They got another letter from their friend Dottie Frakes, who was tending to wounded soldiers in the Pacific. It made Fritzi feel so damn useless. Momma and Sophie went to mass every morning and prayed for the boys overseas, Gertrude and Tula rolled bandages for the Red Cross in their spare time, and all she did was pump gas. And since gasoline was now being rationed, she pumped less and less of it every day. The posters down at the post office had a picture of a soldier and read “They do the fighting, you do the writing.” Fritzi had written to all the guys she knew, but she wanted to do more.
So a few weeks later, when Mr. Hatchett, the Civilian Pilot Training instructor over at the college, was drafted, and they asked Fritzi if she would step in and take over his job while he was gone, Fritzi said she was more than glad to do it.
Teaching would give her a chance to fly again. The college knew they were taking a chance on trusting a former female stunt pilot with their students; however, they needed a replacement for Mr. Hatchett. But Fritzi turned out to be an excellent instructor, and her students loved her—especially the boys. Between running the gas station and teaching, she was pretty busy, but sometimes after a lesson, she would take off and fly for a while by herself. It was wonderful to be up in the air again, even if it was in a Piper Cub.
PULASKI, WISCONSIN
Dear Wink,
We are OK here. Hope you are the same. Not much news except that the CPT instructor you and the girls took lessons from was drafted. And yours truly has taken over his job. Just for a laugh, I gave Sophie and Gertrude a few lessons, and I was surprised. They’ve both gotten pretty good, especially Sophie. She aces her landings like a pro. It almost put me to shame … but not quite. Ha-ha! But it makes me wonder if after this is over, you and me and the two girls and Billy might start our own Flying Circus? But I’m just dreaming, I guess. I have a feeling when you get home, your bride is going to nail your feet to the ground and never let you go upstairs again. Can’t say as I blame her. There is not a man left here that’s not under 16 or over 60. They’re either too young or too old. And it sure is lonesome here. So come home soon.
Fritzi
P.S. How does it feel to be a daddy? He’s a fine little boy, Winks. Looks like you.
PULASKI, WISCONSIN
My Darling Husband,
I hope you got the package I sent. I knitted them all myself. I am over at the station filling in for Fritzi for a few hours and things are pretty slow. I’d rather be busy. It seems if I have time on my hands I do too much thinking. I know we are told our letters must always be cheery and gay but, honey, sometimes I do wonder, why us? We were so happy for such a short time. Why did this war have to happen now? Why couldn’t we have been born five years earlier or even five years later? It isn’t fair. I had you for such a short time and I’m scared I’m not the same girl you left and when you come home, you won’t love me anymore, and I’m scared this war will change you, too, Wink. We can never get back to those two kids we used to be, and that’s what hurts. It’s hard to believe that just last year I was a silly teenage girl playing house, and now I’m a grown woman with a baby to raise and my husband is across the world, and I don’t know when I’ll see him again. Oh, honey, please don’t be brave and take any chances. Just do what you have to do and come home to me. I kiss your picture every night. Do you feel it? Everybody here asks about you.
All my love,
Angie
PULASKI, WISCONSIN
Dear Wink-a-Dink,
Woke up on the wrong side of the world this morning, grumpy as hell. Was a bear all day until I figured out what was wrong. I forgot to say thank you to the man upstairs today for being born in the good old USA, for Momma and Pop, the rest of the girls, and especially for you, Wink, the grandest guy I know and who is my very own brother. After I had a good talking to myself, I felt better. Anyhoo, pal, things here are status quo. With all this darn gas rationing, folks are just dribbling into the station, not more than one or two a day now, and then not spending much. Had a kid come in the other day who could only afford to buy a nickel’s worth, but your Angie, with the big heart, shot him a little more.
Angie’s holding up pretty well, Wink, but do write her when you can. I swear, that gal just lives from letter to letter. She’s fighting this war with you, Wink, and is being brave. The whole town is fighting this war with you. You should see the kids. They have collected everything but their Momma’s kitchen sink, no joke, and Poppa and Mr. Rususki are now in the home guard, helmets and all. We had a blackout drill the other night, and Poppa was so excited he walked off the back stairs and fell in the bushes. Momma was in the kitchen and heard him cussing in Polish and ran out and fell off right on top of him. Before it was over, all of us girls wound up in the bushes, laughing our heads off. Nothing was hurt but Poppa’s pride. Good thing it was just a drill. Don’t know what would happen if it was the real thing.
Fritzi
LONDON, ENGLAND
DECEMBER 25, 1942
Hi, Gang,
Merry Christmas all the way from England. Sure was strange not being home at Christmas. It really stirs up a lot of memories, especially today. I sure have learned something in these last months. All the guys here are very quiet tonight, including big-mouth me. We had a special Christmas Day broadcast from the States, and it sure was good to hear their voices, especially Frances Langford. At the end, when she sang, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” a lot of the guys had to leave the auditorium pronto, including me. The British people have been swell to us. Last night, every family here invited two or three of us to spend Christmas Eve at their house with them. My family was not Catholic, but the father drove me and Kracheck over to the next town for midnight mass and waited, then drove us back to the base. There sure are a lot of nice people here, but it’s not home. I know after we clean up all this stuff over here, I will be back next year to enjoy Christmas with you for real.
Winks
THE END OF AN ERA
1943
WINK’S PHILLIPS 66 WASN’T THE ONLY STATION THAT WAS HIT HARD BY gas and rubber rationing. People just weren’t driving much anymore, and filling stations all over the country were closing down every day. Fritzi and the girls kept theirs going longer than most, but finally, Poppa and Fritzi came to the same conclusion. It was costing them more to stay open than they were making, so the decision was made that at the end of the week, they would close down. It had been snowing on that last day the station was open. The weather outside was cold and gray and more or less matched the mood inside. The girls were sad as they cleaned out the counters and took down the pictures on the walls. Sophie packed up all the old maps and postcards and took them over to the house. Poppa said it was only temporary. He was sure that after the war, they would open right back up, and everything would go back to normal. But the girls wondered if anything would ever be the same.
Running the all-girl filling station had been a lot of hard work, but now that it had come to an end, they began to realize just how much they would miss it. For a short while, thanks to Fritzi, they had sort of been famous, and now it was all over.
It was around five when they finished and already dark outside. The girls had gone home, and Fritzi walked around and locked all the doors and turned the lights off for the last time. When she came back over to the house and handed Poppa the keys, Gertrude said what they had all been thinking: “Oh, Fritzi, I wonder if we’ll ever have as much fun again.”
SHOULD SHE OR SHOULD SHE NOT?
POINT CLEAR, ALABAMA
SOOKIE FELT SHE HAD MADE SOME PROGRESS SINCE HER FIRST THERAPY session. She was finally able to be around Lenore without having such a strong emotional reaction (like wanting to strangle her), but it was still so strange seeing Lenore in a brand-new light—not as her mother, but as a total stranger—and she was torn about what to do.
Sometimes she’d wonder whether she should she tell Lenore she knew she was adopted. If she did, what good would it do? The woman was eighty-eight years old, and
she obviously didn’t want her to know. She had gone to great lengths to keep it from Sookie, and telling her now would only upset her. And it’s not like they could work anything out at this late date. The damage had already been done. Sookie still felt hurt and angry, but at the same time, she was also beginning to feel grateful to her. Other than Lenore pushing her into everything known to man, her family life had been wonderful. She couldn’t have asked for a better father or brother. She had grown up in a lovely home and certainly had never gone without a thing. And if she hadn’t been adopted by them, who knows where she might have ended up? A Texas family could have adopted her, and she could have grown up on a ranch, and that would have been a disaster. She was absolutely terrified of horses. Or she might not have been adopted at all and never left the orphanage, just sat there until she was eighteen and then been kicked out with nowhere to go. And if she hadn’t grown up where she had, she certainly would never have met Earle Poole, Jr. She would have been a totally different person with a completely different husband and an entirely different set of children, or maybe she wouldn’t have married at all. It was mind-boggling to think about just how random her life had really been.
If her real mother had kept her, she might have grown up in Wisconsin speaking Polish or at least speaking with a Yankee accent. She may have even played the accordion or, who knows, she might have become a nun. And if she had been that other person and had passed herself on the street, she probably wouldn’t even have recognized her. She supposed she would have still looked like herself on the outside, but she would have been someone entirely different on the inside. She would have been herself, but an entirely different version of herself. Of course, she might not have been as nervous, or she might have been just the same. Maybe her bad nerves had nothing to do with Lenore. It was hard to know what parts of her personality had been formed by DNA and what parts had been the result of her environment. She had always assumed she had gotten her height and her nose from her father and the Simmons foot from Lenore, but now who knew where anything came from?
Oh, Lord. Just when she thought she was going to be able to relax and enjoy her life, this had to happen. How could she relax with all these questions running around in her head all day and night?
As the days went by, she found herself thinking more and more about her real mother. One night, in the middle of dinner, she said to Earle, “I wonder what she looked like.”
“Who?”
“That lady. Fritzi. My real mother. I wonder if she had red hair?”
“I don’t know, honey, but I’m sure we could find out.”
“Oh, it’s probably too late. If I’m sixty, she would be at least eighty-something. She’s probably dead by now.”
“Well, honey, maybe not. We could at least try to find out, and if she is still alive, I’m sure she would love to meet you. Think about that.”
Sookie thought about it for a minute. “Oh, I don’t know, Earle. Even if she is still alive, you wonder why would she just give up a baby like that.”
Earle shrugged. “I don’t know, honey, but I’m sure she had a very good reason. We don’t know the circumstances.”
“No, you’re right. But still, I think I might be too scared to meet her.”
“Well, you could always just talk to her on the phone.”
“That’s true. But what would I say? ‘Oh, hello, this is the daughter you gave away sixty years ago, just calling to say hi,’ or ‘Hi, guess who this is.’ ”
“No, sweetie, just tell her the truth. That you just found out and you wanted to make contact; you could do that, couldn’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose, but I could give the woman a heart attack, calling out of the blue like that. And don’t forget she’s never tried to find me. And it’s been so many years, she might have even forgotten she had me.”
“Well, just think about it. But if it were me, I’d want to at least try to find out.”
THAT NIGHT IN BED, she did think about it. And it occurred to her that even if the woman was still alive, she might not want to hear from her. She could have married and had a completely new family and might not want them to know anything about her. The woman was Catholic and, who knows, she could have seven or eight or even more half brothers and sisters out there somewhere! Oh, my God … and if she did find her mother, and they all wanted to meet her, the entire family might come out to Point Clear and bring all their children and grandchildren. She could have hundreds of Polish relatives piling in on her from all over the country. Where would they stay? You couldn’t keep a thing like that quiet. If all those Polish people hit town all at once, Lenore would be sure to hear about it in five minutes. So, no, she’d better just leave well enough alone. Who knows what a hornet’s nest she might stir up?
But still, she was curious, and it really was a mystery. Why had Fritzi Jurdabralinski, who was from Wisconsin, wound up all the way across the country? And what was she doing in Texas? Had she married a cowboy? Or a soldier? Or had she married at all?
RESTLESS IN PULASKI
PULASKI, WISCONSIN
1943
SINCE MOST OF THE BOYS FRITZI HAD BEEN TEACHING WERE NOW going into the service, the Civilian Pilots Training program at the college was shut down and the plane was sold to the military.
And now that the filling station had closed, Fritzi had nothing to occupy her time and she just hated to sit around doing nothing.
That good-looking Irishman had been somewhat of a distraction, but he had joined the marines and was off in North Carolina. She was not content to just be a sideline spectator in the war. She wanted to do something other than roll bandages and write soldiers. She could apply for a job at one of the big airplane factories out in California like a few of her friends had, but even that wasn’t enough for Fritzi. She didn’t want to build planes. Hell, she wanted to fly them. Day after day, she paced back and forth on the airstrip in the back and cussed a blue streak where Momma and the girls couldn’t hear her. Damn it to hell and back, there were times she just hated being a female.
FRITZI DIDN’T KNOW IT, yet, but things were starting to move in her direction. Even before the war started, two highly skilled American women flyers, Jackie Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love, had started to plant the idea with the military higher-ups that if war came, the United States should seriously consider training women to fly military planes so that they could perform ferrying missions, flying new planes from the factories where they were built to the military bases. This would free the men up for combat service. England already had women flying ferrying missions and were successfully completing assignments. Russia even had female combat pilots. Eleanor Roosevelt said publicly, “Women pilots … are a weapon waiting to be used.”
But in the United States, when the subject was approached with the top brass, they said that the idea of women ever flying planes for the military was absurd and completely out of the question. Women were far too high-strung and emotional. Flying was and always would be a man’s job. This was their attitude, until the war actually started, aircraft production increased, and a shortage of male pilots ensued. In late 1942, these very same men suddenly had a change of heart and had to admit that maybe it was not such a bad idea after all.
A list was compiled of all the women in America with flying experience and a pilot’s license, and telegrams were sent out asking if they would be interested in flying military planes for the U.S. government, and if so, to please report to the Howard Hughes Airport in Houston, Texas.
Fritzi opened her telegram and read it. Was she interested? She was not only interested, she couldn’t wait. She talked it over with Poppa, and he gave her his blessing. Momma cried in her apron again and said, “It’s all Billy Bevins’s fault that Fritzi won’t stay home.”
When she told the girls she was leaving, they were sad to see her go. But they were also proud and excited to think that their big sister was going to be flying planes for the United States of America government.
PULASKI, WISC
ONSIN
Dear Winks,
A great big yahoo! Looks like you won’t be the only Jurdabralinski flying for the good ol’ USA. I passed all my preliminary tests with flying colors, and it’s now official. Excuse me, but I am writing this letter while jumping up and down with excitement. A bunch of us have been chosen to train the army way, so we can ferry airplanes in the States and free up more of the guys for combat duty, and so, my boy, have no fear. More help is on the way. I am headed out for Houston in two days to begin training. We are starting out as civilian volunteers, but the scuttlebutt is that as soon as we get up and going, we will be military for real, and I am hoping to outrank you, buddy … so watch out. Texas, here I come!
Fritzi
AN OLD FRIEND
HOUSTON, TEXAS
FRITZI ARRIVED AT THE TRAIN STATION IN HOUSTON AND WAS PICKED up, along with a bunch of other girls from all over the country. They were driven over to either the Bluebonnet Hotel or the Oleander Motor Court, where they would be staying until they could get into the new barracks out at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas.
The next morning, they were all out at the base for orientation. On their first break, Fritzi walked into the rec room to get a Coke, and she suddenly heard a familiar voice say, “Well, lookie at what the cat done drug in.”
Fritzi looked over, and she couldn’t believe her eyes. Sitting over in the corner at a table was Gussie Mintz, Billy’s old girlfriend from the Grand Rapids days. “I heard you were coming in today,” she said.