Nice Girls Are the Best Kissers: The Years Between Wwii and the Korean War

By Jeanne Sandberg Fuller

This charming coming-of-age memoir will capture your heart from the very first page. From small town American values and parental attitudes to group dating and popular fashion trends, Fullers crisp, clear, and sometimes quirky, writing style will keep you spellbound. She refreshingly presents an in-depth look at her life in America from post WWII to the beginning of the Korean War when times and lives were a bit simpler. Her characters are real, her verbal pictures are clear and her adventures are pure. A delightful read from the beginning.

-Diane Yost Roush, B.A. Albion College, retired International English Teacher.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491715444

Jeanne Sandberg Fuller

Jeanne Sandberg Fuller, writer, artist, wife, mother, and grandmother won the award as the American Belly Dancer on a Nile cruise boat. She served for thirty years as a docent at the Museum of Fine Arts of St Petersburg, Florida and worked on their Catalogue of the Collections, wrote slide lectures, study sheets, and labels for art works. A born story teller, a trait inherited from her father, Fuller, has been writing since childhood. She relates amusing and touching tales about her parents, relatives, friends, and children. Her essays and stories have won numerous prizes, appeared in magazines and newspapers. She enjoys sewing, decorating, reading, and world travel. After years of collecting treasures at yard sales and antique stores, she is trying to downsize She and her retired Eastern Airlines captain hail from Jamestown, New York and after countless moves they now reside in Seminole, Florida.

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Copyright © 2014 Jeanne Sandberg Fuller.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-1491-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1544-4 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 01/30/2014

Contents

Dedication

Acknowlegements

Preface

1 Remembering World War II

2 Sweet Sixteen and Never Been Kissed

3 Three Near Misses

4 Dating a College Man

5 Nice Girls are the Best Kissers

6 Lazy Hazy Daze in Woodie’s ’37 Chevy

7 College Girl

8 Freshman Follies

9 Roommates

10 My Persian Prince

11 Big Changes at Home

12 Sumpin Pond

13 Chicken Pox at Nineteen

14 A Private Secretary

15 Toyland at Western Auto

16 Woodie Learns to Fly He Tells His Story in His Own Words

17 An Innocent Goes South

18 Joining the Union and Getting My First Car

19 The Korean War Shot Down My Church Wedding

20 Newfie Goofie Land

21 Three Musketeer Brides

22 Second Honeymoon in My Buick Special

23 Farewell Jax, Hello Norfolk

24 Our First Christmas

25 Sandbox 101

26 Peachtree Street Wasn’t so Peachy

Epilogue

The Closet Belly Dancer is Born

Reviews

Family Histories by Jeanne Sandberg Fuller

John Wilson Fuller, Esquire – The 1870 Diary of a Country Gentleman Farmer

The 1893 World of Mary Perry Fuller

Laura’s Family – Mother Always Told Me to Write a Book About our Family And So I Did!

Edited, Designed, and Illustrated

A Chattanooga Childhood – A Memoir/Cookbook—Stories and Favorite Foods as Chosen Cooks Share Their Secrets—by Charlotte Colby Andersen

Memoir

The Day the Bathroom Ceiling Fell and Other Entertainments

Coming

Tales told by a Closet Belly Dancer

Her Trials, Travails, and Travels

Toots learns a new skill—belly dancing! Woodie doesn’t know what to make of his sedate wife making costumes, dancing on cruise boats and at high school reunions.

Read the first chapter at the end of this volume.

Dedication

I finished and submitted my first memoir, The Day the Bathroom Ceiling Fell, typing with one hand. I had tripped on an unfinished sidewalk at Disney World and smashed my left wrist into tiny fragments. During the six surgeries and months of therapy it took to repair the damage, that project kept me from losing my sanity.

This, my second memoir, Nice Girls Are the Best Kissers, is dedicated to my teacher, mentor, and friend, Charlotte Colby Andersen. I was devastated by her death and the end of her writing circle, Charlotte’s Web, that kept me producing a new story to read to the group every week.

My salvation appeared when I learned about a Writer’s Group that met weekly at Madeira Beach Library. The first day I attended I felt I’d fallen into pot of jam like Charity in the musical Sweet Charity! They have provided me and other members with the support we all need to keep writing.

Acknowlegements

The following friends and family member have graciously proofed one or two chapters of this book.

Blair Hamilton Flowers

Carolyn D’Errico

Donald and Dorothy Lundeen

Mazel Linowitz

Carol Allen

Geraldine Wilner

Diane Yost Roush

Diane Yost Roush, my friend from the Chatterbox Book Club, loves reading and has taught English in Lebanon, Egypt, and Germany. She proofed one of my stories, found reading them like eating peanuts, and kept offering to do more!

Then she volunteered to go over the entire manuscript with a fine tooth comb!

There are no words to express my gratitude!

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DONALD L. REXROAD – PHOTOGRAPHER

Although he was born in October 1930 in the West Virginia coal mine area of Clarksburg he moved to Jamestown, New York when he was ten. He and his mother lived with his uncle Woodrow Sayre’s family on Swede Hill at100 Westcott Street. Mr. Sayre was the Social Studies teacher that had encouraged me to enter an essay contest. The $25 first prize convinced my mother that I was destined to be a writer. Reading my memoir brought back memories of his school days.

Don and I attended the First Lutheran Church on Chandler Street, had the same high school teachers, and skated at Celeron and Midway roller rinks. Like many boys he had a paper route, got a job at a green house, Johnson the Florist, where he learned flower arranging, set pins at the bowling alley, and from seven to midnight washed dishes and mopped floors at Clair’s Diner on North Main Street. After a long day of work he drove home in his beautiful green Roadmaster Buick convertible

Don has been taking photographs for over thirty years, aerial photos since 1975 and recently from a helicopter. Since reading my book he has been recording the changes he sees daily in Sumpin Pond. With his permission the cover bears one of his prize-winning color photographs, B&W versions appear on these pages, and with Chapter 12.

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Photographs courtesy of Donald L. Rexroad

LILY

Once I had a neighbor,

Whose company I enjoyed.

She always began,

To make a long story short… .

Then I would sit back comfortably for

Lily never told a short story in her life!

Never a bore, she told her amusing tales

With style!

Dear Lord,

Let me be just like Lily!

Preface

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My Parents

Woodie and I grew up in traditional families.

Divorce was unheard of.

We went to Sunday school.

We were taught respect our elders,

and to say please and thank you.

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Woodie’s Parents

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Woodie and Toots

W oodie and I both grew up in a traditional family with a mother and father. We didn’t even know anyone that had been divorced. We went to Sunday school, were taught to respect our elders, and to say please and thank you. Men never used swear words in front of women and children. Daddy might cuss at the hammer when it hit his thumb, but he never used those words on us.

However, recently Woodie and I arrived at a stadium style movie theater after the house lights had been turned off. It was difficult to see as I, now an elderly woman, tried to enter a row where a heavyset female was seated at the end of the row. I held out my hand to feel my way along and accidentally placed it on the lid of her drink. She exclaimed loudly, Jesus Christ woman! What’s the matter with you!?

I apologized profusely, I’m so sorry, ma’am, but it’s dark and I couldn’t see where I was going.

Then get here before the movie starts! she snapped. It was foolish to explain we’d had a long drive to get here. Well! Leave earlier then! She snarled. These days it means a long drive to theater to see a film for adults with dialogue and character development instead car crashes, explosions, and gun fights.

Time robs us of so much. It seems to me that the romance, love songs, and ‘kind hearts and gentle people’ have become old fashioned. Instead we have wall to wall vulgar language and the constant use of the four letter words. In those good old days if we uttered one of those words we saw scrawled on bathroom walls we got our mouths washed with soap. Today young people are afraid of being virgins as though they are to be pitied because they are missing something. Sex is treated like an exercise where girls compare the lovemaking skills of the men they bed.

But there was a time between two wars in a small town in western New York State where two young people were having a wonderful time. Days that were full of innocence where the world we faced was new and bright and shining. The only things parents worried about was that a son might drink too much beer and smash the family car, or that a daughter might ‘have’ to get married. The only drugs came from the store on the corner of Third and Main and the only guns were Red Ryder BB guns, rifles used for hunting deer during the season, and 22’s that farmers used to kill crows in the corn field.

The discipline and sense of camaraderie we felt during World War II is gone. Then right was right, and wrong was wrong. You never criticized your parents or blamed them if your life didn’t go well. You could trust a person to keep his or her word. We’re old fashioned because we still believe in good manners, respecting our elders, and helping others when we can.

In John Romano’s article in August 15, 2013 Tampa Bay Times ninety year old war hero, Ted Denton, describes the changes he has witnessed though the years. Not the innovations or breakthroughs, but the shifting attitudes. His words sound wistful as he talks of days when Americans believed in the greater good instead of individual glory. Days when integrity was expected, and sacrifices were appreciated. He recalls a time when it was not so rare for strangers to smile and wave.

The America he grew up in did not try to impose its beliefs or values on anyone else and welcomed immigrants with open arms. Some of the things he sees and reads today are just so disappointing. His generation that endured the 1929 Depression was known as the Greatest Generation. When they are gone all we have left are memories of an era where people kept their head down and did their job as he had done to earn a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

Although I can’t remember why I went into the next room apparently I remember far more than most people do. The following chapters cover those halcyon five years from the end of WWII in 1945 until the beginning of the Korean War in 1950.

1

Remembering World War II

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The sign at the city line proudly announces that Lucille Ball, born in nearby Celeron, came from Jamestown. Her children Desi and Lucy established the Lucille Ball – Desi Arnaz Center for Comedy that is visited by thousands of people from far and wide. Tour buses unload fans eager to walk the flagstone walk to view her grave site in the Ball family plot in the Lakeview Cemetery. In 1944 she came home for her grandfather’s funeral and while she was there she sold War Bonds. In spite of Hollywood, Lucille never forgot her small town values.

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We had no idea Cousin Stan was actually involved in building landing strips in the furthermost islands of the Aleutian chain. We didn’t learn until years later that he had been situated so close to Japan and that the Japanese even had bases on the islands at the tail end of the chain. Enemy aircraft frequently bombed and strafed the base, destroying their work and leaving numerous injured and dead.

J amestown is a small industrial town nestled in the hills of western New York State, where the Weary Erie Railroad connects us to Hoboken, New Jersey and Chicago, Illinois. In the early years Woody’s English relatives had established woolen mills while my immigrant Swedish clan had established so many furniture factories we became the home of fine furniture. They were owners, managers, or craftsmen, while my mother earned $12.50 a week in the office at Allied Furniture before her marriage in 1929. The sheet metal that we produced became desks at Art Metal, wrenches at Crescent Tool, ball bearings at Marlin Rockwell. Daddy was trouble shooter at Rane Tool when machines broke down. The town population reached its height of 55,000 during WWII. Our welcome sign listed us as the birthplace of three famous persons: Roger Tory Peterson, Lucille Ball, and Robert H. Jackson.

WWII in Europe began on September 1, 1939, but we didn’t enter the war until Japanese airplanes attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Hawaii, that beautiful island of palm trees and pineapples, had suddenly become a bombsite. Our favorite radio show, Hawaii Calls, was preempted by President Roosevelt’s announcement. That land that played music to transport us there during the sleet, ice and snow storms of a western New York winter, was no longer peaceful. Our president called it a day of infamy because the Japanese had not declared war.

My boyfriend, Woodie, remembers having Sunday dinner at his aunt’s when they heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It certainly cast a pall over everybody and especially his father. He hurried down to Moore’s Hardware in Frewsburg to buy Woodie a bicycle for his 13th birthday, because he knew they wouldn’t be available again until the war was over. The bike was a dark blue and white Shelby with New Departure brakes. Only rich kids had Rode Masters with Morrow brakes.

Scrap drives collected old pots, and pans and even the no longer used street car tracks were torn up. Automobile plants were converted to produce tanks, armored cars, machine guns, and helmets. Although I was only twelve, I aided in the war effort by saving tin foil from my chewing gum wrappers and Daddy’s cigarette packages forming it into balls. All my friends competed to see who could create the largest ball. Tin foil was actually made from thin sheets of tin and after the war aluminum took its place. We weren’t always exactly sure what the government did with the foil, but it made me feel I was helping. Lucky Strike cigarettes became white because the green packages used an ink that contained a scarce strategic metal. Mother poured bacon fat and grease into a tin can because the glycerin it contained was used to make explosives. Even our pennies changed from copper to zinc-coated steel. The Boy Scouts collected newspapers and scrap paper that was used to package armaments. Women’s skirts got shorter and men’s trousers no longer had cuffs to save on precious fabric needed for uniforms. Daylight saving time continued all year in addition to another extra hour, War Time. When I left to ride the city bus downtown and transfer to Jefferson Jr. High, the stars lit my way down one hill, past Sumpin Pond and up the next hill to the bus stop.

We all learned the V for Victory sign we made with our index and middle fingers with the thumb holding firmly on the fingertips of last two. Sadly the sign we so often see today is made with the middle finger standing alone. During WWII the war affected everyone. Men from all walks of life were drafted or volunteered. Now only a small percentage serve their country and many poor unemployed young people sign up because they can’t find work. Nobody makes any sacrifices. During WWII the motto was: use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. No new tires were to be had. Rubber was the first commodity to be rationed, because the Japanese now controlled the rubber plantations. Imported foods like sugar and coffee followed soon after. Food and fuel ration stamp booklets were issued to every American, even babies. Nonessential drivers received an A windshield sticker, limited to 150 miles per month or four gallons of gasoline a week and speed was not to exceed 35 mph. B stickers, issued for essential to the war effort, were allotted eight gallons a week. A special R sticker was for non-highway vehicles such as tractors and other farm machines. Since my boyfriend’s father was a dairy farmer he received tractor gas kept in a special tank near the barn. Now it was ride the bus or stay at home. Mother’s club girlfriend’s family moved from town to Kennedy where they ran Three Gables Gas Station. Their eldest son had a ride into Jamestown with a friend that worked near the high school. The younger was Woody’s classmate, so he must have found a ride. Woodie rode his bike or hitch hiked to Junior and Senior High. However, many times there was no choice, but just walk.

When factories began hiring women, Woodie’s mother joined the war effort working in a factory at Marlin Rockwell making ball bearings. His sister was also employed there as secretary to the assistant chief engineer. Still in high school she walked to the plant at 2:30 when school let out, got a ride part way home with a fellow co-worker, and trudged the rest of the way. Her boyfriend, Don, was drafted in 1943 and was inducted into the Marines. He spent time on Okinawa with a Rocket Squadron before being honorably discharged in 1946.

At school we pasted into booklets ten and twenty five cent stamps to exchange for a twenty five dollar War Bond. These represented the candy and gum that we didn’t buy. Employers withheld money from paychecks to purchase Series E bonds. Woodie’s sister remembers Lucille Ball visited Dorothy’s workplace when she came to her hometown on a war bond selling tour as many stars did. The sign at the city line proudly announces that Lucille, born in nearby Celeron, was from Jamestown. Her children Desi and Lucy established the Lucile Ball – Desi Arnaz Center for Comedy visited by people from far and wide that loved Lucy. Tour buses unloaded fans eager to walk the flagstone walk to view her grave site in the Ball family plot in the Lakeview Cemetery.

Raising morale was one of the most important war efforts. By V-E Day the USO was producing as many as 700 shows daily. In 1941 Bob Hope began a fifty year tradition of bringing music, singers, dancers, and celebrities to perform at bases at home, Alaska, Europe, and the Pacific. Band leader, arranger, and composer Glenn Miller brought new life to the Army’s bands adapting John Phillip Sousa marches and his own composition American Patrol. In December 1944 Major Glenn Miller’s flight across the English Channel to Paris disappeared. In just few years he left a legacy of unforgettable tunes such as Chattanooga Choo-choo, String of Pearls, A Nightingale Sang in Barkley Square, and Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand. Wartime ballads and love songs inspired the entire generation of lonely service men and their sweethearts, wives, and families at home.

It might have been on the farm on Swede Hill my parents bought where Roger Tory Peterson