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 January and February 1918 (I offered helpful suggestions...):
(AI Google NotebookLM Infographic: January-February 1918)
Emily and Lyle’s Story: The Rhythm of Ordinary Days -- January and February 1918
January — A Good Routine
There is a particular kind of happiness that doesn't announce itself. It arrives quietly, through repetition — the same walk taken enough times that your feet know the way without consulting your mind, the same face seen often enough that its absence would register before its presence does. January 1918 was that kind of month for Lyle Carringer and Emily Auble.
Every Thursday, without exception, Lyle was at Hawthorn Street by nine o'clock. Emily was always ready — had always been ready, though she would not acknowledge that she'd been watching the street from the parlor window since eight forty-five. Georgia would appear briefly in the hallway, confirm their plans for the evening with one or two precise questions, and return to whatever she had been doing with the air of someone whose schedule was entirely her own.
The walk to the waterfront took twenty minutes at an easy pace, which they took, because January in San Diego was not a month that demanded urgency. The harbor was always busy — supply ships, the Navy's growing presence, the particular wartime industry of a port city that understood its own strategic importance. They would stand at the seawall for twenty minutes or half an hour, watching the water, talking about the week just past, and then find their way to the café on Broadway for lunch.
The café had settled entirely into their routine now. The waitress who called them both "honey" had recently begun calling Emily "dear" and Lyle "the Marine," which they both found precise and fair. The chicken salad was reliable. The pie changed. They always ordered it anyway.
After lunch they would walk downtown for a while — sometimes with purpose, window shopping or running an errand, sometimes without, just moving through the city they both knew and loved. Then the trolley to 30th Street, where Austin and Della were always glad to see them both in the specific way that parents are glad when they can see that things are going the way they'd hoped.
January dinners at 30th Street had their own particular character. Austin was deep in winter work at Rockwell Field — training programs accelerating as America's need for pilots grew more urgent — and brought his stories to the table with the organized mind of a man who spent his days troubleshooting. The Jenny biplane, he reported in the second week of January, was performing well under routine training conditions but had a documented tendency in cold temperatures to— and here he would catch himself, remembering that he was at the dinner table and not in a debrief — to behave in ways that required experienced handling.
"In ways that required what?" Lyle asked.
"Experienced handling," Austin repeated, with finality.
"He means it goes sideways," Della said, serving the potatoes.
"Aeronautically sideways," Austin said. "Which is a different category."
Emily asked questions about the aircraft with the genuine curiosity that Austin found irresistible — not social questions designed to extend a conversation but actual questions about how things worked, what the training protocol was, how you taught someone to respond to a machine that was misbehaving at altitude. Austin would sit forward in his chair and explain properly, using the salt and pepper shakers to model relative positions when words got complicated, and the dinner table would become temporarily a briefing room, which everyone found more interesting than the alternative.
Abbie Smith contributed to January dinners from her chair in the parlor — she had developed the habit of remaining in earshot while the younger people ate, participating in the conversation when it interested her and ignoring it when it didn't. On the third Thursday, she asked Emily, without preamble, whether she had any opinions about the New York approach to winter.
"I was born in Illinois," Emily said. "We had opinions about winter."
"Illinois winter is a different category from New York winter," Abbie said, which was, Lyle reflected, exactly the kind of thing his grandmother would say, and exactly the kind of thing that was entirely correct.
Georgia was always waiting at Hawthorn Street when they returned from 30th Street, with dessert ready and the table already set. She had discovered in November that Lyle preferred his coffee strong and that Emily took hers with a small amount of sugar, and she produced these without being asked, which was the highest form of hospitality Georgia offered. The dessert changed from week to week — bread pudding one Thursday, apple cake the next, gingerbread when she felt the week had earned it.
On the second Thursday of January — the seventeenth, a year and two days after the high school dance — Emily brought it up as they walked back from the trolley stop.
"A year ago Thursday," she said.
Lyle calculated. "Almost exactly. The nineteenth was a Friday in 1917."
"The nineteenth," she corrected herself. "Frank Morrison. The gymnasium. You stepping on my toes."
"Once," Lyle said. "I stepped on your toes once."
"Twice," Emily said pleasantly. "But the second time was debatable. The floor was uneven."
He took her hand on the dark January street. "Are you glad I came?"
She looked at him with the expression she wore when a question was beneath its own answer. "Are you?"
"Every day," he said.
She squeezed his hand and didn't say anything, because some things are complete without an answer.
At Hawthorn Street, Georgia had made gingerbread, which told them she had known what the date was and had planned accordingly. She set it on the table without comment, poured the coffee, and sat down with them in the warm kitchen while January moved past outside.
"One year," Emily said, looking at her cup.
"One year," Lyle confirmed.
"Good year," said Georgia, which settled the matter entirely.
Rhythm At the PX
At the PX, January had its own rhythm. The holiday rush had subsided into the regular tempo of a military base in winter — the money orders still moved steadily, men sending home what they could after the Christmas gifts had been posted. Lyle had taken on more responsibility in the inventory and ordering side of the operation, working with Corporal Briggs on supply projections and tracking the patterns he'd been noting in his leather notebook since August.
The notebook was half-full now. He'd developed a system — daily tallies on the left page, anomalies and observations on the right. He had identified three recurring discrepancies in the supply chain that suggested either a counting error at the warehouse or a systematic problem in the requisition process. He had written a careful, factual memo about these discrepancies and placed it on Briggs's desk in the second week of January.
Briggs had read it, made no comment, and forwarded it upward.
In the third week of January, Lyle was called into a meeting with Briggs and Lieutenant Goss, the base supply officer, who asked him to walk through his findings in detail. Lyle did so from his notebook, speaking clearly and specifically, the way he'd learned to present figures at Marston's — no editorializing, just the numbers and what they indicated.
When he finished, Lieutenant Goss was quiet for a moment. Then he said: "How long have you been tracking this?"
"Since August," Lyle said. "When I first started."
"And you didn't report it until January?"
"I wanted to be certain," Lyle said. "Four months of data is more useful than two weeks of suspicion."
Lieutenant Goss looked at Briggs. Briggs looked at the middle distance with the expression he wore when he had already known something and was waiting for everyone else to confirm it.
"Carringer," the Lieutenant said, "do you know what a staff sergeant makes?"
"Yes, sir," Lyle said.
"You might think about it."
Lyle thought about it, on the trolley to Hawthorn Street that Thursday, and decided that thinking about it was exactly the right amount to think about it for now.
February — The Stripe
The promotion came on the fifth of February, issued with the brisk efficiency of an organization that moves paperwork when it has decided to move paperwork. Private First Class Lyle L. Carringer, USMC. The stripe on his sleeve. The additional eight dollars a month in pay.
Hennessey shook his hand and said he'd seen it coming since October. Corporal Briggs made a notation in the duty roster and said nothing, which from Briggs was a ceremony.
Lyle wrote to Emily that evening, in the Waterman ink on the Christmas paper:
My Darling Emily,
Private First Class. The stripe is on my sleeve and the mathematics have changed. Tell your mother I'm making progress.
Thursday. I'll explain further.
All my love, Lyle
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Emily read the letter Tuesday morning at the breakfast table and showed it to Georgia, who read it, set it down, and poured herself more tea.
"Good," Georgia said.
"That's all?"
"What else is needed?" Georgia said, returning the letter. "He was always going to be promoted. Now he has been."
Emily folded the letter and put it in the pocket of her skirt, where she would move it to her bag and then to the drawer in her room where she kept all of them, in order, in the small cedar box that had once held Georgia's correspondence and had been repurposed without ceremony.
At Marston's, she told Gladys.
"Pay raise?" Gladys asked immediately.
"Eight dollars a month."
Gladys performed a rapid mental calculation. "And he's been saving since August," she said. "For the you-know-what."
"He hasn't told me the amount."
"He doesn't need to tell you the amount," Gladys said. "You know the amount."
Emily had, in fact, calculated the approximate amount herself, which she felt was reasonable behavior for someone who intended to be a bookkeeper. "Around May," she said.
"June," Gladys said. "He'll want it to be June."
Emily said nothing, but she thought about the date her mother had mentioned once, the date on the marriage certificate that lived in the cedar box alongside Lyle's letters — June 19, 1898, when Emily's parents had married in Milwaukee, twenty years before.
Valentine's Day, February 14, 1918
The Tivoli on a Thursday in February was its winter self — warmer than outside, the old bar gleaming under the gas lamps, the room populated with the particular mix of San Diego's evening crowd and the Navy's off-duty population that had become characteristic of the city's downtown establishments since the war began.
Lyle arrived at Hawthorn Street with a paper cone of red carnations from the flower concession near the base — the florist hadn't had roses in February, and carnations were, Lyle had decided, underrated by people who associated them with funerals and had never looked at them properly. Georgia accepted them on Emily's behalf, put them in water before Lyle could explain that they were for Emily, and said they would last longer this way.
"Thank you," Lyle said.
"Don't thank me," Georgia said. "I did it for the carnations."
Emily came down the stairs in the deep green wool dress — her second-best, the ivory being reserved — and found Lyle in the hallway holding his cap and looking like a man who has been presented with a carnation situation beyond his control.
"She put them in water," Emily said.
"She moved very quickly."
"She always does." Emily kissed his cheek.
They walked to the Tivoli in the February evening, the city around them in its wartime quiet — less traffic than before the war, more uniforms, a different quality to the street life that everyone had adjusted to without quite deciding to. The gas lamps along the Gaslamp streets made the night golden, and the Tivoli's corner entrance was bright and welcoming in the way of places that have been welcoming people for thirty years and know how it's done.
The Boston bar gleamed its customary welcome. They found a table near the back, ordered the roast beef as tradition now required, and settled into the easy companionship that a year of Thursday lunches builds into two people.
"Private First Class," Emily said, touching the stripe on his sleeve with one finger.
"Since the fifth," Lyle confirmed. "Eight dollars more a month."
"Gladys says June," Emily said.
Lyle looked at her. "Does she."
"She calculated. So did I."
"I see." He was quiet for a moment, turning his glass. "She's not wrong. June was what I was thinking."
The dinner arrived and they ate, and the Tivoli moved around them in its February way — a table of Navy officers nearby, two older couples, a group of young men who were clearly on liberty and equally clearly not yet old enough to handle it with complete composure.
It was over the apple pie that Lyle said what he had been composing in his mind for two weeks, since the promotion and the mathematics had changed.
"I want to talk about the wedding," he said. "Not the ring yet — that's still a few months. But the wedding itself."
Emily set down her fork. She gave him the full attention.
"I've been thinking about what makes sense," Lyle continued. "Given the war, given the cost, given that we both have people who matter to us but not in the hundreds." He looked at her. "I was thinking small. Family. The Reverend Crabtree. Central Christian. A dinner somewhere modest after."
"I was thinking the same," Emily said.
"Georgia's lemon cake?"
"Obviously Georgia's lemon cake."
"Then we agree on the structure." He looked at her. "What about the date?"
Emily had been thinking about this since Gladys said June, and since she had gone home and looked at the cedar box and taken out the marriage certificate. She looked at Lyle now with the directness she brought to things that mattered.
"My parents were married on June nineteenth, 1898," she said. "It would be their twentieth anniversary this year." She paused. "I don't want to replace what they had. But I think a date that carries something with it is better than a date chosen at random."
Lyle was quiet, thinking about this with the seriousness it deserved. He thought about Emily's father, who had died before Lyle had met Emily. He thought about what it would mean to carry a date that already held something.
"June nineteenth," he said. "1918."
"If you can get the liberty."
"I'll get the liberty." He looked at her steadily. "Emily, I'm going to say this clearly, because I said it last time in the dark outside a pavilion and I think it deserves saying in proper light." He reached across the table and took both her hands. "Will you marry me on June nineteenth, 1918?"
Emily looked at him. Around them, the Tivoli went about its business, entirely unaware that something important was happening at the table near the back.
"Yes," she said. "I will."
The roast beef was done. The apple pie was finished. The gas lamps did what gas lamps do, which is to make everything look warmer than it is. Outside, San Diego was still February, still wartime, still uncertain about a hundred things that wouldn't be resolved for years.
Inside the Tivoli, Lyle Carringer held Emily Auble's hands across the table and both of them knew that June was coming, that a date had been chosen, that a future had moved from possible to planned.
"We should dance," Emily said.
They had discovered in December that the Tivoli had a small cleared space near the back on Thursday evenings when the crowd thinned, barely large enough for two people, where the sound from the corner musician's guitar was good enough for the purpose.
The guitarist was playing something slow, the kind of melody that knows it's February and accounts for it.
Lyle stood and offered his hand. Emily took it.
They danced in the back of the Tivoli on Valentine's Day, 1918, in the light of gas lamps that had been burning since before either of them was born. They danced slowly, because the music was slow and February deserved slowness. And when the song ended and another began—quicker this time, the guitarist finding a different gear—they danced quickly, because that was also who they were: the kind of people who could do both, together, without losing each other in the change.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Postscript — written that night at the barracks:
My Darling Emily,
June nineteenth.
I'm writing it down so it exists in the right ink on the right paper.
I'll get the ring before May. I'll get the liberty for June. I'll speak to Reverend Crabtree on the next Thursday we pass by the church.
The rest — the cake, the family, the day itself — I leave to you and Georgia, because you will do it better than I could plan it, and because the day should be yours before it is mine.
One hundred and twenty-five days. I have written it in the notebook.
I love you, Emily. I have loved you since January 1917, and I intend to love you until considerably after that.
Yours entirely,
Lyle
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.
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
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