Finally, A Sample From My Memories

Our Own Man Who Came to Dinner

    Jessie had an unending parade of people who came to visit us, particularly when we lived in Pittsburgh. We had, of course, the old school crowd from Michigan State, Daddy’s friends from years of companionship at General Motors, theatre friends from all over, particularly those in the cast of whatever was playing in town, artists, writers and friends from such organizations as AAUW or the League of Women Voters. Everyone who came to town for anything, called Jessie and often came to stay with us for a night or two. I got very used to Jess calling down the stairs, “Tell Helen (or Ruby or Lessie, or whoever was in charge of the kitchen at the moment), to set another place at the table.”

    I was generally the one to set another place, as I was often the sous chef, down there learning all I could about making magnificent dinners for our family and friends. Seldom did we have less than six to eight people for dinner. One frequent dinner guest was a writer friend of Jessie’s named George Lockart, who lived with his brother and worked for the Veteran’s Administration. When his brother moved back to Eastern PA, Jessie invited George to come and stay with us until he found another apartment. He never did find one, and lived with us until we moved to Chicago. He was then inherited by P.B. Burgwin and his family. But that is another story.
 
    George had been drafted into the Army to serve in W.W.II. He was about as good a candidate for soldiering as one would imagine David Sedaris would be. First of all, he was the shape of a cantaloupe, with little arms and legs attached. However, the Army put him in something called the “Timber Wolf Division” with a bunch of hillbillies from Kentucky. But luckily in that group he made friends with the only three other intellectuals who were also privates in that division. One was a famous writer whose name I cannot remember, the next a guy named Joe Schaller (also a writer) and a fourth a young college professor from back East.
 
    After George moved in we were regaled with stories about the adventures of those four men, who landed in France and moved with the armies that fought battles across the country, and actually beat back the Germans to win the war. Not that those four did much toward that win. We were told that they never fired their guns (one of which was constantly jammed), but apparently simply sat on their backpacks or piles of damp army blankets, playing bridge as the army moved across France.
 
    “It always rains during a war,” one of them told me, “so we were never dry.”
 
    “Yes,” would chime in another, “we sat on those damned wet blankets for weeks. Damned things never dried out.”
 
    “I got some kind of foot fungus,” one would say, “Still have it... the miserable stuff never goes away. Wet socks, that’s what did it!”
 
   The only time they were ever comfortable during WWII was one brief stint spent in a captured castle in Germany. It was also the only time any of them had worried about rescuing the ‘souvenirs’ so many of the soldiers were picking up. The hillbillies broke into chests and safes in the castle, looking for money or something valuable, pocketing any souvenirs they thought might get them a little money, tossing out great bunches of clothing and handmade lace. George managed to rescue a few exquisite linen hankies with thick lace borders and embroidered initials that one of the boys was planning to use to clean his gun, and some of the lace yardage, which later was sewn into his sister’s wedding gown, having come back in a pillow case in George’s backpack.
 
    My favorite story about these guys is actually only about Joe Schaller, who was visiting George and so having dinner with us. Our dining room was downstairs, the children’s living room was upstairs and all sound carried easily from it and the piano, down into the dining room. My younger sister had been ‘teaching’ one of her friends to play our battered, out-of-tune upright piano and the friend was practicing, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la (or thumb, up all the fingers, then back down to thumb, up one note, repeat the same. Slowly, obnoxiously. 
     
     Joe finally couldn’t take it any longer and shouted up the stairs, “Hey, jazz it up a little, kid, will ya, the customers don’t go for that classical stuff.”