CHAPTER FOUR
Connie and Carl, names flowing with the allure of alliteration, were silent in their drive to Chilton, taking it all in. Connie was thinking about how fast her life had changed in such a short time. She hadn’t even known Carl for a year. They’d met on a Saturday in December 1945, at a Christmas party at The Manitowoc Hotel, two weeks before Christmas Day. It was a big party, maybe five or six hundred people in all, a couple of hundred at a time, probably more with the ebb and flow of couples through the late afternoon, when the party began, and well into the evening when Artie Shaw and his Orchestra were playing. The music was as wonderful as always, but the days of the big swing bands were numbered. Glenn Miller had been killed in the war; other greats had organized and reorganized. The music world was in flux with new sounds that reflected the excitement of a revitalized America. Duke Ellington led the way, but Artie Shaw could still rip up the dance floor, and he was doing exactly that in the ballroom of The Manitowoc Hotel.
The dance floor was packed with revelers from fifty miles in every direction. The social life, especially for young people in this part of the state, was defined by the convergence of small town residents to wherever the big event was taking place, and on that night, the big event was in Manitowoc. A random sampling of adults who were milling around the four open bars that were set up in the corners of the ballroom would reveal a mix of people from twenty or more different towns, including the bigger towns of Green Bay, Appleton, Fond du Lac, and Sheboygan, and maybe even a few from Milwaukee, which was nearly eighty miles away. Every small town was represented—towns named Algoma, Chilton, Plymouth, Waldo, Elkhart Lake, and Luxemburg. Caravans of friends in strings of cars fifteen—even twenty—cars deep would spill out of these small towns, merging onto the highways from county roads, destined for a night of swing with Arty Shaw and his band. Manitowoc was a relatively big town, not really much of a city, but relative to the farm towns surrounding it, you could think of it as a city. Of course, Chicago and Milwaukee were cities, making everything relative I suppose, but that night, the party at the hotel was as big as any party in any city in America.
Connie was laughing with her best friend Virginia Stranski, also a Chilton girl, not far from one of the bars at the edge of the dance floor. They had come from Chilton with two other friends for an evening of dress up, cocktailing, and dancing. Her two friends, Vy and Patty, were already on the dance floor, having been swept up by two brothers they knew, who ran their own farms near Plymouth. The brothers were sizeable, and so were their farms, and neither could dance worth a lick.
Connie and Virginia were holding a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other, thinking that was the best way to look sophisticated. That was their notion anyway, and they couldn’t stop laughing over it because neither smoked nor drank alcohol, other than a glass of wine over dinner once in a while. They wanted to dance, but not with just anyone. Part of their plan was a mutual commitment to meet someone new that night, someone that neither of them had ever seen before or heard of. They both were ready to bust out of the usual list of local boys who begged them to go out, local being just about anybody from the surrounding towns.
Connie and Virginia grew up as a couple of small town Catholic girls, and their behavior was every bit modeled by the mores of that culture. Neither had been married, of course, and both had dated some nice men, but they hadn’t been in the world as much as one might think for a couple of gals who were twenty-five years old. After all, throughout their early twenties, the country had been at war with the Germans and Japanese, and nobody then had a normal social life.
Now that was all behind them, and in front of them were dozens and dozens of eligible men who were back from the war and looking to start a family. They giggled over the possibilities and realized they had both downed their martinis. With an empty glass and a cigarette that was nearly spent, the timing was right, and sure enough, two tall, good looking men walked right up to both of them and asked them to dance. Carl asked Connie, and John asked Virginia. These men were from Appleton, and the girls had no idea that within four months they would each be married to the man who walked them onto the dance floor that night—but that’s what happened.
It’s funny how life works, how meeting someone can put a person on an entirely new course in life—just like that, just as quick as you can snap your fingers. Go ahead, dear reader, snap your fingers. You know what I mean when I say it can happen just like that. Suddenly someone steps into your life, or you step into theirs (it works both ways), and it can mean a million different possibilities, most of which you never could have imagined.
One of Connie’s best friends got married the year before. A man who worked in the government, some kind of procurement position dealing with ordering and distributing armored vehicles, proposed to Sue Ann Voss, a Chilton girl who Connie shared every class with throughout St. Mary’s grade school and Chilton High. They even went to the University of Wisconsin for a couple of years together before dropping out to take factory jobs to support the war effort.
Right after the wedding, Sue Ann’s husband moved them to Paris to become some kind of administrator for the Marshall Plan. Just like that! Off to Paris. Everyone exclaimed, “Paris… FRANCE!” Everyone thought: no telling what can happen to a small town girl when she gets married. Not everyone stays in town or moves to a nearby farm. Connie and Virginia knew Sue Ann, and her move really hit a home run for the possibilities.
Life sure can be exciting, and it can change dramatically, for the worse sometimes but for the better too. One of the outcomes of the war was how it got people to pay more attention to the moment. For soldiers on the battlefield, the second at hand is all that matters. As every soldier will tell you, when shells are going off everywhere and bullets are zinging by and the noise is ear-splitting, the moment is so real and life is so alive that paying attention to the moment is all you can do. And it’s the only way that hope can be sustained.
∞