December 7, 1941

I know what I was doing the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941. Oh yes, I was pretty busy. I was “helping” my Mom and Dad clean up the “rec” room, they’d had a party Saturday night.

I remember the smell of  cigarette butts in the ashtrays, and the sour odor of  stale beer. Ah, to a 10 (11 in 3 weeks) year old, this was ambrosia. Movie stars smoked like chimneys in the films then, what did we know? Ignorance is bliss.

I wasn’t really helping. I was sitting at the bar with a cocktail glass (it had a stem and looked groovy, like the movies) with white soda in it, and a straw as my cigarette.   I was a hep-cat, boogying to the beat. (Only in my mind though—my folks had polka music playing on the radio).

I was imagining myself in a sparkly gown with shoulder pads wide as a Packer defensive end, and an impossibly high swoopy hairdo, with the back hair captured in an equally sparkly “snood”. These were the movies I loved. I was Hedy Lamarr, Joan Crawford, I was so glamorous, so gorgeous!! I was also in  a “nightclub”, where women wore long gowns and men wore tuxedos, and there was always a throaty singer on stage. All the nightclubs seemed to have big bands just a-bumpin’ and  a -jivin’. Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Glenn Miller, and uh, can’t think of any more.  Oh, how could I forget… Xavier Cugat, oh yeah!!  Rhumba, 1-2-3-kick.

Looking back, I realize how shaken my parents were with the announcement about the attack on Pearl Harbor by President Roosevelt, but it didn’t mean a heck of a lot to me. Our teacher explained all that stuff to us, but we just blithely tossed it aside and skipped home for lunch. Kids really had it made then, I think, and we didn’t worry about much of anything. I am, truly, a very lucky American girl  to have grown up in those days of innocence and patriotic unity.