U.S. History Reflective Journal or Historical Novel Project

Mrs. Bailly-Burton's Class

Corey

Hello, my name is Yentle Zugel, and I am a 50 year old woman who lived through what some believe were the most influential times in American history. I decided to write this novel of my experiences to satisfy those interested in the thirties, forties, and fifties. To start off, I I have to mention some very important facts about myself. My most significant origins are that of my father’s family in Rheinland Pfalz, Germany. He immigrated to America with a radical state of mind. Although he did urge his German family to come to America with him, they refused, because their culture meant to much to them.

            To avoid being hassled about being a Jew and trying to travel out of Germany to America, my father temporarily moved to Hants, England. There he would lay low for a year so that he could move to America more safely. During his stay in England my father met Elizabeth Van Bellinghen, a woman who was quiet and sweet, and that would be my father’s companion and eventually his wife. My parents believe New York was the best spot to live, to get the full American ambience. With that said, they settled down in Ithaca, New York where my father started working for the government and my mother became a house wife to take care of me.
            My family was not affected by the depression, my father was always a wise man and predicted the stock market’s fall. After selling his stocks, he immediately gathered our family’s essentials and moved us to Washington D.C, where the president lived. We were four blocks away from the president’s great house. Daniel drive was the heart of a neighborhood full of happy families and good kids like me. When we moved I was only 12, and where we went mattered little to me. There were more friends in D.C., anyway. The president at the time was Hoover. He said all the poor families would be happy within 90 days. No one believed him and every day angry protestors ran by our house headed to Mr. Hoover’s mansion. My mother always closed the shades at the sight or sound of protesters, she told me not to listen to them or pay attention to them at all, so I didn’t. Little did she know that one day, her own daughter would be running by that same window screaming for her rights.

            My family was not poor like everyone else, but we were not wealthy either. The wealth we did have we had to hide so that others would not steal from us in desperation. My father said we moved to this particular area to avoid most of the poverty. He said this seems bad, but that there are other places with even more grief stricken people. The thought of it made me fear, but seeing it with my own eyes would be life-changing.

            My parents temporarily let our wealth become public by buying a top of the line auto mobile. It was made by Ford and had the name Victoria welded on a shiny plate that was built into the radiator face plate. I remember how happy I was just because of how shiny and pretty the vehicle was, every day I would shine the chrome edges and title plate with the sleeve of my shirt. I learned the car cost $610 dollars. I couldn’t believe the price. I could get a full lunch that was too much food for me to eat every day for a single dollar. My mother and I always spoke with each other during the warm summer days and she mentioned why my father had bought the car. It was his mid life crisis, although her words at the time were for a 12 year old to understand.

            My mother told me about a man named Gandhi who could lead many people just by the way he talked, by his personality.  My mother said he fought for his country’s freedom from Britain and did things like the Salt March, were he got several of his follower’s to mine salt independantly, which was against British law. Gandhi is important to my story because he became my role model in the future, but that is for another page.

             I never liked reading, unless it looked interesting. A pretty picture always caught my eye. One of my mother’s issues of Reader’s Digest showed the beautiful trees in Bombay. The article underneath was about Gandhi and how he was arrested while protesting there. Being the little excited girl I was, I ran to inform my mother, but she apparently already knew. I found her crying and nodding, saying, “I know, I know.” I wondered for years why she always got so emotional when something happened to stop Gandhi. He never gave up, but my mother always mourned at his restraints.

            My parents were nothing alike. My father was always happy and always energetic. He went to every baseball game he could, and every day he would tell me about players like Babe Ruth and the African American, Jackie Robinson. My mother and I always made fun of father because he always said the same things to us every day, as if we forgot. I still remember how every Sabbath day before mass he would tell us how babe Ruth made $80,000 a year. He would crack up every time and yell out “That’s more than the president!” in a sports announcer-like voice. Mass was always boring to me. I never saw the point, because I always believed that religion and God was some sort of story that people had mistaken for truth. Luckily, my family also considered the Sabbath the day we go see a movie. I must have seen Moby Dick twenty times, I loved John Barrymore. Father always wanted to see boy movies like The Big Trail because it had John Wayne in it, my mother thought John Wayne was the sexiest man alive at the time so she didn’t mind. Of course, she didn’t tell father that.

            The next presidential election was coming up by the time I was 14  and my family was rooting for Roosevelt. Franklin Delanor Roosevelt seemed to have all the answers, and wasn’t a bad looker. In school we learned about him after he was nominated as a presidential candidate by the democratic party. Everyone liked his idea of the “New Deal.” Just the name sounded like it would work. Everyone knew things had to change. The New Deal was not like the other president’s ideas to fix the nations economy, it was like an experiment. It was contradicting ideologies: there was no promise, but there was logic and truth behind the idea. I hoped it would accomplish something.

            Roosevelt won the election on November 8th, 1932, and even though it was only Tuesday, my dad was so excited about the election and the Yankees winning the 29^th world series, we saw a movie that night. It was another John Wayne movie, Hurricane Express. I didn’t like the movie, but everyone was so happy and friendly that night, shaking my father’s hand, telling me how beautiful I was and how much I’d grown. It didn’t matter, there was an aura of happiness about the neighborhood at Roosevelt’s election. Even though most people were still poor and knew they wouldn’t become wealthier anytime soon, they knew something better was on the way, or so they thought.

            It was not long before President Roosevelt was giving speeches everywhere, even as far as Miami. It also was not long before the excitement died down in my house. My father became very worried. He spoke about a man named Adolph who became chancellor in Germany and how things began to change over there. My father was German and most of his family still lived in Germany. His consideration for Germany’s government was just as important to him as the government that was right next door. Baseball didn’t cheer him up anymore, it only served as entertainment of the simplest level. He listened to the scores from the radio but never attended a single game since his passion died. My mother would tell me about how Jews began to be mistreated in Germany and how worried my father was about it. He didn’t feel it was right to tell me, but my mother thought I was old enough at fifteen. We were a Jewish family, like my father’s. That is why he feared for them so much.

            Now that alcohol was legal, my father began drinking. Father would never be the same, and would never stop drinking. We didn’t go to movies anymore, so me and my mother listened to vinyl’s. She listened mostly to music like Stormy Weather by Ethel Waters and Sophisticated Lady by Duke Ellington. I think, some how, listening to this music made her happy even though my father was so grief stricken.

            On my fourteenth birthday, February 15^th,1934, my father was rushed to the hospital, he began yelling in slurred speech to call a doctor, so my mother did. We found out he had a liver problem, something called an anemia. My mother was so worried and I couldn’t bear my father dying, but then our luck changed. Two highly intelligent looking men with black, thick framed glasses spoke to my mother about something with big words and fast speech that I couldn’t understand. My mother translated to me the good news they had after they left. The men were doctors and they had a cure for my father’s liver anemia. They said its worked before and they needed more people to test it on to fully legalize it. My mother accepted the miraculous offer and after a few months my father was fine and never drank again. He was in the papers in October. The article read “Oct 25^th 1934 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded jointly to George R. Minot, William P. Murphy, and George H. Whipple for their discovery of liver therapy to combat anemia.” It showed a picture of my father and the 36 other patients who participated in the testing.

            I don’t remember much after that, the last thing I remember is when I turned 21 and my father still worked for the government. I’d began working with my mother at a candle shop down the street. He was constantly taking notes and nervously reading a book called Mein Kamf by a man my father told me was a “trouble maker”. He said his bosses told him to study it and that that was all he could tell me. I learned later that year that Hitler took the “throne” of Germany and now led the country on Jewish slaying sprees and other violent wars with nearby countries. I thought to myself, clearly this man was evil, and he was hurting those of my heritage. This is where my new job began, as a speaker, and as a doer.

            The German takeover of Czechoslovakia enraged many people. Although it did not enrage me, I know he had to be stopped fast. I ran out of the candle shop one day with a poster I had made using window stencils and a piece of oak tag. My mother screamed for me to come back so I stopped and gazed at her with the fire in my eyes. She then told me “You are a woman now, make me proud sweetie.” She cried as I ran out the door. I too, cried, at the moment between my mother and I. It was as if I was going to war with the higher powers. I immediately put my mind set to this protest.  My first protest was successful and people told me it was a good sign., no pun intended. On March 17^th,1939, Roosevelt told the world he saw the German takeover of Czechoslovakia as aggressive and dangerous. This meant other countries would recognize what German officials like Hitler were doing, and that I helped make a difference for my people.

            In 1941, my dad was rarely home. He was always out about the country doing jobs for the government. I remember being worried he wasn’t going to be home for Hanukkah,

then quickly got reminded of more important things. On December 7, 1941 America was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I feared any second another barrage of bombs would land right on us, we did live in the capitol of the nation after all. I turned on the radio immediately and my mother seemed to be on the phone calling my dad before any of it even happened. My father didn’t have much to say besides that we knew they would bomb somewhere. He told me there was nothing to worry about, that the capitol was protected more than anywhere else in America.

            The President came on the radio and declared war on Japan. He called that day, December 7^th, "a date which will live in infamy." My mother was not a very religious woman, but she reminded me that today was The Feast of Lights, it was Hanukkah:

The day the Temples so long ago had oil for a single day, but managed to stay lit for eight days. Fasting would begin, but not because of our religion, but because the country was at war. When the year 1943 came around, rations and scrap drives became the norm for the next few years. My father supplied us with money, so we didn’t have to get jobs. Most women worked at factories and did construction, like men used to do. The men of the nation were soldiers now and us women had to be the care takers of the nation.

            The next three and a half years were ones without luxury, but none the less ones where everyone around you was your brother. Having a war made everyone realize all we have is each other, and that feeling was almost amazing enough to pardon the war. Everyone I knew had a Victory Garden, it was encouraged by the government and supplied us and our neighbors with fresh delicious home grown vegetables. Our garden was fenced in beside our house, but grew fantastic cucumbers, tomatoes, heads of lettuce, and green beans. Gardening was a way to get away from it all and just enjoy nature and the sunny days. We didn’t go to the temple as often when the war began. We were afraid that we would be harmed. My father told my Jewish people were tortured and killed, every day in mass numbers. He told us to be careful about our religion, that some Americans or infiltrating Nazis might harm us for our beliefs even in our own home land.

            The nation was surprised on the afternoon of April 12, 1945 to find the president had passed away, just breaking sixty years old. My father informed us that he died in his favorite place, Warm Springs Georgia. He said it was Roosevelt’s favorite place because it is where he lived as a child, and it is where he last used his legs. Franklin D. Roosevelt swam for the last time that day and complained he didn’t feel invigorated as he usually did from his daily laps. He mentioned cold sweats and aches and pains. The doctor then diagnosed him with Polio and he never walked again. He died while a woman named Elizabeth Shoumatoff was painting his portrait, his last words were "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head," followed by the slump in his chair.

            The new President, Harry Truman, was a bit hard to get used to at first, but eventually became a comfortable leader. During his term on May 8, 1945 the Nazis surrendered and World War II came to an end. Japan eventually surrendered, but that took ungodly power. The Enola Gay dropped Little Boy, an atomic bomb on Hiroshima at 8:15 A.M. (Japan Standard Time) when it reached an altitude of two thousand feet above the building that is today called the "A-Bomb Dome." Another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, both devastated the Japanese and killed an estimated 200,000 by the end of 1945.

            Protesters everywhere including myself and my friends yelled and screamed at the steps of the white house and capitol building that foreign nations deserve our help for what we did to them. To our surprise, a man named George C. Marshall agreed and created a plan called the Marshal Plan. This plan helped war torn countries to mend and rejoin the world economy.

            I had a party because of it. Although the party food and drinks were still cheap, it didn’t matter. Nothing could end my happiness, or so I thought. The day after the protest I was dancing in the rain outside with some of my friends who joined me in the protest, and I saw my father get dropped off by some government vehicle. He walked into the house with a depressed slouch, and was quickly saturated by the rain. I didn’t know what to think, and ran into the house to greet him. I learned my father was kicked from his government position because of his German roots. He said many government officials were being dropped from office under suspicion of communist corruption. My father was not a communist as far as I knew, but he followed the rules as well. As soon as they told him to leave, he didn’t fight. My father was nearly retired and due to his good ties with his bosses, and he got his retirement assertion.

            During my protests, I met a fellow protestor whom I fell in love with. His name was Adam Repagula. As the war settled and soldiers began returning to America, he said he wanted to marry me, before one of those soldiers swept me off my feet. I found his remark foolish, I could never love another man as much as him. I accepted his proposal. I knew my parents would be fine on their own because of my father’s wealthy government retirement fare, so I decided to move to a new place with my husband. Adam and I decided to move to Atlanta, Georgia in 1947 for the warm weather and near by vacation spots. We bought a modest home for temporary living. We also bought a television, a new technology that offered 13 channels of home picture shows that usually involved news and entertainment. The knob actually only offered 12 channels since it began at 2 and ended at 13.

            At this time I was almost 30, but a near by high school called South Side High exposed me to all the new trends for kids. The Beat culture was the most popular, they were not mainstream but everyone considered them “cool.” They were a new type of teen, they snapped instead of clapping and dressed in black form fitting sweatshirts and berets. This was a contrast to the conformist preppy life that I lived in D.C. I remember my husband returning home one day and said he was accused of living in a place called SquaresVille. Adam became a Geometry teacher at Southside. Many students were displeased with him and he just found that comment fantastic. I for some reason allowed him to hang a square sign above our door that read “Squaresville!”.

            I finally got to see movies again, now with Adam. Unfortunately they were commonly Marilyn Monroe movies. His favorite was the one we saw on my 36^th birthday in 1955 called Seven Year Itch. Fortunate for him, I didn’t mind her acting and found her movies romantic and somewhat humorous, especially the drooling men in the crowd.

Aside from Marilyn Monroe movies, Adam and I were the average couple, we drank coffee several times a day, to keep us alive. We both smoked, but everyone smoked in the fifties. The only abstract thing is our love for rock and roll. We were the rebels of adults, it may have been an in-sync mid life crisis, but we couldn’t get enough of that rock and roll. Elvis Presley was not very popular in 1955, but we loved him to death, and it wasn’t long before he made it north, and then nation wide. When we weren’t listening to music, we were watching the Ed Sullivan Show, which also included Elvis sometimes. His appearance on the show in 1956 is where his rocket began to lift off.

            Entertainment was an important part of everyone’s lives, but Adam and I can never forget what we spent our childhood doing, and although we didn’t protest, we did keep an eye out if we needed to. The President at the time was Dwight Eisenhower with Richard Nixon by his side as Vice President. People accused Nixon of spending his $18,000 he promised to use for important things on a dog for his children. The dog’s name was checkers and he did a speech on television admitting to it, that speech made everyone forgive him and made us love him more for being such a swell guy.

            The subject of money was my new career, I worked for American Express as a banker in Atlanta. In 1958, American Express began encouraging the use of Credit Cards with the slogan “Don’t leave home without it!” The credit card idea originated from the 1920’s, when raw materials were sold between companies, but back then they were not popular. Now businesses everywhere liked the card for its instant payments. Adam and I used one to buy our luxuries, but we always paid for food and other essentials with cash. We were not short of money so there was no need to delay payments. One of the luxury items we bought was a 1955 Ford Thunderbird. Adam worshipped it and even sat in it to read or do his “geometry homework” as I liked to tease him and call it. I didn’t mind having the T-bird at all. We would be the hottest couple at every drive-in movie. My favorite film is GIGI staring the beautiful Leslie Caron. It was a musical about a rich playboy and a youthful courtesan-in-training who were good friends and then become lovers. It had romance, humor, action, and great music. Gigi was a woman who didn’t follow the rules of society and lived the way she wanted to with no influence from the outside at all.

Toward the end of the 1950s Communism began to rise and, America began to fear it. Anti-Communist activists like Senator Joseph McCarthy proclaimed that communism was evil, causing America to fear even more. The problem with McCarthy is that he jumped to conclusions and accused people too quickly, we later came to find out a lot of his accused “Communists” were nothing but innocent Americans. He was tried and eventually censured.

            Before I finish this novel, I have to include the Korean War. This war between North and South Korea was significant to my life because one of my father’s close friends Douglas Macarthur served as American support for Korea. Inchon was his most successful attack. It was an amphibious beach assault on the shores of Inchon, this gave America a foothold and helped to capture Seoul. Communist leaders like Mao and Stalin were always planning new ways to fulfill their communist world dreams. Unfortunately, the United Nations were always planning ahead. Macarthur was fired by Truman for his rude tone and obsession with dropping A bombs on China. Truman replaced Macarthur with Matthew Ridgeway who managed to salvage the United Nations war effort and develop a successful counter offense.

            To finish on a more personal note, regardless of the baby boom of the 1950s Adam and I did not have any children. We decided we would both like to live as a free couple and now an old free couple. Adam and I believe we made a difference in America by aiding in the people’s voice as protesters, and living the American dream, minus the children. Personally, I feel have lived a life that has been influenced by much of America’s history. I hope those of you who read this have learned something and have a better understand of America in the 30s, 40s, and 50s from a more personal point of view.