
“Fine. I’ll pick you up.”
When Sookie hung up, she noticed her stomach was hurting. Just the tone of Lenore’s voice was already irking her last nerve.
LENORE SWEPT INTO THE restaurant and waved at everybody she knew. And as usual, if there was someone there she didn’t know, she went over and introduced herself. As head of the Welcome Wagon Committee, she was sure they wanted to meet her.
When she sat back down, she said, “That cute couple over in the corner are visiting all the way from Canada, can you imagine? Anyhow, she was very nice and said she loved the color of my hair, and I said, ‘Well, if one must go gray, it’s just as easy to go silver.’ I gave her Jo Ellen’s number. Did you order my crab cakes?”
“Yes.”
Lenore waved at the couple again and turned back to Sookie. “She really could use a new rinse. But look at you, Sookie. You’re fifty-nine years old, and you don’t have a gray hair on your head. Count yourself lucky, my girl. When I was your age, I was already completely white, but I think it’s an English trait. Queen Elizabeth went gray early as well.”
“So you said.”
“As you know, I used to be a strawberry blonde.”
“Yes, Mother, you have told me that almost every day of my life.”
“Well, it’s true. I was known far and wide for being the only strawberry blonde in south Alabama. At the Senior Military Ball, when they played, ‘Casey Would Waltz with a Strawberry Blonde and the Band Played On,’ everyone in the room stopped and stared at us. Your father was a wonderful dancer. We both were, and they played it over and over again. And all the other boys would cut in, and I remember one said, ‘Lenore, dancing with you is like dancing with a feather.’ But, then, I was always light on my feet.” She looked over at Sookie and sighed. “Oh, Sookie, I wish you just hadn’t given up on your dancing lessons.”
“I didn’t just give up on them, Mother. If you remember, Miss Wheasly told me it would be best for the class if I pursued other interests—something I had a natural talent for.”
Lenore made a face and looked away. “Mrs. Bushnell’s daughter, Gage, is a prima ballerina in New York. That could have been you, Sookie.”
“When every time I went up on a point, I fell over? I don’t think so, Mother.”
“I don’t think you tried, that’s all.”
Sookie looked at her. “What?”
“Well, I’m very sorry, but it wasn’t me that gave up a promising career to marry Earle Poole, Jr.”
“Mother, what promising career? As what?”
“Oh, Sookie, you could have been anything in the world if you had wanted to. You had a real chance to be something, but no. You threw it all away to marry Earle Poole, Jr. I didn’t have the opportunity like you did. When I was at Judson, I excelled in dramatics. Dr. Howell said that I could have been a professional actress if I had wanted to, and he taught Tallulah Bankhead, so I guess he knew a talented actress when he saw one. Of course, Tallulah’s daddy let her do what she wanted, but Daddy wouldn’t let me go on the stage. And it’s a shame, really, because I always wondered what would have happened if I had. There’s no telling what I could have done if I had been allowed to follow my natural bent. I might have gone straight from the stage to the movies, but I married your father and settled for being just a housewife.”
“Mother, you were never just a housewife.”
“Well, I was so. I cooked and cleaned and raised two children, and if that wasn’t me, then who was it?”
“Mother, you never cooked, and you never cleaned.”
“Well, I oversaw everything, and anyhow, that’s not the point. That’s why I pushed you to be something. But you just never had any ambition, and I don’t understand it. You are descended from a long line
of leaders. Your great-grandmother single-handedly saved the family home from the Yankees, and you are just content to sit around all day and fiddle with those birds. You will be sixty years old soon, and what have you done? If I told you once, I have told you a hundred times. You need to think about your duty as a Simmons, and at least try to accomplish something to be proud of before it’s too late.”
Sookie had heard this same speech a hundred times, but today was obviously one time too many. “Mother, just stop it. All that Simmons stuff is just a bunch of baloney, and you know it!” Sookie was stunned at her own outburst.
Lenore was shocked as well and just looked at her for what seemed to be a long time and then said, “I don’t know what you mean, Sookie. It’s obvious that you are just not yourself today, and so I am going home.” Lenore stood up, walked out, and got into the car and waited.
Sookie, still a little shaken, paid the bill and went out, and drove her mother home in silence. When they arrived at her house, Lenore got out of the car and said, “Call me if and when you regain your senses.”
Sookie felt terrible about snapping at her mother like that and immediately called Dr. Shapiro, and he met her for an emergency meeting. But he did not find her behavior alarming at all. “It’s to be expected,” he said.
Sookie understood that that kind of behavior might be expected somewhere else, but in Point Clear, Alabama, upset or not, she should never have raised her voice in public. It just wasn’t ladylike, and besides, she was married to a dentist, and a certain amount of decorum was expected.
CHRISTMAS
PULASKI, WISCONSIN
1941
MOMMA HAD TRIED. SHE STILL BAKED THE OPLATKI—POLISH CHRISTMAS wafers—as usual, but it was a bleak old Christmas in 1941. All of the songs about peace on earth and goodwill toward men that played in between the grim news of the war rang a little hollow that year. It seemed the whole country was preoccupied with one thing. Every large company in America was busy changing over, mobilizing, and gearing up to put all their resources toward the war effort. Everybody wanted to do something to try to help win the war and get the boys home again.
Fritzi had been home for only about a month when their old friend, bathroom inspector and nurse Dottie Frakes, came by for a visit and informed them that after today, she was taking a leave of absence from Phillips Petroleum to become an army nurse. After a big lunch, Poppa went back to work, and Momma and the other girls started to clean the kitchen. Dottie offered to help clean up, but Momma said, “No, you two just go relax.”
Dottie got up and said, “All right, then, Fritzi, let’s you and me go sit in the parlor and have a little catch-up chat.”
As they went in, Dottie turned and pulled the wooden sliding doors shut and turned to Fritzi with a concerned look. “How long has your father had that cough?”
“Oh, quite a while, I think. He’s had a bad cold. Why?”
“I didn’t want to alarm your mother or the girls, but I don’t like the sound of that cough.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve worked in hospitals, and I know what that sound means.”
“Oh … what?”
“He needs to see a doctor as soon as possible.”
That afternoon, Fritzi tried to get her father to go see the doctor, but he said, “Oh, Fritzi, I can’t leave the station for that kind of foolishness. You know how shorthanded we are now. I’m fine. I’ll be better tomorrow.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and pleaded with him. “Please, Poppa. Just go for me.”
He laughed. “If I’m not better in a week, I’ll go. I promise.”
When she had first arrived home, Fritzi had noticed how thin and tired her father looked, but when she felt his shoulders now, there was nothing there but skin and bones.
She hated to do it to Poppa, but she had to tell Momma what Dottie had said and see if Momma could talk some sense into him. Before she even finished the sentence, Momma had her apron off and her hat and coat on and was headed next door to the filling station. Five minutes later, she and Poppa were downtown, sitting in Dr. Renschoske’s office. Momma was an old-fashioned wife and rarely questioned her husband in any way, but not this time.
The tests came back, and the diagnosis was as Dottie had suspected: advanced tuberculosis that had to be treated right away. But when the doctor started talking to him about the different sanitariums that specialized in TB treatments, Stanislaw would have no part of it. “Just give me some medicine. I have a business to run.”
“Stanislaw, you won’t be alive to run anything if you don’t do what I tell you. You will go home and get in bed and rest until Linka and I work out where you are going and when.”
He did, and in the meantime, his nineteen-year-old nephew Florian was put in charge of running the station. Three days later, the arrangements for Stanislaw had been made at the sanitarium. The hard part was getting him there. All the trains and buses were full of servicemen trying to get to bases. So Fritzi called a flying pal of hers and Billy’s in Grand Rapids, who flew over and picked up Poppa to fly him all the way down to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Poor Poppa. He had flown off with two sets of clean pajamas, a sack full of sausages, and a rosary that Sophie had slipped into his pocket. When the plane had taken off, Momma, who had never been separated from him for even one night, had stood and cried into her apron and wondered if she would ever see him again.
AND AS IF THINGS couldn’t get worse, Florian soon received his draft notice, as did Poppa’s mechanic. The other fellow they had just hired to fill in quit to work in Sturgeon Bay, where he could make more money, and Momma was worried to death.
A week later, after Fritzi came home from work, Momma went into her room and closed the door behind her and told her about an offer she had received from a man in Oshkosh to buy the station. Fritzi was stunned that her mother would even think about selling. “You can’t do that, Momma.”
“But Fritzi, what will we do when Florian and the boys leave for good? We have to close down. There will be no one left to run the station. When I think how hard Poppa worked to get this place … it will kill him for sure.”
“You can’t sell it, Momma.”
“But Fritzi, the hospital costs so much. We have to. Who knows how long Poppa will have to stay away or how long the war will last. And there are no men left to hire. They will be all gone—either to the service or working at the factories. We have no choice.”
Fritzi said, “Yes, we do.”
“What?”
“I’ll run it!”
“Oh, Fritzi, by yourself? You can’t do that.”
“No, not by myself. The whole family—all of us. Now that you have Angie to help cook, Gertrude, Tula, and Sophie can help.”
“But, Fritzi, you can’t have all girls running a filling station. Nobody would come.”
When Momma said that, something suddenly clicked in Fritzi’s mind, and she said, “Momma, you just wait and see.”
Later, Fritzi called a meeting in the kitchen with all the girls and told them her idea. They seemed skeptical. “But we don’t know how to fix a motor or anything about carburetors and things like that,” said Gertrude.
“No, but I do.”
Tula said, “But it’s so dirty over there. I don’t want to get grease all over me.”
“Oh, come on, girls. We can’t let Poppa down now or Wink. We’ve all worked at the station at one time or another, and what we don’t know, we can learn. Florian isn’t leaving for a couple of weeks. He can teach you what you need to know, and I can teach you the rest. I know we can do it. Whatta ya say?”
The sisters all turned to Momma. “What do you think, Momma?”
Momma said, “I think you should listen to what Fritzi says. She’s the man of the house now.”
THE NEXT DAY, FRITZI gave her notice at the pickle factory. That night, she rooted around in the gas station files and found Poppa’s old study materials from the service station management course he had taken. S
he sat down and studied all night long. It didn’t look too hard. All you had to do was follow instructions.
1. Welcome greetings and windshield service
2. Gasoline solicitation
3. Radiator check, oil check, battery test, tire pressure check—including spare tire—lubrication check, vacuum service offered
4. Itemized collection and friendly farewell and thanks for stopping
5. Attendants must be neat and clean at all times, fingernails, uniforms, etc.
“Oh, hell,” thought Fritzi. This was going to be easy. She knew most of this stuff already.
The gals would need uniforms, so Momma took all of Wink’s and Poppa’s old uniform pants and shirts and cut them down to fit the girls. Just for an extra added touch, she embroidered in red on each individual shirt the words “Hi, I’m Fritzi” or “Hi, I’m Gertrude,” and so on.
Fritzi had learned a little about organizing a work team from her old Flying Circus days, so she sat down and worked out a plan. And at the end of the week, everybody had a designated assignment.
Tula would do most of the mechanical work. Gertrude, the strongest girl, would be in charge of changing tires and fixing flats. Fritzi would pump gas and check under the hood and drive the tow truck when needed. Sophie was good at math, so she would work as the cashier. Inside the station, they sold candy, potato chips, cold drinks, hot coffee, and Momma’s sausages and homemade sandwiches and pastries. They also sold trinkets, key chains, lighters, glass ashtrays, and toys and gave away free maps and free postcards.
In three weeks’ time, Fritzi and her sisters, wearing brand-new uniforms with hats and cute little black bow ties, were ready to start. When word got out that four good-looking sisters were now running a filling station, business suddenly started to pick up. Doing the air shows with Billy, Fritzi had learned a lot about advertising, and pretty soon, ads started appearing in local newspapers that featured a photo of the four smiling girls standing in front of the station with a caption above it that said: