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 in August 1917 when Lyle had to deal with Emily's birthday gift. The first part of this story is in Emily and Lyle’s Story: Emily’s Birthday Gift, August 1917 (Part 1). Here is Part 2 of this story:
(AI Google NotebookLM Infographic: Emily's Birthday Gift)
Emily and Lyle’s Story: Emily’s Birthday Gift, August 1917 -- Part 1
Sunday, August 19,1917 -- Emily's Eighteenth Birthday
Lyle had been at the florist's concession near the PX by seven-thirty. The selection was modest—the PX stocked cut flowers primarily for officers who needed something for their wives on short notice—but there were yellow roses, and yellow roses seemed exactly right for Emily: warm, unaffected, cheerful without being showy.
He arrived at Hawthorn Street at eight forty-five, Liberty Pass authorizing him until three o'clock. Georgia opened the door.
"She's ready," Georgia said, which told him Emily had been ready for some time. Then her eyes found the flowers and something shifted in her expression—not softening exactly, because Georgia Auble did not soften, but opening slightly, like a window being unlatched. "Those are nice," she said.
Emily appeared behind her grandmother in a moment, and Lyle held out the roses.
She took them with both hands and looked at them for a moment before looking up at him. Her eyes were very bright. "Yellow roses," she said.
"They reminded me of you."
"Warm and a little prickly?" Emily suggested.
"Cheerful," Lyle said. "And exactly right."
Central Christian Church
The three of them walked to Central Christian Church at 820 E Street, arriving as the congregation was gathering—families in their Sunday best, uniformed men scattered through the crowd, the familiar atmosphere of a congregation that has known each other long enough to greet without ceremony.
Reverend W.E. Crabtree had a preacher's gift for making a sermon feel like a conversation, which Emily had always appreciated and Georgia tolerated with the mild respect she gave any competent professional. Today's text was from Romans: "We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope."
Lyle sat between Emily and Georgia in a pew near the middle of the church, aware of the weight of the day—her eighteenth birthday, the war still building itself around them, the uncertain future that lay on the other side of his three o'clock return to duty. The sermon settled around him the way good sermons do, less as argument than as weather, the kind that changes the feel of the air without you noticing until you step outside and find yourself clearer than before.
After the service, Reverend Crabtree shook Lyle's hand and then Emily's, and when Georgia told him it was Emily's birthday, he blessed her with a warm simplicity that made Emily duck her head and smile.
The US Grant Hotel
The US Grant Hotel stood on Broadway like a declaration of confidence—seven stories of California Mission Revival grandeur that had opened in 1910, built by Ulysses Grant Junior with the ambition of a man determined to give San Diego a hotel worthy of its future. The lobby was all marble and polished wood, high ceilings and the particular quiet of a very fine hotel on a Sunday morning.
The dining room was cool and light, set with white linen and proper silver. A waiter in a black coat led them to a table by the window, and Lyle watched Georgia take in the room with the measured appreciation of someone who has seen comparable things and is not overwhelmed but is pleased.
"Happy birthday," Lyle said, when they were seated and the menus had been placed before them.
Emily looked around the room—the white linen, the silver, the window's view onto Broadway—and then at him. "You didn't have to do this."
"I know. That's why I did it."
Georgia studied her menu with the focused attention she brought to most activities. "They have a proper soup," she announced approvingly.
The lunch was unhurried and good—cream of tomato soup for Georgia, roast beef on the menu that Emily chose without deliberation, chicken for Lyle. The dining room filled gradually around them with San Diego's Sunday crowd: naval officers with their wives, a large family celebrating something at a table in the corner, two businessmen who ate and talked simultaneously with the efficiency of men who have no other time to do either.
Emily talked about her plans—finishing her education in the evenings, staying at Marston's for now, what she might study if she had the chance to go further. She'd been thinking about bookkeeping, she said. Numbers had always made sense to her in a way that other things didn't, and if she could add to her Marston's experience with proper training—
"You'd be excellent at it," Lyle said, meaning it exactly. He had watched her for months now, the way she organized her thoughts, the precision with which she accounted for things. She had a mind built for accuracy, which he recognized because he had one too.
"You're biased," Emily said.
"Possibly. I'm also right."
Georgia ate her soup and watched them both with the quiet attention of someone who has decided to approve of something and is confirming the decision in real time.
The Gift
Lyle had arranged with Uncle Davey to pick them up at the US Grant Hotel at 1:30 and take them to Hawthorn Street. At Emily's home, the birthday box waited on the sideboard where Georgia had kept it for three days. Georgia set it before Emily on the kitchen table and stood back with her hands folded and the expression of someone who has been looking forward to this moment.
Emily looked at the white ribbon, the precise wrapping. She looked at Lyle. "Did you actually wrap this yourself?"
"The salesgirl wrapped it. I tied the ribbon."
"That's very nearly the same thing." She began to unwrap it with characteristic care—not tearing, but pulling the ribbon loose and unfolding the tissue paper with deliberate attention, as though the wrapping itself were part of the gift.
The ivory dress lay in its nest of tissue, the small embroidered cuffs, the row of small buttons, the clean modern lines that Lyle had watched her light up for without knowing it herself.
Emily was quiet for a moment. She lifted the dress from the box and held it against herself, looking down at it, and then she looked up at him with an expression that needed no translation.
"How did you know?" she asked.
"Frances knew. I just paid attention."
"You did more than pay attention." She turned to show Georgia.
Georgia looked at the dress with the eyes of someone who has seen a great deal of clothing for almost fifty years and knows what quality looks like. She touched the fabric at the cuff. "Good material," she said. "It will last." Then she went to put the kettle on, because she was not a woman who lingered over moments longer than they required, and because a cup of tea seemed the appropriate punctuation for a birthday in August.
Emily put the dress back in its tissue carefully, smoothed the paper, and came around the table to where Lyle was standing.
"Thank you," she said, and kissed him—right there in the kitchen in front of the sideboard and the empty box and the ghost of Georgia not quite out of the room yet. "It's the loveliest thing anyone has ever given me."
"It suits you," Lyle said. "That was all I knew."
Goodbye at Three O'Clock
The kettle boiled and Georgia made tea and there was the last of the gingerbread from earlier in the week, and they sat in the kitchen and Emily told Georgia about the dining room at the US Grant and the cream of tomato soup, and Georgia asked careful questions about the service and the silver and whether the bread had been fresh. It was all very ordinary and Lyle was aware with the clarity that Liberty Days always brought that ordinary was the rarest and most precious thing he had.
At two twenty, he looked at his watch. At two twenty-five, he looked at it again.
"You have to go," Emily said.
"Twenty minutes yet."
"Then stop looking at your watch."
He put his watch in his pocket. They talked about the following Sunday—his next Liberty Day was not until the week after, he told her, which meant letters in the interim and she would have to write him something worth reading.
"I always write you something worth reading," Emily said.
"You write me about tomatoes."
"Mother's tomatoes are worth reading about. There are four now."
"Four is remarkable."
Georgia, from the kitchen, said without turning around: "Five, actually. The small one on the left came through this morning."
At twenty minutes to three, Lyle stood, put on his cap, and straightened his uniform by reflex. Georgia came from the kitchen and shook his hand with the grip that was more than a handshake. "Come again Thursday week," she said.
"If they'll give me the pass."
"Make sure they will," Georgia said, which was as close as she came to asking him to.
Emily walked him to the end of the front path. The afternoon light of a San Diego August lay gold and long across the street, and the city smelled of sun-warmed stone and eucalyptus and somewhere nearby someone's supper beginning on a stove.
"Happy birthday, Emily," Lyle said.
"The best birthday I've had." She straightened his collar, which did not need straightening. "Write me tonight."
"You'll have the letter Wednesday."
"Write it tonight anyway."
He kissed her, put on his cap again where she had pushed it slightly askew, and walked to the corner. He turned once. She raised her hand. He raised his. Then he turned toward the trolley stop and the barracks and the PX and the long afternoon shift that was waiting for him, and the smile he carried on his face all the way back to Balboa Park was the kind that Corporal Briggs noticed when he arrived and decided, wisely, not to comment on.
That night, between the end of his shift at eleven o'clock and lights out in the barracks:
My Darling Emily,
Happy birthday. You turned eighteen today and I wasn't there for most of it, which is the great unfairness of military life. But I was there for the part that mattered—the dress and the roses and the soup at the US Grant and the tea in your mother's kitchen afterward.
Frances at Marston's chose well. But I chose Emily, and I think that was the better decision.
Five tomatoes. Please tell your grandmother I am genuinely impressed.
I love you. Get some sleep.
Yours always,
Lyle
Here is the Video Overview of this post by Google NotebookLM:
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.
- 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)
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