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 preparing for the wedding in early June 1918 (I offered helpful suggestions...).
(AI Google Notebook Infographic -- Wedding Plans Coming Together - Early June 1918)
June 6th — The Church, Confirmed
On the first Thursday of June, before the errands of ring-collecting and house-moving had fully consumed the month, Lyle and Emily stopped at Central Christian Church on their way downtown. Reverend Crabtree was in his small office off the sanctuary, and he welcomed them with the same unhurried warmth he'd shown in March.
He confirmed the date in his calendar book — June 19th, two o'clock, already entered in his careful hand since their first conversation — and walked them through the order of service once more, this time in more detail, since the day itself was now close enough to require precision rather than general planning. He asked whether they'd settled on any scripture reading. Emily had thought about this and suggested a passage from Ruth — whither thou goest, I will go — which Crabtree said was a fine and fitting choice, if perhaps more commonly used than some, but no worse for being commonly used, since the sentiment endured for good reason.
He asked after the marriage license, and Lyle told him they were going to the County Clerk the following Thursday, June 13th, which would leave the license current and in hand well before the ceremony. Crabtree nodded, made a note, and reminded them gently that he'd need the license itself brought to the church before the ceremony began — a formality, he said, but a necessary one, and better remembered now than discovered missing on the day.
"You'll want to arrive by one-thirty," he added. "Gives us time to settle everyone before the two o'clock start, and a few minutes for you both to catch your breath."
They thanked him and left, and Emily said, once they were back out on E Street, "He remembers everything."
"It's his profession to remember everything," Lyle said. "Weddings, at least. I imagine funerals require the same attention, which must be a harder kind of remembering."
Emily considered this and said nothing further, but she held his arm a little more firmly for the next block, in the way she did when a thought had briefly touched something serious before releasing it again.
June 8th — Approval
The paperwork came back to Corporal Briggs's desk on a Saturday, which was unusual enough that Briggs mentioned it when Lyle came on shift Monday morning.
"Approved," Briggs said, sliding the form across the counter without ceremony. "Off-base housing, effective June fifteenth. Your hours don't change — ten-hour days, six days, Thursday liberty as before. You'll commute from wherever you've landed."
"Harrison Avenue," Lyle said. "Near 22nd Street."
"Trolley run from there's not bad," Briggs said, which was, from Briggs, a form of congratulations. He made a notation in the roster and moved on to the next matter, and that was the whole of the Marine Corps's participation in Lyle Carringer's wedding, delivered in under a minute and entirely sufficient.
Lyle wrote to Emily that evening with the news, and by Thursday, when he arrived at First and Hawthorn with his Liberty Pass in his pocket, she had already told Georgia, who had already told Della, who had already begun, in her own quiet way, planning the moving weekend.
Thursday, June 13th — The County Clerk
The County Clerk's office occupied a solid, unglamorous building downtown, its corridors busy with the ordinary business of a growing city — property records, business licenses, and, in the appropriate window, marriage licenses, processed by a clerk who had clearly seen a great many young couples pass through and had developed a brisk, kind efficiency in response.
Charlie Morrison and Gladys came along as witnesses, which had been arranged the week before over lunch, when Emily asked Gladys directly and Gladys said "obviously" in the tone she used for things that required no further discussion, and Lyle asked Charlie the same afternoon, receiving an equally immediate yes.
The clerk's questions came in the standard order, and Lyle and Emily answered them in turn, the four of them — bride, groom, and their two witnesses — arranged before the counter like a small delegation.
Full legal names: Lyle Lawrence Carringer. Emily Kemp Auble.
Ages: twenty-six. Eighteen, as of the previous August. Both well above the legal minimum — eighteen for the groom, fifteen for the bride, under California's requirements — though the clerk noted this almost as a formality, since neither of them was anywhere near the threshold that would have required additional parental consent paperwork.
Birthplaces: San Diego, California, for Lyle. Chicago, Illinois, for Emily, a detail Charlie hadn't known and remarked on afterward — "I always assumed you were a San Diego girl through and through" — to which Emily replied that she'd been a San Diego girl since she was eleven, which was long enough to count.
Current residences: both listed as San Diego, Lyle’s as the Marine Base in Balboa Park, Emily's given as First and Hawthorn Streets, both for the last time in any official capacity, since by month's end it would no longer be true.
Occupations: Private First Class, United States Marine Corps Reserves, for Lyle. Saleswoman, Marston's Department Store, for Emily.
Names and birthplaces of parents: Henry Austin Carringer, born Pennsylvania, and Abbey Ardelle Carringer, born Wisconsin, for Lyle. Emily gave her father's name — the late Charles Auble, born in New Jersey — and her mother's name, Georgianna (Kemp) Auble, born in Ontario, Canada.
Previous marriages: none, for either of them, which the clerk recorded with the brief efficiency of a question he asked a hundred times a week and rarely needed to follow up on for a couple this young.
The clerk had them both sign, then Charlie and Gladys signed as witnesses beneath, and the license was issued — an official document that made the wedding, in the eyes of the State of California, a legal certainty six days before it became, in the eyes of God and Central Christian Church, an actual one.
Outside on the courthouse steps, Charlie clapped Lyle on the shoulder. "Well, that's official. County knows about it now, at least."
"The county's opinion was never really in doubt," Gladys said. "It's the church that matters." She turned to Emily. "Speaking of which — I'll collect the dress from Mrs. Hennessey Monday, and the flowers Matie's arranging can come to the house on Tuesday evening so nothing wilts overnight. I'll bring everything to the church myself Wednesday morning before I go to work, so it's there and settled before anyone has to think about it."
"You've planned this already," Emily said.
"I plan things," Gladys said. "It's my nature. You should be grateful rather than surprised at this point."
Emily was grateful, and said so, and the four of them parted on the courthouse steps — Lyle and Emily back toward the trolley for 30th Street and dinner with Lyle’s family, Charlie and Gladys back toward Marston's.
The House on Harrison Avenue
The house at 2064 Harrison Avenue was a modest single-story frame cottage two blocks off the trolley line, furnished simply but adequately by its owner, a Mrs. Halloran who had moved north to Los Angeles to live with her daughter and preferred a steady tenant to an empty house. Thirty dollars a month, three bedrooms, a kitchen with a decent stove, and a small front porch that faced southwest, which Emily noted approvingly meant they'd have the evening light.
Lyle moved in on Saturday, June 15th, with his father's help. Austin borrowed a neighbor's flatbed cart for the morning and the two of them made the short trip from 30th Street with Lyle's footlocker contents from the base, his civilian clothes — worn only occasionally in the past year and needing airing out before they'd be fit for anything — and the small collection of personal items that had accumulated in his room at his parents' house since childhood: books, a few photographs and mementos, the Marine Corps citation he'd received for his marksmanship qualification, and the box where his letters from Emily lived, tied in bundles by month.
"You're keeping all of these?" Austin asked, hefting the box, which had gained considerable weight since May 1917.
"Every one," Lyle said.
Austin didn't comment further, but he carried the box with visible care, the way a man carries something he understands to be valuable even if he wouldn't describe it that way himself.
They set up the front bedroom for Lyle and Emily, the smaller back bedroom for Georgia, and left the third room, facing the garden, empty for now — "for whatever comes," Austin said, with a look that made Lyle color slightly and Austin laugh, once, briefly, in the way he laughed perhaps four times a year.
On Sunday, Austin returned with the cart to help Emily and Georgia move their own things from First and Hawthorn. Della came too, an addition nobody had needed to request — she simply appeared at nine in the morning in her working apron with a box of her own kitchen linens as a housewarming contribution, and the four of them spent the day in the productive, companionable chaos of a household establishing itself.
Georgia directed the kitchen setup with the authority of a woman who had run one for thirty years and did not intend to relinquish her standards for the sake of a new address. Her pots went in the cupboard nearest the stove, in the order she used them. Her good china — inherited from her own mother, carried from Canada in 1889 — went on the high shelf, safe from careless hands, though there were no careless hands in this household and everyone understood the shelf placement to be ceremonial rather than strictly necessary.
Della and Emily made up the beds with linens from both households, combined without much discussion into whichever configuration made sense. Austin fixed a loose hinge on the pantry door that had apparently been loose since Mr. Delacroix's tenancy, without being asked, because fixing loose hinges was simply what Austin did with his hands when they were near one.
By Sunday evening, the house at 2064 Harrison Avenue held enough of both households' belongings to function, though Georgia's remaining items — the larger pieces of furniture from her own room, the things she wasn't ready to part with until the very end — stayed behind at First and Hawthorn for now. She had given her notice to vacate that address by June 30th, timed deliberately to fall after the wedding and the two-night honeymoon, so that the final move could happen without anyone rushing it.
"Two weeks," Georgia said, standing in the mostly-empty front room at First and Hawthorn that evening, looking at what remained. "That's enough time to leave a place properly."
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
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