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.
And now we are up to mid-November 1918, and the world becomes a different place.
I asked my AI Assistant Anthropic Claude to tell the story of Emily and Lyle experiencing the quarantine, celebrating Austin's birthday in late-November 1918, and Christmas shopping (I offered helpful suggestions!).
(AII Google Notebook Infographic -- Late-November to Early December 1918)
The Quiet After the Whistles: Mid-November to Early December
Mid-November — The Fence
The whistles of November 11th had promised a great many things, and the first thing that came of them was a longer wait.
At the Marine base in Balboa Park, the Armistice changed almost nothing about daily life. The gates stayed shut. The men who had marched down Broadway on Monday morning were back behind the wire by Monday night, and the quarantine that had kept the base sealed since early October simply continued, one more regulation among many. The sick list had grown, then shrunk, then grown again. No one on the base was willing to guess when it would be safe to open the gates.
"The war's over," Hennessey said, on the Wednesday after, wiping down the counter for the fourth time that morning. "And I'm still not allowed to buy a sandwich on Fifth Avenue."
"The war's over," Corporal Briggs agreed. "The influenza is not. Wipe the counter again."
The PX itself had gone strangely quiet. With the fighting finished, recruiting had stopped. No new drafts of young men came marching in from the train station with their cardboard suitcases and nervous faces, and the steady stream of first-week privates buying stationery and a single candy bar had dried up. Those who remained were veterans of a sort, men who had trained and drilled and waited, and now stood around the barracks in a state that Lyle thought of privately as suspended animation. Everyone had questions. No one had answers.
Lyle was kept busy anyway. Lieutenant Goss, the supply officer, had begun to look into what the base would need to do to demobilize its stores and records, and he called Lyle into his office on the second Thursday in November with a ledger and a pencil.
"You've been tracking the supply anomalies since August," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"Every man who leaves this base is going to need a paper trail. Pay, equipment, personnel records, clearances. There are going to be thousands of them, and every one of them will pass through someone's hands." The Lieutenant looked at him over the ledger. "I'd like those hands to be yours."
It was, Lyle recognized, a compliment, and he said so. It was also, he realized on the walk back to the barracks, a sentence of a different sort. A man who could process discharges was a man the Corps would need until the last discharge was processed, which meant he would be among the last to be released himself. He thought about this for the length of the parade ground and decided, with the equanimity he'd been learning that year, that it was one more thing about which he had no choice.
Emily came to the base on Saturday.
Visitors were not permitted past the gate, but nothing in the regulations forbade a wife from standing outside the fence on the public road with a covered basket, and nothing in Corporal Briggs's character forbade him from noticing a thing he had already decided not to notice. He sent Lyle to the gate on the pretext of an errand and stationed himself with his back to the road.
She was there in her gray winter coat, masked, with Georgia a few paces behind her carrying a second basket, and for a moment, across fifteen feet of dust and the iron bars of the base fence, Lyle simply stood and looked at his wife.
"You're thinner," Emily said, her voice muffled behind the gauze.
"You're masked."
"So are you."
"I have the better excuse."
She laughed, and Lyle, who had not heard that sound in two weeks except in his own head, felt something loosen in his chest that he hadn't known was tight. He came as close as the fence allowed, and she came as close from the other side, and they stood with their fingers just touching through the bars like two people in a poorly planned play.
Georgia set down her basket, inspected the scene with a critical eye, and said, "I'll be over there, looking at that tree." She walked ten paces away and gave the tree an extraordinary amount of attention.
They had twelve minutes. Emily gave him the news: Marston's, Gladys, the neighbors, the mask Georgia had sewn for Mrs. Alcott's nephew. Lyle gave her what he could, which was very little and which seemed to be enough. In the basket were ham sandwiches, a jar of Georgia's pickled cucumbers, and a small lemon cake wrapped in waxed paper, none of which he was supposed to accept and all of which Corporal Briggs, three yards away and studiously absorbed in the sky, did not see.
"When?" Emily asked at the end. It was the only question she asked that day that mattered.
"I don't know," Lyle said. "Lieutenant Goss has a plan. I'm part of it. That means it won't be soon."
"How soon is not soon?"
"Spring, I think. Maybe later." He looked at her. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Emily said, and then, with a firmness that made him think of Georgia, "I married a Marine. I knew what that meant. I just hadn't thought about what after meant." She pressed her fingers to his through the iron. "Spring is all right. We have a house to plan."
"We do."
"And a kitchen to arrange. And Georgia to feed." She smiled behind the mask, and he could see it in her eyes. "We'll manage."
Georgia returned from her tree as if on cue. She and Lyle exchanged a look, and she said only, "Eat the sandwiches while they're warm," and walked with Emily back to the trolley.
Thanksgiving and a Birthday — Thursday, November 28
By Thanksgiving, the base had eased enough that a handful of men with clean health records were granted a holiday pass, noon until eight. Lyle was one of them, and he arrived at 2064 Harrison Avenue at twelve-thirty with a freshly pressed uniform and a face so obviously delighted that Emily and Georgia gave him hugs and kisses on his masked cheek.
They left on the trolley for 2105 30th Street, and Della, answering the door, did not pretend to be dignified. She hugged him for a long time, mask and all.
The day was also, by happy accident, Austin's birthday, and Della had planned accordingly. The table held the usual Thanksgiving fare, turkey and potatoes and Della's rolls and the beans from the summer's garden, and also, at one end, a modest chocolate cake with a single candle that Austin was not permitted to ignore.
The gathering was small but entire. Austin and Della, Abbie in her chair, Edgar, Davey and Amy and Maybelle, and the three from Harrison Avenue. Two weeks before, the quarantine would have forbidden all of it. Now, though everyone still carried their masks in their pockets, the house had the quality of a place newly unlocked.
The talk, naturally, was of the Armistice and the quarantine and what they meant. Davey, whose taxi business had suffered through October and November — "sailors confined, soldiers confined, civilians afraid to leave the house, and me with a full tank and nowhere to take anyone" — was cautiously optimistic about the winter. "There'll be a rush when the gates open," he said. "Every man jack of them will want a ride to Broadway."
"The gates are not open yet," Lyle said.
"They will be. They always are, eventually." Davey buttered a roll. "Marines stopped recruiting, I hear."
"Entirely. Not a single new man since the eleventh."
"That tells you something," Austin said. "When the Marines stop signing men up, the war's well and truly over."
"What about the airfield?" Emily asked. "Rockwell Field?"
Austin set down his fork. "They've been told to prepare for a drawdown," he said slowly. "No new classes. The students currently in training will finish, and then, I expect, the schedule will thin. It's the right thing, of course. The country doesn't need thousands of pilots in peacetime." He was quiet for a moment. "But I've spent two years building something. It's strange to hear that it might not be needed."
"Planes will always need mechanics," Edgar said.
"Some planes. Some mechanics." Austin picked up his fork again. "I'll manage. I always have."
Della had a letter, and she read it aloud over the pie. It was from her sister Matie, who had left San Diego in the first week of November for Portland, a departure no one had quite expected, and had written her news in a looping hand across three pages of lavender notepaper. She had gone north, she explained, to look after an ailing friend. She had found, upon arriving, that the friend was nearly recovered and that her own second husband, who had gone north a year before for work and had not been heard from since, was waiting at the station. They had talked for a week. They had agreed to try again.
"She says he looks older," Della read. "And that she expects she does too. And that they have taken rooms near Sellwood and he's very attentive." She paused over the next line, and her expression softened. "She sends love to all of us and says she will write at Christmas, and that she is sorry to have missed the party, and that Lyle is to have a photograph taken of himself in uniform to send to Portland."
"Marry well once," Abbie said, from her chair, "and you need never do it twice."
"She's done it twice, Mother," Della said.
"Then she'd best make the second one count." Abbie sniffed. "I wish her joy of it."
There was a moment's silence, and then everyone laughed, and Della folded the letter and tucked it away.
The cake arrived, and Austin blew out his single candle with the grave concentration of a man defusing a bomb. When the cheers had died down, Lyle and Emily presented him with a flat package, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
Austin undid the string slowly. Inside, in a plain walnut frame, was a photograph of the family gathered in the parlor on the evening of the tenth: grandparents and parents, uncles and cousins, a young wife and her mother, and a Marine in a borrowed civilian jacket. Lyle had had it printed in the second week of November at a downtown studio, and Emily had chosen the frame.
Austin looked at it for a long time without saying anything, and then he cleared his throat twice and said, "That's a good picture."
"Lyle took it," Emily said. "Charlie held the camera. It was the first roll."
"It's a good picture," Austin said again, and set it carefully on the sideboard where he could see it from his chair. And it was there, in the end, through all the years that followed, that the family went on finding it.
Early December — Shopping Against the Clock
On the first of December, the base opened its gates a crack. Marines with no sick-call record were permitted limited liberty, and the Monday passes resumed, with a firm rule that no man was to attend any public gathering and each was to wear a mask when out in the street.
On Monday the second, they went to Balboa Park, simply to walk. On Monday the ninth, with the city's mood tightening, the newspapers reported that cases were rising again, and the Board of Health was said to be considering new restrictions. Everyone knew it, in the way that people know things before they are announced.
"We should do the shopping today," Georgia said at breakfast, folding her napkin. "If they close the stores, we shall have nothing for Christmas but good intentions."
They went downtown at nine, the three of them in their masks. Broadway was crowded in a hurried, uneasy way, with shoppers moving fast and buying quickly and leaving. Marston's, when they reached it, was busier than it had been in weeks, the accessories counter lined with customers who clearly shared Georgia's concerns. Emily slipped behind it to greet her friends from the department, and Gladys came across the floor with her mask pulled down just far enough to speak.
"They're saying tomorrow," she said, low and rapid. "The Board of Health meets tonight. Mr. Peterson thinks they'll close us entirely. Buy whatever you need now."
"Have you got what you need?"
"I've been buying since October," Gladys said. "I'm a woman who plans."
They split up in the store, as people in secret conspiracies do. Georgia went to the dry goods floor, where she bought three yards of heavy blue wool and a card of silver buttons and was seen studying a pattern with an expression of quiet purpose. Lyle slipped into the stationery department and asked the clerk a series of carefully worded questions about ledgers. Emily went to the camera counter and chose, with great deliberation, a leather-bound photograph album with black pages and a box of gummed corners, and had it wrapped while Lyle was, she hoped, out of sight.
They met on the sidewalk afterward, each carrying a flat paper-wrapped parcel and each looking ostentatiously innocent.
"I didn't buy anything," Lyle said.
"Neither did I," Emily said.
"I bought thread," Georgia said, and walked ahead of them toward the trolley stop with her chin high and her bag clutched under her arm.
The Board of Health did meet that night. The order was announced the next morning: beginning Tuesday, December 10, public places would close. Theaters, restaurants, dance halls, churches, and nearly all stores were to shut their doors. Masks were mandatory on the streets. Violators would be fined.
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Here is the Video Overview of this story by Google Gemini Notebook (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.
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.
Then I wrote more chapters of their life together:
- 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
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: The Honeymoon and Back To Work, June 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Georgia Moves In, Late June 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Monday People -- July and August 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: September to Early November 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Lyle’s Party and an Armistice, Mid-November 1918
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