Joseph and Ethel: Part I of a Love Story

So my plans for Los Angeles fell apart in a quick instant, so I had to rejigger my entire plan, which means that I'm now in Lincoln, Nebraska, and on my way to Chicago. Why? Because I can. 

I left Denver on Friday morning en route to Omaha, where I arrived just in time for Shabbat at everyone's favorite Nebraska Orthodox synagogue (okay, so it's the only). I stayed Saturday night with an amazing old friend Melanie (we once took a trip to Kansas City to stay with her very cool sister and the trip, being on Halloween, included me reading what should have been scary stories but were pretty lame, overly long stories) and her husband in Omaha. Then, yesterday morning, I took off back to Lincoln where I surprised my dad for Father's Day.

While hanging out with my dad, he brought out the scrapbook that his mother, my Grandma Ethel Edwards, kept during the war. The book, which only spanned a few years from 1943-45, included gobs of Western Unions, wedding greetings, Valentine's cards, and more. It's a little time capsule of the relationship of two people that I never knew, and that, more importantly, my father barely knew.

Ethel Louise Nelson and Joseph Francis Edwards in San Antonio circa 1944.

It's funny, because when I look at them they look so Jewish to me. Is that weird? Or did everyone look Jewish in the 1940s?

My father was born on August 6, 1953.

Ethel died eight years later of lung cancer on January 20, 1962. Joseph died three years later of a heart attack on August 17, 1965. My father had just turned 12 years old 11 days before.

Joseph was 47 when he died. Ethel was 39; she died on her birthday.

Let's just say my father had a rough childhood and leave it at that.

In the scrapbook are oodles of Western Unions from Joseph to Ethel talking mundanely about the weather or modes of travel, but in a romantic, funny way. There's even an entire conversation that was recorded as it happened (not sure what this is called) between Joseph and Ethel's sister (Helen). It's a really funny conversation to read. It also expresses the modesty of dating during that era.

One of the peculiarities of their communications during this time (Joseph was being moved around while he was active duty, they married on October 3, 1943, and Joseph eventually was sent to France in late 1944) is some of the language that Joseph uses. He frequently refers to 88s and 73s.

January 1, 1943 -- this is almost 70 years old! Eeep!

"Maybe it's the weather?" my dad suggested.

"Nah, that's insane," I said. "Maybe it's some kind of military lingo?"

My dad was able to clear up a lot of the weird military lingo in the letters and Western Unions, but not this one. After some digging, and with the knowledge that Joseph was a technician involved in radios, I discovered that 88s and 73s is radio speak!

According to Wikipedia, for amateur radio users, 73 means "best regards" and 88 means "hugs and kisses." (Oddly enough, amateur radio websites kvetch about those who add -s to the end of 73 or 88 as being grammatically incorrect. I'd like to think Joseph was a pro at the radio speak, however.)

Seriously? Aw. Big squishy puppy kisses aw! My dad never knew his father as a romantic, but boy do these Western Unions and cards really paint a different picture.

Stay tuned for more cuteness shared between Joseph and Ethel during 1943 and 1945, including some one-of-a-kind souvenirs from early 1945 in France. These things are wartime artifacts. It seems that my grandfather landed in Paris just after the liberation. Awesome!

Note: I've been trying to trace my grandfather's path during World War II for years. It would be a lot easier if his military paperwork had not gone up in flames during a fire in the 1950s in the Missouri facility that held his documents. So, from here, I have to piece together where he was stationed (Alabama, San Antonio, Cincinnati, and so on). It's quite the fun time. 

[Singing] It's Shabbos Now!

But modestly, of course. Because, after all, this is the interwebs and I am an Orthodox Jewess. So pretend I'm in a closet, and no one can hear me. (I am in the Poconos, and it's quiet here. Oh, except for the five burly construction workers banging and sawing and talking about women while putting up the new windows. It's cold. Very cold. Because there are holes in the wall where windows go. But back to our regularly scheduled blog post ...)

Just a note that in a month and a couple days, I'll be rocking Shabbos in Jerusalem. That's the appropriate way for a Chaviva to rock Shabbos, in case you didn't know. Every day, I grow weaker, I think, being here. Almost a feeling of detachment from the world. In Israel? I feel alive. So I'm super stoked to be heading toward Jerusalem soonish. Let's just hope I can survive the coming weeks. (Hat tip to Elianah for her inspiring Israel ROCKS Shabbat post.)

Speaking of the coming weeks, I have a lot in store as far as blog posts go. I just have to get all of my schoolwork done so I can write the blog posts. In no particular order are ...

• TWO, yes, TWO cookbook giveaway contests. There will be some action involved (get your chef's hats ready) and two lucky winners will receive (one person for each book) Jamie Geller's new Quick & Kosher: Meals in Minutes or Susie Fishbein's Kosher by Design: Teens and 20-Somethings. There will be two contests, two blog posts, two winners. The first will start on Wednesday, October 27. 
• A blog post on the hair situation. Yes, hair covering. These happen to be some of my most-read posts, so I'm eager to write another one now that I'm nearly five months into being married and covering. Have I piqued your interest? I might also go all mikvah on you!
• An interesting thing happened in class last week. It involves a class full of Jews with varying observance and self-identification, a kugel, a gefilte fish, and some kale. I know, right? I'll be asking your advice. Feel free to guess where I'm going with this. 
• Tuvia's been helping organize his great aunt's and great uncle's house, and he's found some serious gems of photography and memory. Me, being obsessed with genealogy, took on the task of looking into the photos, the people, the locations, and more. I am looking forward to letting you all know the details, including an interesting revelation about Tuvia's mom's family maybe being Sephardic! As a teaser, here's the photo that got me really going. I believe (and through a variety of checking with living relatives and others) this is Evan's grandmother's immediate family in the early or mid 1930s in Oradea, Romania. This, folks, is a gem, and if it's what we all think it is, it's probably the only surviving photo of a family that (save three sisters) perished in the Shoah. 

Such a seriously good looking frum Jewish family, right?!

So keep your eyes peeled. I promise I'm going to get to these. I have to. This blog is my life force, and maybe that's why I've been feeling so dead and detached lately. Poke me. Prod me. I'll get to it.

Until then? A gut Shabbos. Shabbat Shalom. Peace, health, and lots of cholent to you!

The potpourri: Movies, Books, and Electrocuted Family.

So many things to say, so little space to make it all relevant and/or connected to every other thing that needs to be said.
Firstly, the Sex and the City movie. I guess I won't say as much as I was planning to, simply because it just isn't worth the space. But beware, reading this might ruin the movie-going experience. Wait. On second thought, this stream of consciousness has made me think that maybe I should post my thoughts at the end of the blog so if someone wants to read all the other junk, they're not tainted by my spoiler. Moving on ...

Secondly, I got a bunch of documents in the mail today from the St. Louis Dispatch archives. It amazes me that I can get a couple or three or four documents from one location for a whopping $6, whereas getting marriage licenses from various counties in Illinois is going to cost me upwards of $50. How does that happen? Mom has suggested it isn't worth it, but I'd rather collect the docs now and not have some relative trying to track them down in the future. Better to do the leg work and get it done than wait, eh?

So I received the obituary of my great-grandma's brother, Edward Weilbacher, who had died of electrocution in 1922. It sort of threw me because here's this 19-year-old kid dying of electricity in the early 20s. I was assuming perhaps it was some sort of fratboy incident gone wrong, but as it turns out, he died after being electrocuted while using an electric floor scrubber. The sort of mysterious part, though, is that supposedly it killed him because of a weak heart. His football couch marveled at such a thought (which is why there was an inquest) -- this was a healthy, athletic kid. How could he have had a weak heart? The story in the Dispatch is pretty long for some kid getting electrocuted, and as it turns out, the reason it was such big doings was because he had been the star quarterback and team captain of his high school football team. He was also in a fraternity, so chances are the listing of "scholar" on his death certificate means he was attending university. Where? The obit doesn't say. The obit does list his brothers and sisters, including one brother I was unaware of who isn't buried at the family plot. The mystery woman buried there could, however, be this other brother's wife I guess. Either way, how nifty that he died in such a tragic way. I mean, it isn't nifty ... but finding out these quirks in the tree is fascinating. The funny thing about it, though, is that after he was juiced, they hosed him down and put him back to work. Had they taken him immediately to the hospital, he probably would have survived.

Thirdly, I finished one book and got about 1/3 of the way through another book during flights and airport time this weekend. I finished reading Marc D. Angel's book on Orthodox conversion and then started reading Chaim Potok's "The Promise." The later is an incredibly quick read, and the former was as well. The thing about the former is that it wasn't what I expected in a conversion book. Most of the books I've read are very much about the ins and outs of the process itself and what people do or do not believe. Rabbi Angel's book detailed the history of conversion, the rabbinical rulings and responsa, historical fluxes in the acceptance and avoidance of converts, etc. He talked about the different types of converts and why they choose the path they do, and he included various essays from converts of varying backgrounds and what led them to the Orthodox route. (In more cases than not, the converts started on the Reform route because it was easy and/or accessible, only to find themselves reconverting later or finding a difficulty associated with their original route that led them to the Orthodox beth din.) I'm sort of zipping through books, which is a good thing, considering I have so very many of them to read, and the moment I get to graduate school, my reading style and habits will change greatly.

Fourthly, we come back to the firstly. The Sex and the City movie. I have to say my company was outstanding, and the way all the women in the audience were dressed gave us endless conversation. The estrogen abounded, and my movie companion was definitely outnumbered. But cripes. I found myself so upset at the end of the flick, in dismay, frustrated. Maybe I'm just worn out with the Happily Ever After movies. The scenario that everyone gets what they want, or rather, what we -- the audience -- want for the fictitious characters. Yes, it's a movie. We go to them to be entertained, to escape the sad and lonely existence of life. To watch characters fall in love and live happily ever after. Or, in the case of SATC, we see characters who don't necessarily fall out of love, but fall back in love with themselves. Not everyone in the movie ends up in love and with a spouse and the kids and the car and the house and the dream. But for Samantha, the dream WAS being alone -- being a sexy vixen who can have sex with anything and everything that moves without consequence. It's essentially who she is. So she, too, lives happily ever after. I guess I yearn for surprise. I yearned for Carrie to not end up with Big. For her to somehow realize that all the tumult, the shit, the mess, the breakups and get-back-togethers over 10 years were a sign that it wasn't all meant to be. Nothing's perfect, but anything that is so broken for so long must be like Humpty Dumpty, right? Maybe I just wanted validation. To know that ending my nearly three year on-again/off-again with the supposed man of my dreams was the right choice. Because for the length of that relationship it had been this Carrie/Big comparison, though I knew that there was no comparison. For starters, I wasn't in my 30s. I wasn't a cosmo-drinking sex column writer. I wasn't Carrie and he most certainly wasn't big. The comparisons continued though, as I dated a Russian and other exotics in between the on-agains. It was ridiculous how my friends and I made the connections. Maybe that's why the movie's end irritated the hell out of me. I wanted them to break as my little fantasy had broken six months ago. But it didn't, and life goes on. We want the happily ever after, because it rekindles that hope that maybe we can have what we want. That we should really fight for it. If it can happen in the movies, then ... right?

A girl can dream, anyway. Maybe I had the Mr. Big character in my life all wrong.

I promise to post something with more content. And meaning. And depth. Really.

Oy. I've been so busy the past few days. My time at work seems to fly, mostly because I'm busy working on stuff for the professors while intermixing it with loads of genealogy research. After the second cousin started sending me stuff, I started working again on the tree over on Ancestry.com. I don't pay for an account, so I have to be super creative with my sleuthing, and for the most part it works quite well. I'm sending off for five marriage certificates and one death certificate for relatives who lived and died here in Illinois. I think it's interesting that I've ended up in Illinois (yes, I'm moving) and that I'd like to end up back here in the future. The roots of my family were firmly planted here for several generations, and in Missouri and Tennessee, too. I have to figure out how to get creative with looking at the old country, though, because I'm hitting a point where the relatives I need to fill in the gaps come from Germany (my family is uber German, it appears). It amazes me, though, how well-kept records are. Census data, death and marriage records, business dealings -- all in the U.S. these things are tallied closely. Overseas in the Old Country you find most records in the form of business ownership and christening, which can be a blessing I suppose. Especially since my family, being uber German, was also uber Catholic from many angles.

In unrelated news, I've fallen back in line with my Torah study. I didn't manage to get anything put up last week (d'var Torah, that is) because of the trip. Hopefully this week pans out better and I can get some thoughts up. On the other hand, tonight I'm out and tomorrow night is the Lag B'Omer Bonfire of which I'm totally stoked to attend since it's just down the street. Any other Chicagoans should come and join in, by golly. In case you're curious,

It’s tradition on the yahrzeit of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai, reputed author of Zohar, to have a bonfire and celebration! In Israel, Mt. Meron is completely alight with bonfires and music.

Now, for those wanting more info, here's what I can tell you: Lag B'Omer is essentially a way of saying the Thirty-Third Day of the Omer. The Omer is the count between Pesach and Shavuot (the day Torah was given), and on Lag B'Omer all the restrictions are sort of put on hold and music and singing and dancing are all permitted and encouraged.

Friday I'm going to head back to the Orthodox shul. They're probably going to wonder why I come every other week and don't make it on Saturday mornings, eh? This Saturday morning I'd go, but I have a friend coming into town and we're going to spend the day plodding around town and then heading to the Rilo Kiley show with her sister Saturday night (this friend, Melanie, and I have been to oodles of Rilo Kiley shows together, so it's all happy and nostalgic).

Luckily, no work Monday, which means I get a complete day of absolutely nothing. It'll be nice, considering next weekend I'm setting off again, this time to San Francisco to visit a very awesome someone. It'll be a quick trip, but I've never been. Perhaps I'll get bitten by the SanFran bug, eh?

And finally: Last night, unable to sleep, I penned (well, wrote) an introduction to a book-type-memoir-thing. It involves content based on this blog post, not to mention content from this other blog post. I'm not sure what the chronology will be, but I have so much to say. I'm not sure where I'll go with it, but it will cover a lot of stuff -- past, present, future. Anyhow, perhaps I'll post it up in the Google Docs for all to read. But for now, let's just say that depending upon how tonight goes, it'll probably shape how I feel about it all anyway.

I'll keep you posted.

In Search of the Past: A Roadtrip.

I've decided to go on a two-day roadtrip this weekend. Initially it was simply to seek out and enjoy some Chick-Fil-A (don't ask), but then I needed something more solid, a real reason to rent a car and make hotel reservations and get on the road.

Listen, I just want to get out of town, if only for a few days.

Not having a car in the city limits you to where you go, and sometimes I just need to break out and get away. Now to get me wrong -- I love living in the city, and I love not having a car. But last week was a really stressful, upsetting week, and despite the efforts of those around me, it just didn't get better. I mean, now I'm okay, but it's time for me to take a tiny break and get out of town. I've rented a car, booked a hotel room (Red Roof Inn -- tres classy!). I'm mapping out spots to stop along the trip down historic Route 66, various oddities and my ultimate goal, my reason for really going, is to visit Alton, Illinois, to visit the grave of my great-grandfather John Edward Baskette.

You see, I never met the man, and he died in 1984 when I was less than a year old. My parents didn't drag us babies to the funeral, and even if they had, I promise you I wouldn't have remembered anything. For those of you keeping score at home, you'll remember that this man -- my great-grandfather -- shares the name of my grandfather who died in April 2007. Grandpa was a junior, who evidently sometimes went by Eddie. This became news to me this week after an interesting connection was made.

I did a lot of genealogy work many months ago, and hit a dead end with a relative whose last name I just couldn't connect to anyone else. I found a guy who had posted in a lot of genealogy forums trying to find information about the same person, so I e-mailed him multiple times with no luck. So this week, bam! This fellow e-mails me back and we discover lo-and-behold, we're second cousins. We both share that great-grandfather, but since he had three or four or five wives, we have different great-grandmothers. But the really interesting part of the family comes from that Baskette-Duval side of the family tree. These folks were related to the great colonial greats, and rumor has it I might be a something-or-other cousin of George Washington. Exciting, nu? (Then again, just about everyone is related to Washington it seems.) But this is the family line that hits Philadelphia DuBois and great French civil servants and state leaders. It's the side of the family that intrigues me.

So inspired by a need to get outta town and this now-found cousin of mine, I've decided to go pay a visit to our great-grandfather, and in the tradition of my family, take a picture of the grave for posterity. The funny thing is that he's not buried with my great-grandmother, nor is he buried with the cousin's great-grandmother -- he's buried with his last wife. So it turns out that my actual great-grandmother is buried in St. Louis, which isn't far from Alton. So I'm hoping to head into St. Louis (and not get lost) and visit her grave as well.

I'm hoping it's sort of a spiritual/healing/destressing trip. The thing of it is, earlier this week when I was looking at some of the genealogy stuff to refresh my mind, I was on the Social Security Death Index looking up "John Baskette" to make sure I had Alton, IL pegged right. There listed, of course, was my grandfather. Deceased April 2007. Even typing it right now, I'm getting all teary-eyed. I can't explain it. Grandpa and I were by no means close. We didn't share inside jokes or close memories and he didn't take me to the park or the carnival or do any of the things a lot of grandparents do. But I idolized him. He fought at Pearl Harbor, he ran across the golf course as Japanese plans shot at him. And he survived. He raised several children, he managed to smoke for more than 60 years and never die -- and that fact made me hate him in some ways. But he was this enigma to me, a man of honor and prestige. I read his survivor story over and over again. And over the past few years before he died, I'd send a letter every now and again and he'd send a typed letter back. I still have those letters. I didn't go to his funeral, because of scheduling and stupid things. I should have made it there. I don't think it really hit me that he was dead until I saw his name and former Social Security number listed on the Index.

Then it was real. In print on that catalog list, it's real.

So I'm going to go visit his father, and perhaps, hopefully, the cemetery was able to pull up an obit on his death so maybe I can know who he was and what he did. I wonder why he lived in Alton, Illinois, and what he did there. Did he commute to St. Louis to work? Or did he move to Alton after he was retired? Did he live most of his life in Nashville like the rest of the family? How did he meet his last wife? Why did he divorce all the other wives? And how did my great-grandmother die, and did she die while they were together? Or after?

I guess a lot of people don't ask a lot of these questions. It was searching for a Jew a lot before, but now it seems I'm trying to figure out how I got here, and try to predict how my children and their children will be, with the genes and tendencies and histories and memories that I will bestow upon them. I don't know how anyone would *not* want to know the answers to all of these questions. Even if they're the stuff of legends, they're the things that define our lineage, that somehow shape who we are.

So I'm going to hop in a car after work on Friday, spend my Shabbos evening driving to Springfield, Illinois, where I'll light my candles in a hotel room and get up the next morning to drive to a cemetery in some city I've never been and will probably never go to again. And I'm hopeful, if anything.

Oh -- and you can bet there will be documentation. Photos. Video. You'll see where I went and what I did. Why? Because by blogging and sharing these stories of my life, I'm documenting so that my children someday won't have as many questions as I do now. I want them to know who I am, who I am becoming.