Here is the latest chapter in the story of the courtship and early married life and times of my maternal grandparents, Emily Auble and Lyle Carringer, who married in June 1918. The background information and the list of chapters of their life together are listed at the end of this post. This is historical fiction with real people and real events, and is how it might have been.
I asked my AI Assistant Anthropic Claude to tell the story of Emily and Lyle on their honeymoon and the days after 19 June 1918 (I offered helpful suggestions...).
(AI Google Notebook Infographic -- The Honeymoon and Back To Work, June 1918)
Emily and Lyle’s Story – The Honeymoon and
Back To Work
The Day After — Ocean Beach
They woke late on Thursday, by the standards of Lyle's usual PX schedule, and took a leisurely breakfast in the room before dressing and making their way, mid-morning, back to 30th Street to collect Austin's automobile, as arranged the day before.
Austin handed over the keys with a few brief instructions about the choke and a piece of advice about the route to Sunset Cliffs Boulevard that Lyle only half-listened to, eager as he was to be on the road with his new wife beside him. Della sent them off with a small basket of rolls and fruit "in case the diner's line is long," which it was not, but which they appreciated all the same on the drive out.
Ocean Beach in late June was bright and busy once the morning low clouds retreated westward, the Pacific exactly as cold as Lyle remembered from the previous summer's outings before he'd enlisted, and they left their shoes on the sand and waded in together, laughing at the shock of the water, Emily's skirt pinned up with the same pragmatic efficiency she'd shown at La Jolla months before their engagement. They swam properly for a while once the cold had lost its power to surprise them, and afterward lay on the warm sand drying in the sun, Emily's head on Lyle's shoulder, both of them entirely unhurried in a way that neither had experienced together before — no trolley to catch, no Liberty Pass expiring, no three o'clock deadline pulling at the edges of the day.
"This is what it's like now," Emily said, watching the waves. "No clock."
"There's always a clock," Lyle said. "Mine starts again Friday morning."
"Not today, though." She turned her head to look at him. "Today there's no clock at all."
They ate lunch at the small diner near the pier — the same one from the year before, the same tomato soup and grilled cheese that had sustained them on their courting days, eaten now as a married couple with Lyle's new ring catching the light when he reached for the salt.
In the afternoon they drove back toward town, stopping first at Harrison Avenue to change clothes and then at First and Hawthorn to collect Georgia, who was waiting on the porch with her good coat already on and an expression that suggested she had been ready for some time and was pleased, though she would not have said so directly, to be included in the day.
"How was the water?" Georgia asked, settling into the automobile's back seat.
"Cold," Emily said. "Perfect."
"I assumed as much," Georgia said, and that was the whole of her commentary on the matter, though she reached forward and briefly squeezed Emily's shoulder in a gesture that said considerably more than the words had.
Dinner at 30th Street that evening was quieter than the wedding celebration had been — just the family again, Della's cooking, the particular comfort of an ordinary evening made extraordinary by what had happened the day before. Austin asked about the automobile's performance on the way to the beach with the specific interest of a man who cared about such things, and Lyle reported that the choke had behaved exactly as described, which pleased Austin considerably.
By the time Charlie collected them again — his chauffeuring duties apparently extending through the full length of the honeymoon, a fact he mentioned with theatrical long-suffering that fooled no one, least of all himself — the June evening had settled into the particular gold-then-grey light that San Diego did so well, and Lyle and Emily returned to the U.S. Grant for their final night as newlyweds still officially on honeymoon, before Friday morning and the ten-hour shift and the whole ordinary architecture of married life reasserted itself.
The Last Honeymoon Night
The second night held less of the wonder of the first — not because it mattered less, but because wonder of that particular kind arrives once and then settles, appropriately, into something steadier and no less precious for being familiar. They talked again, more easily now, already building the private shorthand of two people who have decided to spend every remaining night of their lives in the same room. They spoke of the house on Harrison Avenue, of Georgia's move still to come at month's end, of Lyle's Monday shift and Emily's own return to Marston's later in the week, of the whole ordinary future stretching out ahead of them, made extraordinary simply by being shared.
"Tomorrow we go back to it," Emily said, as the lamp burned low. "The clock starts again."
"It does," Lyle agreed. "But we go back to it together now. That's the whole difference."
"It's a considerable difference," Emily said, and settled against him, and they slept their second night as husband and wife with the bay dark and quiet beyond the window, and Monday waiting, unhurried, for its turn to arrive.
Friday
The honeymoon was over early on Friday morning – Lyle needed to go to work at the PX on the base by 7 a.m. They ate a quick breakfast at the hotel cafe, Emily kissed Lyle goodbye, and Lyle caught the trolley to Balboa Park to work. Emily had the day off from work, and she walked to visit her mother at Hawthorn Street. Emily worked in Georgia’s small garden and rested a bit.
After work, Lyle went to Hawthorn Street, took Emily to dinner at Tivoli’s, and then they went to their new home on Harrison Avenue for their first night together there. Exhaustion! Happiness! Love!. Sleep.
Saturday Morning
The alarm at 2064 Harrison Avenue rang at half past five, and Lyle woke in his own bed, in his own house, with his wife beside him, and thought that this was a very good way to begin a Monday.
Emily stirred as he rose. "You're not late," she said, without opening her eyes fully.
"I'm never late," Lyle said, which was true, and which she knew, and which she said anyway most mornings because it was a comfortable thing to say.
The kitchen still bore the faint disorganization of a household not yet fully settled — Georgia's pots in the cupboard nearest the stove, in her order, but the coffee kept in a different tin than either Lyle or Emily instinctively reached for, so that both of them opened the wrong cupboard first before remembering. Emily made coffee while Lyle dressed, and they ate a hurried breakfast together at the small kitchen table — the first of what would become several thousand such breakfasts, though neither of them thought of it that way yet, being still new enough to the arrangement that every ordinary thing felt faintly remarkable.
"Marston's at eight," Emily said, checking the small clock on the shelf.
"PX at seven." Lyle finished his coffee standing, the old habit from the barracks not yet worn off. "Ten hours today. I'll be home by six."
"I'll have something ready," Emily said, and then paused, visibly trying the sentence out for size — I'll have something ready, said by a wife to a husband, in her own kitchen, for the first time in earnest rather than in rehearsal. She smiled slightly at herself. "That's a strange thing to hear myself say."
"Get used to it," Lyle said, kissing her before he left. "I intend to hear it a great many more times."
He caught the trolley at the corner, two blocks from the house, and rode it toward Balboa Park through a San Diego Saturday that looked, to every outside appearance, exactly like every other Saturday the city had produced that summer — except that Lyle Carringer rode it now as a married man, which altered nothing about the scenery and altered a great deal about how he saw it.
Corporal Briggs looked up when Lyle reported for his shift and studied him for a moment with the particular scrutiny Briggs reserved for inventory discrepancies and, apparently, newly married privates.
"Married," Briggs said. It was not a question.
"Wednesday. Married Wednesday."
"Congratulations." Briggs said the word the way he said most words, without excess, but he extended his hand, and the handshake that followed was longer and firmer than Briggs's handshakes typically ran. "Harrison Avenue treating you well?"
"Very well, Corporal. Our first night there was last night."
"Good street," Briggs said again, as he had back in May, and returned to the ledger, the conversation closed, the congratulations delivered and received in the economical Briggs fashion that Lyle had long since learned to value precisely because it cost Briggs something to offer at all.
Saturday — First and Hawthorn
Saturday night brought them both to First and Hawthorn Street for dinner, the house now considerably emptier than it had been even at the wedding, Georgia's notice to vacate ticking down toward its June 30th deadline with the particular relentlessness that deadlines have regardless of how well one has planned around them.
Georgia met them at the door with the expression of a woman who has spent the week packing boxes and has developed strong opinions about the process.
"You'll want to see what's left," she said, by way of greeting, and led them through rooms that had, over the preceding ten days, been steadily reduced to their essential furniture and a scattering of boxes labeled in Georgia's precise hand: KITCHEN — FRAGILE. LINENS. GEORGIA'S ROOM — NOT YET.
Dinner was simple — Georgia had been cooking around the packing rather than for any particular occasion, and served them a plain but satisfying meal of chicken and vegetables at a table that itself would need to make the journey to Harrison Avenue before the month was out.
"How was the first few days?" Georgia asked, once they were settled.
"Good," Emily said. "We enjoyed the two days off, did some looking and shopping and even went out to the beach!"
"Corporal Briggs congratulated me," Lyle offered. "At some length, for Briggs."
"What did he say?"
"'Congratulations.' One word. Followed by a handshake that lasted four seconds longer than his handshakes generally last."
Georgia considered this. "For a man like that, four seconds is practically a wedding toast."
They talked through dinner about the coming week's logistics — Georgia's larger furniture, the bed frame and the wardrobe from her room, still needing transport before the thirtieth, and the question of whether Austin's automobile or a hired dray would prove more practical for the heaviest pieces. Georgia had opinions, delivered with her customary economy, about which items mattered enough to preserve carefully and which could be left behind without regret, a distinction she drew with the particular clarity of someone who had already moved a household twice before, from Chicago to San Diego in 1911, and from house to apartment in 1916 after her husband died, with considerably less warning and considerably more at stake.
After dinner, the three of them sat for a while on the mostly bare front porch, First and Hawthorn quieter now than it had been in years, watching the June evening settle over the street that had been Emily's whole life until ten days before.
"Will you miss this house?" Lyle asked Georgia, careful in how he asked it.
Georgia was quiet for a moment, looking at the street, the porch, the door she had opened and closed some hundreds of times over two years. "I'll miss what happened in it," she said finally. "Emily grew up in these rooms. That matters more than the rooms themselves." She stood, gathering the evening to a close with her usual decisiveness. "The house is just boards and plaster. I'm not sentimental about boards and plaster. I'm sentimental about considerably less replaceable things."
She did not elaborate, and neither Lyle nor Emily asked her to, understanding that this was as close as Georgia Auble generally came to saying something tender outright.
Sunday — 30th Street
Sunday's dinner at 2015 30th Street carried the easy familiarity of a tradition now fully re-established — the newlyweds arriving at the family table not as guests being specially accommodated but as the married couple whose Sunday presence was simply expected, the way it had been expected on Thursdays for the twelve months before.
Della had cooked generously, as she generally did on Sundays, and the table held roast chicken and vegetables from the garden and rolls that disappeared with their customary speed. Austin asked after the days at the PX with genuine interest, and Lyle described Briggs's four-second handshake, which Austin found sufficiently amusing to repeat to Edgar, who had arrived slightly late and missed the original telling.
"Four seconds," Edgar said. "For Briggs, that's practically an embrace."
"That's exactly what Georgia said," Emily noted.
"Georgia is a woman of sound judgment," Abbie said from her chair, which was, from Abbie, high praise indeed, delivered in the tone of someone confirming a verdict rather than offering a compliment.
The conversation moved easily through the meal — Austin's week at Rockwell Field, a new training class arrived from the Midwest that had, in Austin's telling, considerably more enthusiasm than aptitude, though he expressed confidence this would correct itself with practice; Della's garden, which had produced its first real tomato crop of the season, a fact she mentioned with a sideways glance toward Georgia's absent competitive commentary on the subject, since Georgia's own tomato ambitions from the previous summer remained a matter of family legend.
"You'll have to tell your mother," Della said to Emily. "Three tomatoes already, and it's barely the solstice."
"She'll want the count," Emily said. "She keeps precise track of these things."
After dinner, when the dishes had been cleared and the family had settled into the parlor for the unhurried remainder of a Sunday evening, Lyle raised the matter he'd been planning to raise all through dinner.
"Father," he said. "Could I borrow the automobile on Thursday? Georgia has furniture that needs moving to Harrison Avenue before the thirtieth, and Thursday is my next Liberty day, and it seems as good a time as any to make a start on it, while I have the entire day."
"Take it as long as you need it," he said. "I'll come along, if you'd like an extra pair of hands. Moving a bed frame alone is a good way to put your back out, and you'll want your back in working order for the next day's shift.
"I wouldn't say no to the help," Lyle admitted.
Edgar, overhearing, volunteered himself as well, on the grounds that three men moving furniture accomplished the job in considerably better time than two. Austin said “Maybe Davey can help too."
To be continued...
Here is the Video Overview of this story by Google NotebookLM (also on my YouTube channel here):
This is historical fiction based on the facts that are available for the life and family of my maternal grandparents, Lyle and Emily(Auble) Carringer. It is based on my research, social history and society norms at the time and place, and it is likely realistic. It might have happened this way. In this case, I don't know what their swedding rings looked like. I do know where they resided after their marriage.
Stay tuned for the next chapters in this family story.
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The AI-assisted biography of my maternal grandmother is in ABC Biography of #7 Emily Kemp (Auble) Carringer (1899-1977) of Illinois and California. I wrote a story about her life in 1916 in Ask AI: Describe Emily Auble's Life After the Death of Her Father In 1916.
The AI-assisted biography of my maternal grandfather is in ABC Biography of #6 Lyle Lawrence Carringer (1891-1976) of San Diego, California. I wrote a story about Lyle being a young working man in 1916 being teased about being boring in Lyle's Story: Finding Courage in 1916-1917.
- Emily and Lyle's Story: The Dance.
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: A San Diego Romance In 1917.
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: The Promise Made.
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Letters From Boot Camp – Part 1, May 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Letters From Boot Camp – Part 2, May-June 1917.
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Letters From Boot Camp – Part 3, Weeks 5 and 6, June 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Letters From Boot Camp – Part 4 (Weeks 7 and 8), Late June to July 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Coming Home -- Lyle’s Leave, July 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Lyle Carringer Starts Work at the PX
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Lyle’s First Liberty Day -- August 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Emily’s Birthday Gift, August 1917 (Part 1)
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Emily’s Birthday Gift, August 1917 (Part 2)
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Lyle’s 26th Birthday Party in 1917 (Part 1)
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Lyle’s 26th Birthday Party in 1917 (Part 2)
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Holiday Season, Thanksgiving to Christmas 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: New Year’s Eve, 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Ordinary Days, January and February 1918
- Emily and Lyle's Story: The Wedding Plan, March 1918 (Part 1 of 2)
- Emily and Lyle's Story: The Wedding Plan, March 1918 (Part 2 of 2)
- Emily and Lyle's Story: Wedding Preparations in April and May 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Wrapping Up the Remaining Tasks – Early June 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Parental Counsel – Mid-June 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: The Wedding of Emily and Lyle – June 19, 1918
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