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 Thanksgiving and Christmas.
(AI Google NotebookLM Infographic: Thanksgiving and Christmas 1917)
Emily and Lyle’s Story: A Season of Gifts -- Thanksgiving to Christmas 1917
November — The Settling In
November settled over San Diego in its characteristic way — not with the dramatic seasonal change that people in other parts of the country experienced, but with a subtle shift in the quality of the light and a coolness in the evening air that the locals called winter and visitors from the East found quietly amusing. The Santa Ana winds and hot spells had finished their fall outbursts, the bougainvillea had quieted, and the city felt, in November, like itself — unhurried, sun-warmed, tilted toward the sea.
At the PX, the weeks after Lyle's birthday brought a steady increase in business. The holiday season was approaching, which at the PX meant a particular kind of demand — men sending money orders home, buying writing paper to write to mothers and wives and sweethearts, purchasing small gifts to post before the Christmas mail cutoff. Lyle had suggested to Corporal Briggs in early November that they increase the money order stock and reorder the better stationery before it ran out, both of which Briggs accepted without acknowledgment. The money order stock doubled by the fifteenth. Lyle noted the decision in his new leather notebook and said nothing.
Hennessey, observing this dynamic, took Lyle aside one afternoon. "You know he reads your suggestions and implements them without telling you?"
"I know," Lyle said.
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"It bothers me somewhat less than running out of money orders on the fifteenth of December would."
Hennessey considered this. "You're very practical."
"I've been an auditor since I was twenty," Lyle said. "It does something to a person."
Emily's days at Marston's had their own November rhythm. The Christmas buying season was beginning, and the gloves and accessories counter was one of the first departments to feel it — gloves were the gift that people bought when they weren't sure what else to get, which made them reliable and occasionally exhausting. Gladys, from her position in the administrative offices, kept Emily supplied with intelligence about buyer decisions, stock issues, and the general backstage machinery of a department store's holiday season, all delivered in the low rapid undertone that had become their primary conversational mode.
"They're bringing in French kid gloves before the fifteenth," Gladys reported one Tuesday at lunch. "Limited stock. If you're buying for anyone important, tell them before the general customers find out."
"Who would I be buying gloves for?" Emily asked.
Gladys looked at her with the expression she reserved for questions with obvious answers.
"Right," Emily said. "What colors?"
The question of Christmas gifts had been occupying her since the beginning of the month, and it was the French kid gloves that provided the answer — not for Lyle, who would find kid gloves impractical in the barracks and useless at the PX counter, but the conversation sparked a different idea. What would Lyle actually use? What would he carry every day, look at every day, find genuinely useful rather than merely decorative?
She thought about the leather notebook Georgia had given him for his birthday. He'd written her that he'd used it already to track inventory discrepancy patterns he'd noticed in the PX supply system. The right thing, used by the right person, disappeared into their life as though it had always been there.
What did Lyle do every day? He handled money, tracked figures, balanced accounts. He stood behind a counter and served a hundred men a shift. He wrote letters at night in the barracks.
She wrote to him that Thursday asking — very carefully — what he was running low on in terms of writing supplies.
He wrote back the following Monday: Ink, mostly. And the kind of patience required to write with Barracks-issue pen nibs, which are apparently made from the same material they use for bayonets.
Emily smiled at the letter and made a list.
What Lyle Was Planning
Lyle's own gift problem was different in character. He was a man who understood value — years of accounting had given him a precise sense of what things actually cost and what they were worth, which were not always the same figure. He had a Marine private's salary and a Marine private's access to the PX, which gave him some advantages in the stationery and tobacco lines but limited him considerably elsewhere.
He thought about what Emily used every day. She was at Marston's six days a week, walking to and from work regardless of weather, carrying her bag with the things she needed for the day. She was practical and not given to ornamentation for its own sake. She liked things that worked.
He had noticed, on one of his Liberty Thursdays in October, that the clasp on her everyday bag was developing a tendency to spring open. She hadn't mentioned it. She had simply adjusted her grip on the bag to hold it closed, which was so characteristically Emily — solve the problem at hand, don't announce it — that he'd spent the next two weeks thinking about it.
He wrote to Charlie Morrison, who was his best intelligence source on what Marston's currently had in the leather goods department. Charlie's reply was thorough, specific, and included a pencil sketch of what he described as "the one that looks like it was made by someone who thought about it."
Thanksgiving, November 29, 1917
Della Carringer's Thanksgiving table was the kind that becomes legendary within a family — not through excess but through accumulation. Every year the same dishes appeared, prepared in the same order over two days, presented in the same dishes, and eaten with the same combination of gratitude and ambition that characterized the Carringer approach to meals generally.
This year the table extended into the parlor to accommodate: Austin and Della, Abbie, Lyle in his uniform, Uncle Edgar, Uncle Davey and Amy and Maybelle, Emily and Georgia. Ten people, three side tables pressed into service, every chair in the house employed.
Georgia arrived at noon with a covered dish of her bread pudding and the comprehensive assessment of Della's kitchen that she conducted each visit, silently and without comment. Della, who understood this by now, laid out her preparations for review and accepted the resulting arrangement of pots with equanimity.
"Your stock is ready?" Georgia asked, lifting the lid on the turkey broth.
"Since yesterday," Della said.
Georgia replaced the lid with the expression that indicated she found this satisfactory. She took up a position beside the stove and the two women cooked together in the productive silence of people who have established their respective jurisdictions.
The men gathered in the parlor. Austin described Rockwell Field's Thanksgiving preparations — the base mess had apparently attempted a turkey dinner for several hundred pilots and ground crew that had been, by Austin's account, ambitious in intent and educational in execution.
"They cooked forty birds," Austin said. "Someone failed to account for the difference between cooking one turkey and cooking forty simultaneously. The math doesn't scale the way you'd think."
"Did they eat?" Davey asked.
"Eventually. With good humor. Military men learn to eat what's in front of them and consider the alternative."
Davey, settled in the most comfortable chair with the authority of a man who has driven forty miles to get here and considers this to have earned him certain privileges, had his own story about a Thanksgiving fare in 1914 — a family of twelve, a touring car, and a driver who had not been told the address before agreeing to take them somewhere in the countryside.
"I drove for an hour before it occurred to me to ask where we were going," Davey said. "Turned out they didn't know either. They were looking for a farm stand that one of the aunts had visited once, possibly in 1908."
"Did you find it?" Edgar asked.
"We found a farm. Whether it was the right farm was a question that was never entirely resolved to everyone's satisfaction. But they had produce, and the family bought a pumpkin and seemed happy, so I consider the mission accomplished."
Maybelle, who at fifteen had developed opinions about everything and the confidence to share them, had positioned herself next to Emily and was conducting an earnest inquiry into what it was like to work at Marston's as compared to being in school, which she was still enduring.
"The difference," Emily said, "is that at Marston's, when someone is difficult, you can be pleasant to them and then they leave. At school, they come back the next day."
Maybelle considered this with the seriousness it deserved. "That's a good difference," she decided.
The dinner itself achieved everything a Thanksgiving dinner should — the turkey exactly right, the gravy without a single lump (Georgia had noticed the gravy and quietly intervened at a critical moment, which Della acknowledged by saying nothing and looking grateful), the sweet potatoes caramelized at the edges, Della's rolls which were the item people thought about when they thought about this table for the other fifty-one weeks of the year.
Austin said grace with the particular earnestness of a man aware that some of what he was grateful for was specifically not taken for granted. He mentioned the family around the table and the ones who weren't. He mentioned the men serving who would not have Thanksgiving dinner. He mentioned the end of the war, which had not come but was being hoped for. He sat down to a table that was quiet for a moment in the good way.
"Right," said Georgia, when the moment had run its proper length, and passed the turkey.
After dinner, in the arrangement of full contentment that follows a proper Thanksgiving — some in chairs, some at the cleared table, Maybelle on the floor with Edgar's old catalogue that she'd found somewhere and was examining with archaeological interest — Lyle sat on the sofa beside Emily and felt the specific satisfaction of watching two families become one. Georgia, in the chair nearest the window, was talking with Abbie about Canada, of all things — Abbie had apparently had a cousin who'd gone north before the turn of the century, and Georgia had opinions about the Ontario winters that Abbie found not entirely satisfactory. It was, Lyle thought, the best possible kind of argument.
"Happy Thanksgiving," Emily said, leaning slightly against him.
"Best one I can remember," Lyle said, which he had also said about his birthday and meant just as much now.
The Gift Exchange
Two weeks before Christmas, Lyle presented himself at the leather goods counter on his Liberty Day while Emily was at the accessories counter across the floor, occupied with a customer. He'd arranged with Gladys, through Emily, a three-minute window in which to conduct his business unseen. Charlie Morrison was stationed casually near the door to signal if Emily finished early.
The bag was exactly the one Charlie's sketch had described — brown calfskin with a brass clasp that engaged with the authority of something made to last, inside pockets organized with the logic of someone who had thought about what women actually carry, and handles long enough for the shoulder or short enough for the hand. It was not cheap. Lyle had been saving for six weeks.
The clerk wrapped it without being asked and said it was an excellent choice, which Lyle was not certain he trusted but chose to accept. He retrieved it from behind Gladys's desk on his way out, and it went home to the barracks footlocker, where it waited.
For her part, Emily arrived at Hawthorn Street four days before Christmas carrying a box that she entrusted to Georgia with instructions. Inside was a good fountain pen — a black-barreled Waterman with a medium nib — two bottles of Waterman's ink, a quantity of proper writing paper, and a small card that said: For the letters. Write me many.
Georgia looked at the card. "Does he write many?"
"Every week," Emily said.
"Good," Georgia said, in the tone that meant she found this exactly correct and had expected nothing less.
Christmas Day, December 25, 1917
Lyle's Liberty Pass ran from noon Christmas Eve through 6 p.m. Christmas Day — enough time for church with Emily and Georgia at Central Christian, a quiet Christmas Eve supper at Hawthorn Street with Georgia's gingerbread on the table and the city going about its wartime holiday outside, a fitful sleep on the living room couch, breakfast, and then the trolley ride and walk to 30th Street late on Christmas morning with Emily and Georgia.
The Carringer house had been decorated with the particular care that Della brought to occasions she considered significant. Pine boughs on the mantel, a modest tree in the parlor corner with the glass ornaments that had been in the family since Lyle was small, the smell of Christmas baking in every room. Edgar was already there when Lyle, Georgia and Emily appeared, Emily carrying the Waterman pen in its box and trying to look as though she wasn't watching his face.
Georgia's lemon cake arrived with the ceremony it had earned by now — placed on the sideboard, cover removed for inspection, cover replaced. Della received it with the warmth she gave everything Georgia contributed, and the two women went to the kitchen together with the purposeful step of people who have a Christmas dinner to produce.
Austin distributed the gifts with the economy of a man who considers gift-giving an engineering problem requiring efficient execution. The household exchanges were modest — wartime had adjusted everyone's expectations, and the adjustments were worn comfortably, without complaint. Edgar gave Austin a book on aircraft engines that Austin accepted with genuine pleasure. Davey and Amy had toys for no one in particular and a tin of mixed nuts that everyone appreciated. Matie appeared mid-afternoon with a fruitcake and a scarf she had knitted for Lyle, which he accepted with the genuine warmth he felt for Matie's reliable practicality.
The Waterman pen went to Lyle from under the small tree. He opened it with the careful attention he gave to packages now, Emily having taught him by example. He looked at the pen, the ink, the writing paper, and the card.
He read the card twice. Then he looked up at Emily.
"For the letters," he said.
"Write me many," she confirmed.
He tested the nib on the corner of the wrapping paper — a fluid, even line, the pen obviously well-balanced in his hand. "This is exactly right," he said.
"I know," Emily said.
The calfskin bag came out from behind Austin's armchair, where Lyle had positioned it a week earlier. He handed it to her with the slight tension of a man who has spent six weeks hoping he got it right.
Emily opened the paper and then was quiet for a moment, running her hand along the leather, testing the clasp — which engaged with a clean, decisive click — opening the inner pockets and closing them with the expression of someone taking accurate inventory.
"The clasp on my old bag was giving me trouble," she said finally, looking up.
"I know," Lyle said. "I noticed in October."
She looked at him for a moment with the full attention she usually reserved for things she was reading. "You noticed in October," she repeated.
"You were holding it closed with your hand so it wouldn't spring open."
Emily looked at the bag, then at him, then at the bag again. "I didn't say anything."
"No," Lyle agreed. "That's why I noticed."
She kissed him right there in his parents' parlor, which caused Edgar to find something interesting to examine in the direction of the window and caused Abbie, from her chair, to make a sound of measured approval.
Georgia's lemon cake came out after dinner, which was roast beef and Della's rolls and three kinds of vegetable because this was Christmas and Della had opinions about Christmas. The cake was received with the ceremony that had established itself: Lyle received the first slice, declared it perfect, Georgia accepted this as the correct assessment, and the cake disappeared in twelve minutes.
"Faster than last time," Georgia observed.
"We had more people last time," Lyle said.
"No," Georgia said. "You simply wanted more of it."
This was correct, and Lyle did not argue it.
To be continued ...Here is the Video Overview of this story 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.
==========================
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)
Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment