D-Day, 2019
D-Day was a comparatively big deal when we were growing up. It was similar to July 4th and perhaps to Memorial Day - but, more somber. It wasn't a bank holiday. We didn't picnic or barbecue. But, if by chance there was some mention of World War II on the television set and Mom was nearby, she would quietly remind us that our uncles, Sherman and Ephron - her two younger brothers - served in the war.
It was a point of obvious pride for her and for the rest of her side of the family. Snapshots of the boys in uniform adorned my grandparents living room until the day Grandpa died. And, it wasn't about anything in particular that they did in the war. Both were honorably discharged with sargents stripes on their uniforms (actually, Uncle Ephron reenlisted in time to serve in Korea.) Rather, I think it was that they survived. Whatever it was that they did or went through, it was enough that that had come back home in one piece.
Not all of their peers did. I remember vividly a friend of my Dad's (Dad had a sole support deferment during the War) who had arrived in Brooklyn not long after serving in Japan (it seemed like most of the African-American vets had served in Asia) with a stutter which everyone attributed to something called, "shell shock". He was a gentle soul who lived by himself a few doors away from my great-uncle Bill's gas station on Atlantic Avenue.
Pumping gas at Uncle Bill's station was every male family member's first job upon arriving in New York and it was a natural gathering place for all of them even after they went on to find other work. It was there that I first met Mr. Rufus, the man with the stutter. He took a liking to me. Not sure why. I couldn't have been much more than five or six at the time. Mom and Dad were a popular couple and taking an interest in mei was perhaps a way of ingratiating himself with them. In any event, he gave us a parakeet which we had for many years. In fact, he may have gien us more than one as my parents hid the fact that the first bird had died at some point (my brother and sister have only recently spilled the beans about this.)
I've been playing a lot of loud music in my apartment to commemorate this day. It's been years since I have used a speaker system with any degree of sophistication. I bought a pair of wifi speakers from a going out of business sale in Middletown last week. I later found out I could have bought the same speakers at an even cheaper price if I had waited long enough to come home and look them up on the internet. No matter. It's the same dilemma with every purchase I make from a brick and mortar store these days: Yes, I can probably find it cheaper on line, but, I probably would not have known it existed in the first place had i not spotted it in a brick and mortar store.
It took hours to set the speakers up. Each one had to treated like a separate communications device which primarily meant getting it to pick up the signal from my telephone router. The instructions that came with them were only of use once the speaker joined your wifi network. They are of no use whatsoever in guiding you should you be unable to successfully pick up the signal. In that event, you are strictly on your own.
To make along story short, I eventully got the speakers to work, only to find out that the whole idea behind them is to get you to subscribe to the "premier" version of a music app (e.g., Spotify, et al.)
So after this 90 day free trial period, I will be on the hook for $10 a month. I have to say, it's almost worth it. I have never experienced this level of fidelity in my own home. I swear it's like sitting in a movie theater. So, naturally I have had to revisit all my old favorites, now available online. That means, the entire Beatles canon; nearly every digitally remastered Broadway show and motion picture soundtrack from the 1950s and 1960s.
That includes Robert Russell Bennet's orchestration of a suite of tunes composed by Richard Rogers for the television documentary series "Victory at Sea". I have now heard it with increasing levels of fidelity ranging from a tinny monophonic t.v. speaker to a modest portable stereo and now some forty years later to something like being right there in the recording studio with the orchestra.
But, something else has changed, not just the technology. There is a piece on the recording that always brought me to tears when I was living at home in those years after graduation until I got my first apartment, those years after Dad died and Mom and I had the house to ourselves. It was a piece of sad music that comes towards the end of the third "movement", aka, "Guadalcanal March". It always brought back the immediacy of the War and what it must have meant to my mother's generation, to not know where your youngest brothers were or whether they would ever come home.
The music made Mom seem younger in my eyes. It explained so much about her: Her ability to concentrate and to get seemingly drab tasks done. Her steely resolve once she made up her mind about something. Miss Wiener recognized it, and even mentioned it to me shortly before she died in 2007. The music made Death and Loss seem more tangible or as tangible as it could be to someone who hadn't experienced much of it.
Listening to it again, bouncing full blast from the plaster walls of my kitchen, I was struck by how fleeting the notes were. Barely more than a couple of bars, really. What was it about them that made them so haunting at the age of twenty-five? And, now, not so much?
It was a point of obvious pride for her and for the rest of her side of the family. Snapshots of the boys in uniform adorned my grandparents living room until the day Grandpa died. And, it wasn't about anything in particular that they did in the war. Both were honorably discharged with sargents stripes on their uniforms (actually, Uncle Ephron reenlisted in time to serve in Korea.) Rather, I think it was that they survived. Whatever it was that they did or went through, it was enough that that had come back home in one piece.
Not all of their peers did. I remember vividly a friend of my Dad's (Dad had a sole support deferment during the War) who had arrived in Brooklyn not long after serving in Japan (it seemed like most of the African-American vets had served in Asia) with a stutter which everyone attributed to something called, "shell shock". He was a gentle soul who lived by himself a few doors away from my great-uncle Bill's gas station on Atlantic Avenue.
Pumping gas at Uncle Bill's station was every male family member's first job upon arriving in New York and it was a natural gathering place for all of them even after they went on to find other work. It was there that I first met Mr. Rufus, the man with the stutter. He took a liking to me. Not sure why. I couldn't have been much more than five or six at the time. Mom and Dad were a popular couple and taking an interest in mei was perhaps a way of ingratiating himself with them. In any event, he gave us a parakeet which we had for many years. In fact, he may have gien us more than one as my parents hid the fact that the first bird had died at some point (my brother and sister have only recently spilled the beans about this.)
I've been playing a lot of loud music in my apartment to commemorate this day. It's been years since I have used a speaker system with any degree of sophistication. I bought a pair of wifi speakers from a going out of business sale in Middletown last week. I later found out I could have bought the same speakers at an even cheaper price if I had waited long enough to come home and look them up on the internet. No matter. It's the same dilemma with every purchase I make from a brick and mortar store these days: Yes, I can probably find it cheaper on line, but, I probably would not have known it existed in the first place had i not spotted it in a brick and mortar store.
It took hours to set the speakers up. Each one had to treated like a separate communications device which primarily meant getting it to pick up the signal from my telephone router. The instructions that came with them were only of use once the speaker joined your wifi network. They are of no use whatsoever in guiding you should you be unable to successfully pick up the signal. In that event, you are strictly on your own.
To make along story short, I eventully got the speakers to work, only to find out that the whole idea behind them is to get you to subscribe to the "premier" version of a music app (e.g., Spotify, et al.)
So after this 90 day free trial period, I will be on the hook for $10 a month. I have to say, it's almost worth it. I have never experienced this level of fidelity in my own home. I swear it's like sitting in a movie theater. So, naturally I have had to revisit all my old favorites, now available online. That means, the entire Beatles canon; nearly every digitally remastered Broadway show and motion picture soundtrack from the 1950s and 1960s.
That includes Robert Russell Bennet's orchestration of a suite of tunes composed by Richard Rogers for the television documentary series "Victory at Sea". I have now heard it with increasing levels of fidelity ranging from a tinny monophonic t.v. speaker to a modest portable stereo and now some forty years later to something like being right there in the recording studio with the orchestra.
But, something else has changed, not just the technology. There is a piece on the recording that always brought me to tears when I was living at home in those years after graduation until I got my first apartment, those years after Dad died and Mom and I had the house to ourselves. It was a piece of sad music that comes towards the end of the third "movement", aka, "Guadalcanal March". It always brought back the immediacy of the War and what it must have meant to my mother's generation, to not know where your youngest brothers were or whether they would ever come home.
The music made Mom seem younger in my eyes. It explained so much about her: Her ability to concentrate and to get seemingly drab tasks done. Her steely resolve once she made up her mind about something. Miss Wiener recognized it, and even mentioned it to me shortly before she died in 2007. The music made Death and Loss seem more tangible or as tangible as it could be to someone who hadn't experienced much of it.
Listening to it again, bouncing full blast from the plaster walls of my kitchen, I was struck by how fleeting the notes were. Barely more than a couple of bars, really. What was it about them that made them so haunting at the age of twenty-five? And, now, not so much?