Stock Family History

Looking Back Looking forward The Life and Times of Cliff and Ruth Stock

Writer and Editor: Judith Kolva, Ph.D. Legacies In Ink, LLC www.LegaciesInk.com 954-759-4531 Designer: Enid Grigg Heritage Biographies www.HeritageBiographies.com Š2014 Charles J. Schwabe All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Charles J. Schwabe.

Photographs courtesy of the Stock/Schwabe family, the Library of Congress, and Wiki Commons.

To Family Past Present Yet to Come

“A story is like a star: It is born in the past, Illuminates the present, And will shine in the future.� ~ J. R. Carroll

ForeWord

It is appropriate to start Cliff and Ruthie Stock’s story with a story—the story of how Looking Back, Looking Forward was born . . .

In the years following Donna’s death, the Schwabe family (Jena, Kira, Carissa, and I) traveled from seemingly every point on the compass to share the Thanksgiving holiday. Some arrived on time. Most arrived sort of on time—but that’s another story.

In 2010, we gathered at Kira and Alex’s home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Our holiday was even more special because Cliff and Ruthie flew in from Denver. As per Schwabe tradition, we crowded into the kitchen, where we each fixed a special dish; we shared stories; we argued over the card game (the loser washed dishes); we laughed. Then, we cried . . . we missed family members no longer with us.

We ate our way through squash soup topped with sour cream, turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, mounds of mashed potatoes, gravy, and green bean casserole. STUFFED. Still, we made room for homemade pumpkin pie, topped with lots of real whipped cream. Well, for some unbeknown reason, Cliff started to tell stories—stories about his childhood, courting Ruthie, serving in World War II, raising three children.

Suddenly, a strange, but exciting, phenomenon occurred . . . Texting stopped. Cell phones powered off. Laptops closed down. Total silence. The Schwabettes watched Cliff. They savored every word.

Occasionally, Ruthie chimed in with her stories. Frequently, she finished Cliff ’s sentences with, “OH, Cliff !” Words cannot express the look on my daughters’ faces when, for the first time, they heard their grandparents’ stories.

This was important—magical. I recognized immediately that Cliff and Ruthie’s stories must be retained.

Why? My daughters, their children, and all the generations that follow must understand and appreciate who Cliff and Ruthie were and what they stood for.

Back row: left to right; Pops, Jena, Ainsley, Carissa, Rocco, and Kira Front row: left to right; Bowie and Rylan, 2014

So, after my now-wife Judith (I’ve been blessed twice in my life) and I returned home to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, we talked about how to about how to preserve Cliff and Ruthie’s story in an heirloom book.

Easy . . . Cliff and Ruthie would tell stories; Judith would write the book.

It is now my pleasure and privilege to present Looking Back, Looking Forward to you, the Schwabe/Stock family. I have every confidence you will pass it on to tomorrow’s generations.

Looking Back, Looking Forward was created with unconditional love, hours and hours of time, and unsurpassed talents . . .

Thank you, Cliff and Ruthie, for opening your home, telling your stories, and sharing your photographs.

Your thoughts, wisdom, life lessons, and solid values will touch lives forever.

Thank you, Dr. Judith Kolva, for using your gifts as an interviewer, writer, and personal historian extraordinaire. Thank you, my self-proclaimed Princess wife, for complaining only once, when we WALKED eighteen-holes of golf, while twenty-mile-an-hour winds pelted snow down the fairways, when we were in Denver interviewing Cliff and Ruthie. (Did I mention I lost your gloves?) Thank you for making my vision a reality. You are special beyond words. I am truly and forever blessed to have you in my life.

Thank you, Enid Grigg, for creating out-of-this-world book designs. Judith and I introduce you to our families by saying, “We are privileged to work with the best designer on the planet.” You truly are.

Thank you, Dee Moustakas, for applying your unrivaled proofreading skills. Judith and I are one hundred percent confident that Legacies In Ink’s books will never go to print with a single misspelled word, misplaced comma, or misused italics.

Now, I invite you to turn the page and savor Looking Back, Looking Forward.

Chuck Schwabe May 2014

The year was 1920. World War I—the war to end all wars—was over. The United States of America returned to business. With Republicans in the White House, the country prospered . . .

8

Looking Back . . .

The Roaring Twenties 1920-1928

D

uring the next ten years, America’s population boomed to seven million. Life expectancy reached an all-time high of fifty-four years. The Dow Jones soared to 100 points. Unemployment was five percent. Average annual earnings reached $1,236. Wonder Bread sold for 9¢ a loaf, Maxwell House coffee 47¢ a pound, Wheaties—The Breakfast of Champions—10¢ a box, Hostess cakes 25¢ a package, Baby Ruth candy bars 5¢ each.

to conquer perceived social instability—was considered, by many, to be America’s greatest failure. Mark Twain proclaimed, “Prohibition drove drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and did not cure or even diminish it.”

With legislation prohibiting manufacturing, selling, or transporting liquor in place, organized crime bourgeoned. Mob leaders became part of the culture. Bootlegger, rum runner, and moonshine became part of the language.

Speakeasies—private clubs that mandated password entry—sold illegal liquor. Sanctioned by the bribed neighborhood cop, they operated behind hidden doors.

Solid citizens concocted bathtub gin from raw alcohol.

Pharmacists wrote prescriptions for “medicinal” doses of alcohol. Wineries increased production of legal sacramental wine by hundreds of thousands of gallons.

Ignoring American’s cries to “get a horse,” Henry Ford increased the efficiency of his assembly lines and dropped the price of a new Model T—the horseless carriage—to $320. Gas to fuel it cost 18¢ a gallon. Newly introduced red, yellow, and green electric traffic signals, complete with warning buzzers, controlled it.

The nation’s 387,000 miles of freshly paved roadways meant adventure-seekers could drive from California to New York in thirteen days.

It was an exuberant era, aptly nicknamed The Roaring Twenties.

Convention and Victorian morality were tossed aside. A new woman shocked the nation. She was a flapper. She bobbed her hair, wore makeup, shucked her corset, and showed off short skirts. She smoked, drank, and shimmied to the Charleston. She, according to her newly liberated sisters, was the bee’s knees. After all, this was the first time in history she was allowed to vote.

But not all was free and easy. Prohibition—the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and America’s attempt 9

And in Texas, the Feds discovered a still that produced 130 gallons of whiskey a day operating on Senator Morris Sheppard’s farm. Senator Sheppard just happened to be one of Prohibition’s biggest backers—an author of the Eighteenth Amendment. But, then, hypocrites never blush.

In America’s ballparks, fans began a love affair with baseball. Babe Ruth—The Sultan of Swat—was their hero. In America’s schools, John T. Scopes ignored the law and taught the theory of evolution. The Monkey Trials’ jury declared him “guilty as charged,” and the judge fined him $100. In America’s nightclubs, the jazz culture took on a beat of its own. Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald made musical improvisation mainstream.

Fed by a fear of blacks who were moving into northern cities, Jews who were rising in the economic and social order, and labor unions that were demanding a larger share of the industrial pie, three million Ku Klux Klan members donned white masks, robes, and conical hats, marched in parades, instigated rallies, and burned crosses—all in an attempt to perpetuate white supremacy.

10

Technology turned the era upside down . . . electric irons, pop-up toasters, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, home hair dryers, electric shavers, and rotary dial telephones made life easier. Radios and talking movies made life more fun. Almost better, the general public could purchase the good life on credit.

Not to be left behind, the medical field introduced major break-

throughs . . . vitamins, sulfa drugs, penicillin, insulin, the electrocardiogram, TB vaccinations, and an immunization for scarlet fever increased life expectancy.

Briton Hadden and Henry Luce published America’s first weekly news magazine—Time. DeWitt Wallace needed a diversion as he recovered from his WWI shrapnel wounds, so he condensed articles from monthly magazines into what was to become the largest paid circulation magazine in the world—Reader’s Digest. And A.A. Milne’s Christopher Robin fell in love with a quartet of the most popular fictional characters of all time—Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and Tigger.

Charles Lindberg—Lucky Lindy—completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The first motor hotel—Motel Inn— opened in California. Macy’s hosted the first Thanksgiving Day parade. MGM’s lion roared on the big screen.

Clarence Birdseye, a naturalist from New York, invented frozen food.

Accountant, Walter Diemer, thought up pink Double Bubble bubble gum.

California entrepreneur, Roy Allen, sold the first frosty mug of A&W root beer for a nickel. White Castle opened the first fast food hamburger chain and sold small, square sliders for 5¢, but the real deal was five burgers for a dime—takeout only.

Kimberly-Clark sold Kleenex. Johnson & Johnson introduced the Band-Aid. Leo Gerstenzang (inspired by his wife’s cotton‑wad‑wrapped toothpicks) invented Q-tips.

But in the hearts of many Americans, Edwin Perkins of Omaha, Nebraska, created the most important invention of the era (if not all time)—Kool-Aid. Certainly, a glimpse back in time is interesting. But what’s most interesting about The Roaring Twenties, at least to the Stock/Schwabe family, occurred on September 18, 1920, when Clifford “Cliff” Jacob Stock was born, and again on February 15, 1921, when Ruth “Ruthie” Mildred Schwartz was born.

11

Hometown

Cliff remembers . . .

My hometown was Belleville, Illinois. Belleville is in Saint Clair County, Illinois, about seventeen miles east of Saint Louis, Missouri. Belleville means beautiful city. Because of the wealth generated by its stove foundry industry, it’s known as the Stove Capital of the World.

After the German Revolution of 1848 failed, educated people fled Germany and ended up settling in Belleville. By 1870, ninety percent of Belleville was German. Well, my family, both sides, is German. I can’t tell you when my ancestors came to America and settled in Belleville, but I can tell you my dad’s

Unbelievable Story

Cliff 1920

I’m going to tell you a story you won’t believe . . . The first thing I remember about my life happened when I was only a month, maybe two, old. My mother laid me in a bassinette. It was nothing more than a laundry basket, padded with soft batting, so she could leave the baby—ME—in it.

She set me by a window that slanted out slightly—like a dormer. I remember a ray of sunlight streaming through the window and shining in on me, laying there in that bassinette.

Nobody will believe I remember this. But I do. And my life went on from there.

12

Cliff and Grandma Wittmann 1921

parents were born in Illinois, probably in the early 19th century. I can also tell you my dad, Fred Phillip Stock, was born in Illinois in 1894.

My mother, Hilda Anna Wittmann Stock, was born in Illinois, in 1897. Her dad, Martin Wittmann, was born in Illinois, in 1874. By the time I came along, he worked as a coal miner in Belleville’s coal mines. Mom’s mother, Mary Junck Wittmann, was born in Germany, in 1876.

I have one brother, Fred, who is two years older than me.

When I was born in September of ’20, we lived in a twostory house at 226 North 13th Street, in Belleville. Grandpa and Grandma Wittmann and their twenty-five-year-old son, Jacob, who was a shipping clerk, lived upstairs. My parents, Fred, and I lived downstairs.

First Telephone We got our first telephone when I was about four. It was one of those old jobs that hung on the wall in the dining room.

It was black and had a crank on the side that we turned to ring up the operator.

When she came on the line, we told her who we wanted to talk to, and she connected us. Telephone operators were town gossips—they could (and did) listen in to what everybody had to say.

I remember my dad and his three buddies standing next to the telephone, singing barbershop quartet to their friend on the other end of the line. In case you don’t know, barbershop quartet is when four fellows get together and harmonize without any accompanying music. One sings lead, one tenor, one bass, and one baritone. And, unlike music today, you can actually understand the words to the songs.

Some people sent telegrams, but with the telephone, we didn’t bother. The only time we sent a telegram was if somebody needed money. Then, we went to the Western Union office, handed over money to a clerk, and told him to wire it to whoever wanted it.

You see, you gave the clerk a secret question and answer. He passed it on to the clerk on the other end of the transaction. If the person asking for the money could answer the question, he got it. If not, too bad. Unlike today, you didn’t have to worry about getting cheated out of your money.

Anyhow, that was a pretty efficient way to get money to somebody—actually, it was about the only way.

Victrola In 1925, my family bought our first radio. It was one of those box jobs about eighteen inches long, seven inches high, and five inches deep, with huge tubes powered by dry-cell batteries that sat on a shelf below the radio. To tune in stations, we turned a bunch of dials.

In those days, radios didn’t have much power, so they didn’t put out much sound, music, news, or anything else. Lots of families sat around and listened to their radios as a family. Mine didn’t. If somebody wanted to listen, they just tuned it in. Our radio was on a couple hours a day, at most.

Something kinda’ interesting is Grandpa Wittmann had an old Victrola record player. It looked just like the gold gramophone people get in this day and age when they win a Grammy Award.

Did you know that in 1958, when the Grammys first came out, they were called the Gramophone Awards?

Anyhow, ours wasn’t that primitive. It was in a cabinet that had speakers down below and played twelve-inch, 78 RPM, black vinyl records. I especially remember listening to Al Jolson 13

sing “Two Black Crows.” I don’t know whatever happened to that thing, but I wish I did, because the Victrola became a real collector’s item, worth lots of money.

Talking Movies We used to have what we called outdoor theaters, where we saw silent movies. What they amounted to was a bunch of park benches, out back of a saloon, where people sat and watched pictures projected up on a screen that was attached to the back wall of the saloon. Kids couldn’t go in the saloon, but Grandpa took me and Fred to see whatever picture was playing that month.

One of our favorite stars was Buster Keaton, who is still famous for his deadpan expression that earned him the nickname Great Stone Face.

In the late ’20s, they came out with talking movies—talkies.

“The Jazz Singer,” with Al Jolson, was first. After talking pictures got started, there were lots more pictures, and they came out practically every week. Plus, that’s when vaudeville started. We didn’t get to go to the vaudeville shows because they cost an extra 25¢, and we didn’t have the money.

But I remember that vaudeville shows were real popular. They came on before the movie, and people watched everything from some gal prancing around half-naked on the stage, to musicians, to dancers, to comedians, to male and female impersonators, to minstrels, to acrobats, to trained animals. Some acts were good.

Most were horrible.

Winton Touring Car Even though the first cars came out back in the 1800s, my family didn’t own a car until I was five. It was an eight‑passenger Winton touring car. Wintons were fancy cars, built by hand.

14

They had painted sides, padded seats, leather roofs, and gas lamps. Ours had a bench seat in the front and a bench seat in the back—these two seats sat six people. Two drop seats that faced backwards were attached to the back of the front seat— they were large enough so two people could sit and have plenty of room for their feet. Our Winton had curtains on the side and lights on the fenders.

Brand new Wintons sold for up to $5,000—that was lots of money in the ’20s. Ours was second-hand, so the first thing Dad did was tear down the engine, then, rebuild it. He got everything put back together and ready for our first long trip by the Fourth of July, 1926. We got up at four o’clock in the morning to pick up my aunt and uncle who lived in Mascoutah, Illinois.

Well, when we got to their house, they were still in bed, which aggravated my dad, no end.

They rolled out of bed, got themselves ready, packed a big box full of fireworks, and we started out. Fireworks in the ’20s were homemade and ridiculously unsafe, but the Fourth of July wasn’t the Fourth of July without sparklers, caps, glass water bombs, colored fire candles, and nail and key noisemakers.

Anyhow, we drove due east, almost 210 miles, all the way across the state, to visit relatives. The trip took seven hours, each way.

There were eight of us and all our stuff in that Winton, but we didn’t have a single problem all the way there or all the way back.

Bath Day Back in the ’20s, most houses had gas lights. You see, when electric lights first came out, people didn’t think they would ever replace gas lights. So, when my dad bought our house, he had it piped for gas. He never turned it on, but all the rooms had a gas pipe sticking out of the wall. Anyhow, Dad was ahead of his times because he capped the pipes and wired our house himself, so we always had electric lights.

Our house had ten rooms—five down and five up. The kitchens were one above the other, and both had water. (Belleville didn’t have city sewers, but it did have city water.) The connection to the water meter was through a lead pipe. Lead pipes aren’t legal anymore, but back then, we never even heard about lead poisoning from contaminated water.

Our only heat was from coal-fired room heaters in the dining room downstairs and what we called the sitting room upstairs.

The room heaters did a pretty good job, but the bedrooms got darn cold. When I woke up winter mornings, the window in my room was frosted over. It looked like ferns covered the entire window. Beautiful. That’s something you sure don’t see anymore.

We didn’t have a shower. We had a bathtub downstairs, but we couldn’t use it during the wintertime, because it was too cold.

We took a bath once a week—on Saturday. Freddie and I hauled Mother’s laundry tub next to the kitchen stove, where it was warm. Mother poured hot water into the tub. Then, we took our bath.

We soaped up with “99 44⁄100% Pure” Ivory soap (it floated, you know). Mother gave us a quick rinse, dried us off, and we put on clean clothes. Then, we drug the heavy tub over to the sink and bucketed out the water. It ran down the drain, out of the house, underneath the sidewalk, and into a ditch on the street.

Outhouse We had an outhouse in the backyard. It was one of those jobs with a cesspool underneath. Every couple years, the honey dippers cleaned it out. They drove a team of horses that pulled a waterproof cart they backed into our yard. Then, they moved the small wooden building, dipped long-handled ladles into the holes, lifted out the waste, and dumped it into their cart. After the holes were cleaned out, it would be, “See ya later!” I don’t know what they did with all that junk, but I guess they took it someplace and got rid of it.

Cliff and Freddie 1924

15

Going outside, to the outhouse, in the middle of winter, in Illinois was—well, “interesting.” Usually, it was so cold at night you didn’t even dare stick your nose out the door, let alone pull down your pants and bare your butt. You did your business in the china bowl stored under the bed. In the morning, somebody carried the bowl outside and emptied it. I don’t remember who emptied the bowl Fred and I used, but I know it wasn’t me.

My grandmother had an oak potty chair upstairs with a real pretty flowered bowl underneath. I think my grandfather emptied her bowl. Anyhow, Donna kept that potty chair a long time. It’s a real antique today—worth lots of money—but I don’t know whatever happened to it.

The Iceman We lived across the street from Griesedieck Western Brewery Company, where they brewed Stag beer—a cheap beer with low sugar levels that’s not supposed to cause a hangover, no matter how much you drink. I think that’s a lot of bunk.

Anyhow, in 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution—Prohibition—became the law of the land. That meant people couldn’t legally manufacture, sell, or transport alcohol. Before Prohibition, Griesedieck manufactured ice, because they had to keep their beer cold.

Well, Prohibition was still around during the Great Depression, when people didn’t have jobs. To keep workers employed, the brewery finagled a contract to bottle Orange Crush soda pop.

So, even though they didn’t need ice to keep beer cold, they still produced it for their pop.

That was a good deal for guys who worked as icemen. They drove to the brewery, heaved two or three 400 pound cakes of ice into their truck beds, and threw canvas over them. Then, they drove their routes around town. Customers had cards divided

16

into four sections—10, 25, 50, and 100. They put their cards in the window, and whatever number was up, was the weight of ice they needed that day. The iceman sawed whatever the customer wanted, lugged it inside, and put it in their icebox.

Mechanical refrigeration wasn’t around, much. The first mechanical operations I saw were in the middle ’30s. They were Kelvinator refrigerators—the ones with the big, round temperature monitors on top that looked like beehives.

Eventually, my family got a mechanical refrigerator, but ours was a Frigidaire. It’s too bad, but when mechanical refrigeration came along, the iceman’s job disappeared.

Homebrew During Prohibition, even though buying or selling beer and liquor wasn’t legal, the government allowed you to make so many gallons of homebrew a week. Or, if you wanted to stretch it out, you could make so many gallons a month. My dad made beer, and my grandfather made root beer for me and Fred. Grandpa went to the drugstore to buy yeast and sassafras—that’s what gives root beer its flavor, you know.

When Prohibition ended in 1932, Griesedieck made beer again.

Well, my dad knew a guy who worked at the brewery. He invited me and Fred over and showed us around. Fred and I were just young teenagers, but we still got to taste the beer and nobody cared. As far as I was concerned, people didn’t need beer. (I, eventually, became a Scotch man.)

Drugstores Mr. Freudenberg owned a drugstore near our house. Three large display windows, trimmed with crepe paper, faced the street. The store itself was one big room. By big room I mean 30 feet wide and 40 feet deep—that’s 1,200 square feet. Still, Mr. Freudenberg sold all kinds of stuff . . .

Fred and Hilda Stock around 1925

Wall cases on the west side of the store were lined with Dr. Caldwell’s Syrup of Pepsin, Sloan’s Liniment, Udder Balm, Bayer Aspirin, Dr. Sloane’s Diuretic, and Ex-Lax. The first­-aid section was stocked with Mercurochrome, iodine, bandages of all sizes, gauze, cotton, adhesive tape, corn plasters, toothache remedies, and mustard plaster.

Wall cases on the east side of the store displayed cosmetics— Armand face powder and rouge, Coty lipstick, and Cutex nail polish were popular. Gifts were next to cosmetics. Customers bought Evening in Paris gift sets, wrapped in fancy paper, for women; boxed billfolds for men. Grads loved Shaeffer pen sets.

And for babies, he sold bootie, sweater, and cap sets, baby books, cups, and spoons. A card to accompany the gift cost a quarter.

Toward the front of the store, Mr. Freudenberg displayed cigarettes—Lucky Strike, Chesterfield, Old Gold, Camels, and Philip Morris. Two packs cost 25¢. A carton of ten cost $1.20. A floor case of cigars sat next to the cash register. The expensive Perfecto Garcia cost 25¢, for two. The el-cheapo King Edward cost 5¢, for two. A display case held corncob pipes, Dr. Grabow filter pipes, Prince Albert pipe tobacco, and Beech Nut chewing tobacco.

The Double Kay nut machine stood next to the cigar case. It was heated by two large lightbulbs, so the peanuts, cashews, and mixed nuts were always warm and fresh. The large candy case held Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, Mounds, Three Musketeer, and Milky Way candy bars, and Black Jack and Wrigley’s gum.

17

Everything in the candy case cost a nickel. Penny candy— peppermint sticks, suckers, jaw breakers, root beer barrels, and taffy—was in big glass jars on top of the candy case.

A magazine rack stood inside the front door. Everybody liked Life and Look. Men bought Gangster and Popular Science.

Women snuck in for True Story and True Confessions. Kids sat on the floor and read hundreds of Batman, Robin, Superman, and Wonder Woman comics.

During the mid-’30s, Mr. Freudenberg put in a soda fountain, with a counter and booths. Small, round, glass tables, and wrought iron chairs fit in the space in front of the counter. Two pale green malted milk machines made really, really thick malts and milk shakes; the soda jerks squirted chocolate, lemon, cherry, and Green River syrup out of ceramic containers into Cokes— all at 5¢ for a small glass, 10¢ for a large glass. Three‑scoop strawberry, chocolate, butterscotch, marshmallow, or pineapple sundaes topped with real whipped cream and a cherry cost a quarter. Two-flavor, double-dip ice cream cones cost a dime.

The pharmacy, where the druggist mixed up medicines, was a separate room in the back of the store. He shook powders into a pestle and ground them up with a mortar. It wasn’t a fancy operation—the pestle was just a little bowl, and the mortar was nothing but a stick he used to smash the powders, until he got them ground down real fine. Then, he spooned the mixture into small papers, folded them in half, and turned up the corners. He typed out labels one at a time.

Back then, when your doctor prescribed medicine, the druggist called him up and got everything squared away. The druggist actually told the doctor what should be in the medicine and whether or not you should take it. Different, huh?

Comic Strips Every Sunday, I read the comic strips in the newspaper—“Buck Rogers,” “Tarzan,” “Goops,” “Dumb Dora,” to name a few.

Back in my day, comic strips only came out in the Sunday paper.

AND . . . They. Were. Funny.

Today, comic strips are in the paper every day, but they aren’t funny, at all. They’re just something somebody, who didn’t have anything else to do, sat down and thought up.

Strange Things sure have changed. Life when I was growing up probably seems strange—VERY strange—to you. But the truth is that’s how it was.

Ruth remembers…

Plain Person My very first memories go back to when I was just a little kid, before I went to school. My mother and all my relatives called me Ruth Mildred. I remember my mother taking me to a wading pool to swim. I also remember my mother, father, and me batting a balloon around, trying to keep it up in the air.

I also remember playing with Rosemary Eckert. Rosemary was my favorite cousin. We rode bikes and just did things little girls like to do.

When I was real young, we had an icebox. Mother put a sign outside our apartment, the iceman drove along the street, saw

18

for her friends. After Cliff and I got married, he went over to her house every Friday night before he bowled, and they feasted.

The only time I cooked before I got married was when I was about ten. My mother was out, and I decided to surprise her by baking a cake. Well, she was really surprised—I didn’t bake my cake long enough. It was raw in the middle. So, Mother threw it out. She didn’t care two hoots about the cake, but she was put-out because she was afraid I might have hurt myself using the oven.

The truth is I never liked to cook. I’m not crazy about eating, in general. I’m not crazy about meat. I’m certainly not crazy about gourmet food. I’m a very plain person.

Ruth Mildred 1922

the sign, and delivered however many pounds of ice Mother needed. Eventually, when we moved into a different apartment, we had a refrigerator.

I, though, could care less what was in the kitchen. I never cooked until after I got married. My mother was the cook in our family.

She liked to cook and was good at it. Actually, she was a gourmet cook and enjoyed baking cakes and pies and having luncheons

Ruth Mildred and Rosemary around 1924

19

“This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.�

Franklin Delano Roosevelt First Inaugural Address March 4, 1933

Looking Back . . . .

The Great Depression 1929-1937

T

he bold, frank truth was the United States of America was in the throes of the Great Depression. At year-end 1932, thirteen million Americans—25 percent—were unemployed. They picked up whatever change they could—a little here, a little there. Every penny counted. They all helped fill the common pot.

Fourteen million people lived in unheated, filthy, overcrowded tenements. Thousands less fortunate were put out on the streets. The stock market turned upside down.

Factory doors were nailed shut. Banks closed—pulled down their shades; locked their doors. Depositors banged on the windows and demanded, “Let us in!” This was their money, not the bank’s. But a sign read, Bank Broke.

The mantra of the masses was, Repair. Reuse. Make do. Never throw anything away. Mothers mended socks and sewed patches over knee-holes. New dresses, pants, and even underwear were fashioned from patterned feed and flour sacks. Younger children wore hand-me-downs.

Mobs scrounged dirty city markets for scraps of spoiled food.

Kellogg’s Bran Flakes cost 10¢ a box, eggs 15¢ a dozen, bacon 19¢ a pound, but pockets were empty. Folks stood in bread lines and flocked to soup kitchens.

Families that could afford milk toast, oatmeal mixed with lard, boiled cabbage, chicken feet simmered in water, corn meal mush, or white bread sandwiches made with only ketchup, mayonnaise, or lard were “well off.” Families that ate Spam and noodles mixed with cream of mushroom soup were “rich.”

21

Hobos rode the rails and begged for food at farmhouses.

Bandits raided highways. Men who could no longer provide for their families pulled the trigger.

Women rallied. Nothing, nothing, was beneath them.

Some pickpocketed. Some stole stale bread. Some took in sewing. Some planted gardens. Some sold fruit. Others sold more than fruit. After their husbands deserted them, single mothers packed up their children, veiled their pride, and moved in with extended family.

To escape, people turned to music and books . . . “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” sang out reality. “We’re in the Money” sang out hope. John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath reassured people they weren’t alone. Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth told a universal story about resilience to poverty and suffering.

operated radios) needed a new source of revenue. So, they created a car radio, installed it in a 1930 Studebaker, and Paul drove 800 miles to a radio manufacturers’ convention in Atlantic City.

Too poor to secure a booth inside, Paul parked the Studebaker near the pier and cranked up the radio. Orders poured in. Shortly thereafter, Henry Ford tuned in, cut a deal with the brothers, and started offering factory-installed car radios in his Model A Ford—the Baby Lincoln. And the Galvins? Well, they changed their company’s name to Motorola.

Still, even during these troubled times, a handful of entrepreneurs persevered , prospered . . .

Charles Darrow, an out-of-work engineer, designed and patented a game challenging players to compete for riches and real estate.

Darrow tried to sell his game to Parker Brothers. They dismissed him. Undeterred, Darrow sold 5,000 handmade games to a Philadelphia department store. Parker Brothers reconsidered, played their Get out of Jail Free card, rolled the dice, and made Monopoly the bestselling board game of all time.

After Wall Street crashed, Paul and Joseph Galvin (owners of Galvin Manufacturing, who sold electric converters for battery-

22

Ruth Graves Wakefield graduated from the Framingham State Normal School Department of Household Arts in 1924. During the next eight years, she worked as a dietitian and lectured on food. Then, in 1930, Ruth and her husband bought a tourist lodge in Whitman, Massachusetts, and named it the Toll House Inn.

Cliff remembers . . .

Families Doubled Up

Well, Ruth became notorious for her Butter Drop Do Cookies.

The recipe called for Baker’s Chocolate. One day, she was out of chocolate. So, resourceful Ruth simply substituted a semi-sweet chocolate bar cut into bits. Guests loved her new cookies.

My family didn’t suffer as much during the Great Depression as most people. You see, Belleville’s economy depended basically on mining and farming. Well, after Wall Street crashed, most mines closed and coal miners lost their jobs; farmers couldn’t sell their crops and lost their land. So, most people were down-andout—downright hungry.

The chocolate bar happened to be a gift from Andrew Nestlé. After the recipe was printed in a Boston newspaper, sales of Nestlé semisweet chocolate bars soared. In appreciation, Mr. Nestlé cut a sweet deal with Mrs. Wakefield—a lifetime supply of Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate in exchange for printing her chocolate chip cookie recipe on the Nestlé package.

More than eighty years later (and counting), the recipe for the most popular cookie in America still appears on the back of the Nestlé package.

Cliff Stock and Ruth Schwartz lived through the Great Depression. Their memories splash color on the pages of dull, dusty history books.

Cliff and Freddie around 1935

But we lived in a neighborhood. And the thing about living in a neighborhood was nobody went hungry. If somebody didn’t have a job, neighbors helped. Unlike today, people didn’t get a single lick of support from the government. They survived because of their neighbors, not welfare.

My father didn’t have any problems. He worked all the way through the Great Depression. But it didn’t start out that way . . . Dad was a foreman at National Carbon Company— they made Eveready batteries. In about 1930, the company moved the plant from Belleville to South Carolina.

Well, Grandma Wittmann put up such a fuss about our family moving Dad said, “Okay. We won’t move. We’ll take our chances.

I’ll find something.” We stayed in Belleville and life went on.

When National Carbon left town, Dad decided he might as well paint our house. So, he went to the hardware store and bought a couple five-gallon cans of white lead paint and some color. Then, he got a bucket and mixed up a bunch of yellow paint.

Around 1977, the government banned lead paint because kids got lead poisoning from licking it off their toys and breathing in the paint dust during remodeling projects. But back in my day, everybody used lead paint.

Anyhow, Dad had his paint, so the next day he cleaned the clapboards. Just as he started to paint, the telephone rang.

The call was from a guy at Knapp Monarch. Come to find out, Knapp Monarch was getting ready to move into the old Carbon plant and wanted Dad to help get the building ready.

So, my dad was off work only a couple of weeks before he went to the plant and replaced the black glass that had been knocked out. Then, he cleaned the water tank and painted everything in sight. When he was finished, Knapp Monarch moved in and offered Dad a job as a foreman. And that’s what carried us through the Great Depression.

24

Cliff, Mom, Dad, and Fred around 1939

Even though we weren’t hungry, my grandmother’s sister wasn’t as lucky. She and her husband had a bunch of kids. Still, they took in another family that didn’t have a place to live and fed everyone from their garden vegetables.

Families doubled up and helped each other. I don’t think people today would do that.

Ruth remembers…

Great Mother My mother, Florence Adeline Hood Schwartz, and my father, John Austin Schwartz, separated when I was about five years old, and I didn’t see my father again until my grandmother died twenty-one years later. I was an only child. So, during the years I was growing up, it was just me and Mother. We lived in an apartment in Saint Louis, Missouri.

I don’t know exactly why my mother and father separated. I do know he was attracted to women. Mother wouldn’t put up with that nonsense, so she left him five or six times. He always came after her, until the last time. They were never divorced, but my father hooked up with another woman who became his common-law wife. Of all things, her name was Ruth.

Anyway, like most kids, when I was growing up, I didn’t realize that my mother was a good mother. Actually, she was a great mother. Mother was always a single mother. My father never contributed a single penny to support me. This was during the Great Depression, so Mother really struggled to make ends meet—she had to. Mother took care of me and kept me with her, even when relatives told her she should put me in an orphan’s home.

One of my aunts and her husband ran a really, really big paper route. They were comfortable all through the Great Depression, so my mother worked for them—at least for a short time. Back then, paperboys (they were usually boys) went from house to house collecting payment from their customers. That was Mother’s job.

John Austin Schwartz

Well, that wasn’t a steady job, but another aunt owned a delicatessen store with a soda bar, where she served sandwiches and sold candy. The store was across the street from a factory and was busy during lunchtime, so Mother picked up a little work there. But, again, it was a part-time job. So, Mother was parttiming it all over the place but not making very much money.

Even though Mother worked two part-time jobs, she was always home when I got home from school. But, even then, she didn’t sit. She did all the shopping, cleaning, cooking—everything. I didn’t do anything. Well, on occasion, I helped her with the wash because she had to go down to the basement in our apartment building to use the washing machine. But the truth is I didn’t do any chores when I was growing up.

25

Ruth Mildred around 1931

First Two-piece My mother and I had a very good relationship. We had fun together. Like most people during the Great Depression, we didn’t have money for entertainment, so we spent lots of time at the library, and that contributed to my interest in school. From kindergarten on, I liked school—especially reading. Come to think of it, I never even saw a comic book until I had my own kids.

I always read library books.

But I must tell you that, in her way, Mother was very old-fashioned. You see, back in her day, women didn’t wear revealing clothing.

Mother rarely went near the water because she was afraid of it. (She was terrified of heights, too.)

But, anyway, when she did go to the beach, she wore a bathing suit that covered her down to her knees and protected her lilywhite skin. It was a black, knee-length, puffed-sleeve wool dress, with a sailor collar.

She wore it over bloomers, trimmed with ribbons and bows and accessorized it with long black stockings, lace-up bathing slippers, and a fancy cap. I don’t know how women swam in those things.

Now, think about this: During Mother’s teenage years, when a woman went to the beach, she undressed an a bathing machine—a small, windowless house on wheels that sat on the sand, far away from the men’s section of the beach. (Heaven forbid a man glimpse a woman in her bathing suit.)

The house (or cabana) had a bench and two towels. No mirror.

The only light was from an opening in the peaked roof. The floor was four feet off the sand, reachable by a stepladder. After

the woman was properly attired, horses drew the house out to the deep water, where she climbed down the ladder into the ocean.

If the woman couldn’t swim, the female attendant circled her waist with a strong cord attached to the house. After she splashed around in the surf for ten or fifteen minutes, she climbed up the ladder and horses hauled her back to the shore.

But men? No surprise—men just jumped off a small patrol boat, wearing only their drawers.

Anyway, when two-piece bathing suits came in, Mother didn’t allow me to get one for a long time. When I finally got my first twopiece, the top was a full bra and the bottom was a pair of pants with an over-skirt. I don’t like two-pieces because I don’t think they do the best for your figure, but I got one because everybody was wearing them.

Never Complained Even though my parents were separated, Mother and I were close to my father’s side of the family. I don’t know why, but maybe it was because of my grandmother. I do know we did lots with them. We went to their house, and on picnics, and did the general stuff families do. It was the same with my mother’s side of the family.

Because of Mother, I never knew what it was like for most people during the Great Depression. Mother really had problems, but she never complained. So, I didn’t realize how much she struggled until I figured it out years later.

27

28

Pearl Harbor, 1941

Looking Back . . .

World War Two 1938-1946

07 DEC 1941 0700 hours, Hawaiian time

T

wo U.S. Army privates snapped to full-alert. They stared at their radar screens. What the . . . Were more than fifty unidentified planes really approaching from the northeast?

They called their superior officer.

“Don’t worry, boys. The anomaly is probably part of an unexpected delivery of new B-17s coming from mainland United States,” he said.

destroyed the American battleship USS Arizona and capsized the USS Oklahoma. Another 20 ships were sunk or beached. Over 310 aircraft were damaged or destroyed. Even more tragically, 2,400 Americans (military and civilian) were dead. Another 1,180 were wounded.

On December 8th, at 12:30 p.m., President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his Day of Infamy speech to a joint session of Congress and, via radio, the nation. The Senate responded with a unanimous vote supporting war. Only Montana pacifist, Jeanette Rankin, dissented in the House.

At 4 p.m., President Roosevelt signed the declaration of war.

More than two years after the conflict started in Europe, the United States of America was officially engaged in World War Two—the most deadly and destructive war in history.

Suddenly, patriotism was popular. Americans were proud. The red, white, and blue of Old Glory stirred passion in their hearts and brought tears to their eyes. “She’s a grand old flag,” and they would fight for her freedom. They would die for her honor.

The “intel” was wrong.

The radar blip was the first wave of Japanese planes that struck the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory. Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, leader of the attack, shouted, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (“Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!”)—a coded message informing the Japanese navy that Americans were caught by surprise.

At 0758 hours, the Pearl Harbor command radioed its first message to the world: AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. An hour later, a second wave of Japanese aircraft attacked. The two raids—350 planes—lasted under two hours. Still, bombs 29

Enthusiastic volunteers packed local draft board offices. Almost overnight, the economy shifted to war production.

By early spring 1942, mandatory gas rationing was a way of life. Gas wasn’t the problem. Rubber tires were. Japanese armies had conquered the rubber-producing regions of Southeast Asia and cut off America’s rubber supply. So, to conserve rubber, the government reduced the national speed limit to 35 miles an hour and issued gas ration classifications.

Gas rationing was regulated through the federal Office of Price Administration (OPA). Citizens appeared, in person, at an OPA office, certified their need for gas, and documented that they owned no more than five automobile tires (any more were confiscated). Half of all U.S. drivers were declared “nonessential” and issued black “A” windshield stickers that allowed them to buy four gallons of gas per week. For nearly a year, “A” stickered drivers were not allowed to drive for pleasure.

By March 1942, dog food was banned from metal cans. By April, civilians could not buy toothpaste unless they turned in an empty metal toothpaste tube. By May, each citizen, including babies, in the renowned “Land of Plenty” received a food ration book.

Sugar was the first consumer commodity rationed. Coffee, meat, lard, shortening, oil, cheese, eggs, jams, jellies, fruit butters, and processed foods soon followed. Women attended training sessions and learned to shop prudently, yet serve nutritious meals. Oleo margarine replaced butter. Cottage cheese substituted for meat.

When shoppers discovered two boxes of macaroni and cheese 30

cost one ration coupon, Kraft’s mundane blue box was suddenly a glamorous celebrity.

As the 1942 calendar pages turned, ration coupons were issued for liquor, cigarettes, typewriters, metal office furniture, radios, phonographs, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, sewing machines, stoves, fuel oil, silk, nylon, and even shoes.

Americans accepted changes the war forced on the country. While men fought in foreign battlefields, women stayed home and worked in industries that supported the war effort. After all, the government’s slogan promised—The more women at work, the sooner we win.

More than six million Rosie the Riveters donned pants, packed lunch pails, and whistled off to do a “man’s job.” They built planes, bombs, and tanks. They drove streetcars, operated heavy construction machinery, worked in lumber and steel mills, and unloaded freight. Rosie was powerful, patriotic . . . clever, competent . . . and, yes, pretty.

Canned goods were shipped to troops over there. So, the government encouraged civilians to provide for the homefront by planting Victory Gardens. Life and The Saturday Evening Post printed

stories supporting the need. Woman’s Day and Good Housekeeping printed “how-to” features. Twenty million Americans rallied. Victory Gardens were planted in empty lots, backyards, and even on city rooftops—all in the name of patriotism.

scope. He had an idea. In 1958, after seventeen years of rejection and trial and error, Sylvia Porter endorsed de Mestral’s “zipperless zipper” in her New York Post financial column, “Your Money’s Worth.” Velcro, finally, went mainstream.

But the 1940s weren’t only about war. Some of the greatest inventions of all time debuted . . .

Like all World War Two couples, building inspector, Fred Morrison, and his fiancée, Lucile, made the best of their time together before he shipped out. One morning, they tossed a round cake pan back and forth on a beach in Santa Monica, California. An observer offered Fred 25¢ for their toy.

By the end of the decade, Tupperware—the burping seal—was a household staple. Sure, men were home from the war and once again “bringing in the bacon.” Still, former Rosie the Riveters weren’t willing to retire—completely. They capitalized on Earl Elias Tupper’s invention and started the homeparty revolution.

Naval engineer, Richard James, had a problem— he needed a spring that could support and stabilize sensitive instruments aboard ships in rough seas. One day, he knocked his experiment off a shelf and watched it “walk” on a banana split, to a stack of books,

to a tabletop, to the floor, where it recoiled and stood upright. Enter the Slinky.

Swiss electrical engineer, George de Mestral, loved to hunt. His dogs loved to hunt.

The problem was burdock burrs stuck to his clothes and his dogs’ fur. One day, as he picked off the pesky seeds, he became intrigued with their hooks and loops. He looked closely. He examined them under a micro-

Hummm . . . If a cake pan that cost a nickel was really worth a quarter, weren’t they onto something?

Well, time passed. Fred flew P-47s in the Army Air Force, until he was captured and held prisoner of war. The war ended. In 1948, after several prototype attempts, Fred marketed Flying Saucers. In 1957, Fred sold the rights to what he then called Pluto Platters to Wham-O. Wham-O changed the name to Frisbee. Fred hated the new name—until he received a $2 million dollar royalty payment.

World War Two and the decade of the ’40s changed lives of countless Americans—Cliff Stock and Ruth Schwartz included.

During these years, they started their life together.

31

Cliff remembers . . .

Sixty-five Dollars—a Month After I graduated high school—we’re talking ’38 here—I got a job at Duke Manufacturing Company in Saint Louis, Missouri.

Marsh P. Duke founded the company in 1925 to design and manufacture foodservice equipment for major restaurant chains, schools, and institutions. The original building stood at almost the exact location where the Gateway Arch stands today.

During World War II, Duke produced galley equipment for tank-landing ships that transported troops and supplies around the world. The company did such a good job it received the Army-Navy “E” award for excellence. Less than four percent of companies that did war work won this honor.

Anyhow, I worked five and a half days a week and made sixtyfive dollars a month. Yes. I said, “A month!” Back then, there was no such thing as overtime. When old man Duke hired me, he told me he normally hired on guys at $60 a month, but because I had to drive all the way from Belleville (about seventeen miles) he’d pay me an extra $5 for transportation.

I want you to know that, during the ’40s, $65 a month was a very big deal.

I worked in a backroom shop in an old brick building on North 9th Street in Saint Louis. The bricks started at the sidewalk and leaned out over the edge of the roof. I have no idea how that building held together. But, lucky for me, it did.

Shortly after I started, Duke was awarded a contract to outfit the navy mess halls at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida.

We ended up installing fifteen cafeteria counters and fifteen big stand-alone coffee makers.

32

Well, back in the ’40s, good stainless steel wasn’t available, so most equipment was made out of Monel metal—a copper and nickel material that shined up and had sort of a glow. Compared to steel, Monel was very difficult to machine. It hardened quickly, so we had to work it at slow speeds and feed rates.

Anyhow, because Monel was so new, nobody knew exactly how to handle it. Old man Duke did know he wanted to make lots of money, so he decided we’d build the frames for the cafeteria counters one at a time. The problem was we had to stand them up on end in the middle of the shop so they wouldn’t fall over, and that didn’t leave much room to work.

No Coke for Ruth Schwartz Eventually, Duke moved its offices across the alley upstairs into the Broadway building, so I worked in that building a few hours a week. One Saturday morning, I stayed later than normal. Well, as I was putting on my coat to leave, the door opened. A young lady, wearing a tan skirt, Polo coat, and big hat with a beak stood there huffing and puffing. (She had just walked up two flights of stairs.)

I didn’t say a word—just looked at her and wondered what she wanted. Pretty soon, she caught her breath and said, “I want to speak to Mr. Duke.”

“Okay . . . But what’s your name? I’ll ask him if he wants to see you,” I said.

She said, “Ruth Schwartz,” turned her back on me, and sat down.

I walked in the backroom and said, “Mr. Duke, a Ruth Schwartz wants to see you.”

He said, “I’ll be there in a minute.” So I went out front and asked this Ruth Schwartz if she wanted a Coke.

“NO! I do not want a Coke,” she said. (Can you imagine Ruthie not wanting a Coke!?)

Anyhow, Mr. Duke talked to Ruthie and hired her on the spot.

A couple weeks later, she marched over to my drafting board, where a couple guys and I were eating lunch. The next thing I knew, Ruthie looked me straight in the eye and said, “So, Cliff, are we going to have as much fun on our date tonight as we did on our date last night?”

The guys stopped chewing. I stopped chewing. I was thinking, What the . . . We didn’t go out last night, but managed to say, “Sure. I’ll pick you up at seven.” With that, Ruthie turned her back on me and flounced off. (Ruthie seemed to have a habit of turning her back on me.)

I didn’t have a car, but my dad let me borrow his, as long as I filled it up with eight gallons of gasoline. Gas cost me a dollar.

Movies cost me sixty cents. I had to shell out ninety cents for shows at the Fox. I guess that wasn’t too bad—good thing, because I didn’t have much money to spend on dates.

After Ruthie and I dated for thirty-two weeks, I bought her a charm bracelet. Then, every two weeks, after I got paid, I bought her a silver charm. You see, heart bracelets were popular—girls had their initials engraved on silver hearts and gave them to their friends. A heart charm sealed friendships. So, I picked out hearts I liked and gave them to Ruthie. I even gave her my gold baby ring.

Anyhow, at seven o’clock, sharp, I pulled up in front of her apartment building, driving my dad’s car. I took her to a baseball game at the old Sportsman Park in Saint Louis. (Back in the ’40s, the Cardinals and Browns played in the same stadium.)

After the game, I took her out for a bite to eat.

Every Friday Night After our first date, we went out every Friday night. You see, Ruthie was dating a guy by the name of Ben Rogers. She dated Ben Saturday night and Sunday night. I had Friday night and Sunday, all day. Then, Ben joined the army and left to fight in World War II. But I was still in Saint Louis, so Ruthie agreed to date just me.

I took her to the Three Sisters, where they had a jukebox, and we danced and drank Cokes. I took her to movies and out afterwards for cheese and olive sandwiches. I even sprung for tickets to Saint Louis’s Fabulous Fox Theatre. The Fox was a movie palace that had over 5,000 seats and filled them every night. They brought in fancy stage shows and Big Bands. Ruthie liked Fred Murray and Bennie Goodman, but the Glenn Miller Orchestra was her favorite.

Cliff and Ruth 1942

33

Saint Louis Ordnance Plant In 1941, I left Duke to work in the steel control department at the Ordnance Plant, where Fred worked. During World War Two, the Saint Louis Ordnance Plant operated twentyfour hours a day, seven days a week. It was the world’s largest manufacturer of .30-caliber and .50-caliber ammunition for rifles and machine guns. By 1943, with the war going fullscale, nearly 35,000 people worked on the 291-acre complex of 300 buildings and bunkers at 4300 Goodfellow Boulevard, on the city’s northwest edge. The plant’s production peaked at 250 million cartridges a month.

Anyhow, I made $135 a month. So, in September of ’42, when the new Chevrolets came out, I had saved enough money to buy one. It was a two-door sedan that cost me $1,250. It had a slope back and all the bells and whistles you could get at that time— white wall tires, fog lights, a spotlight on the side. Everything.

Eventually, my boss changed me over to the tool and gauge shop, where I wrote requisitions for steel materials. I worked a sixty-hour shift—six days a week, ten hours a day, with thirty minutes for lunch, and flipped back and forth from two weeks on days to two weeks on nights. The day shift started at 7 a.m. and got off at 5:30 p.m.; the night shift started at 5:30 p.m. and got off at 4 a.m.

With my schedule, some weeks Ruthie and I had lots of time together. Some weeks we didn’t.

Why Not? I can’t tell you, for sure, why I wanted to marry Ruthie. I guess I thought, Why not? And we just decided to get married. I don’t remember how I proposed, but I do remember we went to a jeweler in Saint Louis who had an office up on the fifth floor of a building downtown. We hardly said, “Hello,” before he pulled out a ring with a center diamond, surrounded by twenty small diamonds, set in an iridium platinum setting.

34

That ring cost me lots of money—$480. But Ruthie wanted it, so I bought it on time and paid the jeweler a little every month.

Ruthie threw a big deal engagement party so she could show off her ring to her girlfriends. We cut out paper hearts, wrote Cliff and Ruth on them, and attached them to a spring we had glued into a small box. When Ruthie’s girlfriends opened their boxes, the heart popped up. They were very impressed.

Pearl Harbor Day On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It was a Sunday, at noon, Eastern Standard Time. One of my school friends had joined the navy a couple of months before and was home on boot leave. We were sitting in a soda shop when we heard Paul Harvey’s announcement come over the radio. Like every American we were shocked and had no idea how “the rest of the story” would play out.

I wasn’t in the service yet. I didn’t know when I’d be called, but figured I’d be drafted soon. So, on August 24, 1942, I enlisted in the navy. I decided to join the navy because my uncle was in the navy. Plus, it seemed to me if I served on a ship I’d have a nice clean bed to sleep in every night. It was better than trotting around in all that mud and goop.

Boot Camp A week or two after I enlisted, I received orders to report to boot camp. That was a long day. My dad dropped me off at the federal building in Saint Louis, where, along with forty other guys, I stood in front of the United States flag, raised my right hand, and took the United States Armed Forces Oath of Enlistment: I, Clifford Stock, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

After our oath, we rode a bus to Union Station and boarded a train headed to Chicago. Well, that train stopped at every Podunk town along the way to pick up more troops. It was a slow, slow trip. When we finally got to Chicago, we walked to the “L”—Chicago’s rapid transit system—and climbed up-top, where we boarded a “B” train to Great Lakes Naval Station — the U.S. Navy’s Headquarters Command for training.

By the time we got to Great Lakes, it was seven-thirty, and the chow lines were closed. Eventually, a few cooks came in and made a bunch of bologna sandwiches. So, even though the navy hauled us all the way to Great Lakes on a slow, slow train, all they gave us to eat was a cold bologna sandwich and glass of milk.

After we ate, we marched to a building, where they issued our bedding. The blankets had been stored in moth balls. Do you know how blankets smell and feel when fine moth ball powder gets in the wool? Terrible!

Anyhow, we, then, marched to our barracks, only to discover it was an old, old barracks that didn’t even have bunks. It had a bunch of “jack stays,” which were nothing but a long line of iron pipes that held hammocks. (So much for my nice clean bed!)

The secret to sleeping in a hammock is to pull it as tight as you can get it, stick your mattress in, and crawl inside. We had moth ball blankets but no sheets, so we itched all night. Plus, guys had no experience with hammocks, so they fell out, right and left. At least we laughed—a little.

The next morning we marched to a big building, where we stripped buck-naked and stood in line to take our physicals.

After our physicals (still buck-naked) we advanced through an assembly line and got measured for uniforms. Guys armed with black magic markers scribbled our chest sizes on our chests, our arm lengths on our arms, our leg lengths on our legs, and our waist size on our bellies. Before we knew it, we had numbers all over our bodies.

It got worse—we were sent to see a psychiatric evaluator. So, here’s a captain, sitting behind a big desk, fully clothed and immaculate. And here we are, buck-naked seaman recruits, covered with black marks.

Believe it or not, he asked us questions to determine our mental stability.

Anyhow, we finally got our clothing—six t-shirts, six pair of boxer shorts, six pair of black socks, a pair of tennis shoes, and a pair of black dress shoes. Then, we got a white sailor’s cap, chambray shirts, Seaman Recruit Clifford J. Stock and bell bottom trousers, 1942 which were like jeans. Then, they issued our dress blues— “Crackerjack jumpers”—with piping on the sleeves. Finally, we got shaving gear and hand soap that we stuffed into a ditty bag.

The Great Lakes Naval Station sat (still does) on the banks of Lake Michigan in Illinois. The main complex—“Main Side”—had a hospital, supply building, paymaster, and gym.

The training facility had three camps—Camp Dewey, Camp Downs, and Camp Porter—each with barracks, showers, head, drill fields, obstacle course, and mess hall.

35

Much of what we did at Great Lakes was conditioning—along with calisthenics, we marched for hours—back and forth, round and round, without going anywhere. About the only thing we learned from all that marching was how to treat blisters.

Then, there was the “Yes, sir!” lesson. I’ll bet I said, “Yes, sir!” at least a hundred times a day. Yes, sir this and Yes, sir that was all about discipline. You see, wartime battles demand discipline.

Everyone must be coordinated. Everyone must do his job.

We were proud Americans—proud navy men. I still remember the Sailor’s Creed . . .

I am a United States Sailor.

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and I will obey the orders of those appointed over me.

I represent the fighting spirit of the Navy and those who have gone before me to defend freedom and democracy around the world.

I proudly serve my country’s Navy combat team with Honor, Courage and Commitment.

I am committed to excellence and the fair treatment of all.

Not everything was marching and patriotic stuff. Guys circulated pictures of pinup girls—cheesecake shots of famous singers and dancers like Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, and Ava Gardner— that they pinned inside their lockers and on barracks’ walls. Fly boys even stuck pinups on the sides of their planes. Pinups were supposed to boost morale. Believe it or not the government spent tax payers’ dollars to ship and distribute them.

36

Anyhow, our lockers were nothing but orange crates set side by side in a Quonset hut. No pinups for us. I didn’t care because if an inspector saw you had a pinup, he gave you demerits, and you had to do extra pushups or even clean the head with a toothbrush. In my book, I wouldn’t scrub toilets for ANY racy picture.

Twin Beds Late in September of ’42, I got boot leave and went home to Saint Louis, where Ruthie and I were married on October 4th, 1942. That’s kinda’ interesting because my grandfather was married on October 4th, and Donna and Chuck were married on October 6th. I guess there’s just something about October.

Anyhow, for our wedding night, Fred booked us a room at the Coronado Hotel in Saint Louis. Come to find out, the room had twin beds, separated by a nightstand. Ridiculous. Just ridiculous.

We rearranged the furniture and pushed the beds together.

Rationing By the time Ruthie and I got married, I’d sold my car and had to borrow Fred’s car for our honeymoon. During the war, rationing was enforced, which meant you had to have ration tickets if you wanted to buy gas and lots of other things.

Well, my brother’s job allowed him to buy gas, so that wasn’t a problem. But we did have another little problem—on our way to the hotel in Jefferson City, Missouri, where we spent our honeymoon, we had a flat and had to get out and change the tire.

We only stayed a couple days because my ten-day leave was almost over, and I had to get back to the base. So, as soon as we returned to Saint Louis, Ruthie drove me to the train station, and I went back to Great Lakes.

Cliff and Ruthie Honeymoon, 1942

Old Fleabag Hotel I was on a draft assigned to Chicago’s Navy Pier—an “A School” for training aircraft machinist mates. I was there from midOctober until May, when I graduated. I had a three-day leave in December, so Ruthie rode the train to Chicago for Christmas, and we stayed at the Sherman Hotel. Then, I put her on the train back to Saint Louis and returned to Navy Pier.

Proud

After I graduated, an officer asked me what I wanted to do. I said, “I joined the navy. What do YOU want me to do?” Well, the navy decided I should stay in Chicago as an instructor. Okay.

Fine. By then, I had my crow patch—an eagle with a single chevron underneath—and was a petty officer third class. That meant I was in ship’s company and didn’t have to live on base.

Anyhow, as I said, Ruthie got to Chicago on a Sunday, and on Monday she went out and found a job. I don’t remember exactly how much she made, but it was over $100 a month. She was making more money than me, so together we did alright. We had enough to buy food and didn’t need a car, because we rode the streetcar—actually because I was in the navy, it didn’t cost me a dime to ride the streetcar.

I called Ruthie and told her that if she’d move to Chicago, I’d find an apartment and come home every night, except every fourth night, when I was on duty. She thought that was fine, so I rented an apartment, and Ruthie made arrangements to move.

Plus, any time we went out and I wore my uniform, total strangers bought my drinks. Most times, I didn’t even pay for my food because some stranger picked up the tab.

Well, Ruthie got to Chicago on a Sunday, ready to move into our apartment. But we had a little problem—the manager wasn’t around on the weekend, so we couldn’t get in and had to go to an old fleabag hotel. We hadn’t seen each other for five months, but that dirty hotel was the only place we could find to spend the night.

Money Left Over The pay for a petty officer third class was $58 a month; the apartment cost fifty bucks; my insurance was $6. That doesn’t leave much, does it? Well, because Ruthie was my wife—my dependent—I had to give her $22 a month from my pay, and the navy gave her $28 a month. That added up to $50 a month.

We used that money to pay for the apartment, and I ended up with money left over.

38

As an aside . . . The government needed money to support the war.

So, every two weeks, after I got paid, we spent $18.75 and bought a Series E war bond. The interest rate was only 2.9 percent, and they didn’t mature for twenty-five years. But we saved up enough over the years to buy furniture and carpets for our first house.

It’s hard to believe in this day and age, but during World War Two, Americans were proud of military people and military people were proud to serve—they wanted to serve.

Enough Is Enough When you’re in the navy, you can only stay so long at one duty station before they move you someplace else. When my time was over at Navy Pier, the navy put me on a draft to Florida.

Because I had no idea where I’d end up, I sent Ruthie home to Saint Louis. Well, wouldn’t you know it? The navy took me off the draft, and told me I had to stay at Navy Pier. So, I called up Ruthie and told her to turn around and come back to Chicago.

Well, on her way, she lost her suitcase. Somebody picked it up and left one just like it sitting in the train station. Come to find out,

it belonged to some guy who’d been traveling, and it was full of dirty clothes. Eventually, the railroad detectives found Ruthie’s suitcase and got the whole mess straightened out.

Anyhow, I couldn’t rent the same apartment we had before.

I had to take a smaller one. Come to find out, the size didn’t matter . . . A couple of days after Ruthie got to Chicago everything changed, again. My superior officer handed me orders to report to Sanford, Florida.

Ruthie said, “Enough is enough,” and refused to go back to Saint Louis. She had just been hired to work in Chicago. But Ruthie didn’t care. She quit before she even started.

Smelling Like a Rose Ruthie and I boarded the Miami Limited—the train to Florida.

Ruthie rode in a car with civilians, but I had to ride in the cattle car, with at least thirty other guys who were on the draft. The cattle car was the same size as the “40 & 8” train cars Germans used to transport prisoners to death camps—“40 & 8” meant it was big enough to carry either forty men or eight horses. Good thing the trip was only overnight.

When we got to Florida, we saw an ad in the paper for a garage apartment. Even though Ruthie was pregnant with CJ and would have to walk upstairs, the apartment only cost $35 a month, so we took it.

Now, here’s where the deal came in: We went on navy sustenance.

That meant we got $37 a month, which was more than the $28 we got from the government, and I didn’t have to give Ruthie her $22 anymore. We paid the gal who owned the apartment $35, and at the end of the month, we were two bucks ahead.

That’s how to come out smelling like a rose!

Just Got Lucky While I was in Florida, I was promoted to petty officer second class. I was still on the draft, but when navy brass discovered I’d been a teacher at Navy Pier, they took me off the draft and put me in ship’s company.

I got orders to report to a training school, where I taught pilots how to diagnose a flight—in other words, how to figure out what was wrong with their airplanes. At least that’s what I was supposed to do. What I really did most days was play cribbage with the chief.

Eventually, the navy needed petty officers first class. I put in for a promotion, took the test, and got it. So less than two years after I went into the service, I went from seaman recruit to petty officer first class.

That was pretty darn good. But Ruthie told me I just got lucky.

Ruth remembers…

Keep Your Knees Together After I graduated high school, I went to what nowadays is called a junior college. Back then, they didn’t call it a junior college because you could get a full college degree in two years. I could have graduated as a gym teacher with a two-year course of study, but I chose business because I was oriented that way.

I took accounting in high school. I liked it. That’s more or less why I went along with taking a business course, where I learned

39

everything about an office. I even learned how to sit properly in front of my boss—it was office protocol for girls to keep their knees together.

Then, there was shorthand. Gregg Shorthand was best-known.

Shorthand is a way to write quickly, using abbreviations, strokes, and symbols. It looks like this . . .

For work, I dressed in “utility clothes” influenced by wartime rationing—squared shoulders, narrow hips, and skirts that ended just below the knee were in. Tailored suits were popular. Until nylon stockings came in during the war, girls wore silk stockings with a seam up the back. I remember going down to Marshall Field’s and standing in line to buy my first pair of nylons.

That was before pantyhose, so whatever stockings I wore, I held them up with a garter belt—a wide, elastic, girdle-like undergarment, with tabs that hung down and hooked onto my stockings. Sometimes, when I didn’t want to carry I purse, I stuck my billfold and lipstick into my garter belt.

Convenient, maybe. Comfortable, never.

Time-Motion Studies During the ’40s, billing machines (mechanical machines that calculated and created invoices) were bigger than my dining room table is today and very noisy. Typewriters were big, black, clunky things. When I typed to the end of a line, a bell rang, and I had to sling the carriage back with my right hand.

Computers have a light touch, but I had to really bang away on those typewriters.

If I needed to make three or four copies of a letter, I stuck carbon paper between the sheets of typing paper. This was before Wite-Out correction fluid or erasable onion skin typewriter paper. So, when I made a mistake, I had to erase it on every single sheet of paper. And, keep in mind, before I could graduate business school, I had to take a test and prove I could type 80 words a minute, without a mistake.

40

I sat in front of my boss’s desk (knees together) while he dictated a letter, and I wrote what he said in shorthand. (I could write 80 words a minute.) Then, I typed up the letter, and he signed it. Even though I really did all the work, his initials were at the bottom in uppercase, followed by mine in lowercase: MPD:rms.

Let’s face it, during the ’40s, and for years after, men were men, and women were girls.

Anyway, I like organizing things, so I liked the orderliness of office work. I received most of my raises because I could organize whatever. What I did was similar to time-motion studies. I should have gone on to a higher college and graduated with a degree in time-motion, because I was really good at it.

I worked in accounting at Jewel Tea—a food manufacturing company in Saint Louis. When the bakery lists came in, they were a hodgepodge. One day, the buns were listed on one side of a page; the next day, they were listed someplace completely different.

Well, my job was to price out items, and it was a big waste of time to continually search here, there, and everywhere. So, I worked out a form and asked the company to use it. My boss liked it, so he gave me a raise because I saved the company time.

Steady Eddie Before I worked at Jewel Tea, I worked at Duke Manufacturing.

I started in 1939 and made $65 a month. That was good money—lots more than most of my friends made.

I saw Cliff the day I went for my interview and thought he was the office boy. He walked into the room, where I sat waiting, and asked me if I wanted a Coke. I did not want a Coke. I wanted a job.

Nothing—I mean NOT A THING—attracted me to Cliff. I only went out with him because the girls in the office kept after him to date me. They kept it up and kept it up until they started on me, too. Well, I worked in payroll and had lots of paperwork.

So, I took my papers into the drafting room where Cliff worked, sat at one of the big drafting boards, and spread out.

One day, the teasing got to me. So, I waltzed over to Cliff and said, “Oh, CLIFF . . . Shall we go out tonight, like we did last night?”

Cliff turned red. He gulped. Finally, he stammered, “Well . . . okay. Yeah. I guess we can.” He was so out of it I didn’t think he’d show up.

That evening Mother and I stood behind the curtains and peeked out the window, watching for him. Cliff drove up in front of our apartment building right on the minute. We went out that night and had a good enough time, but I was dating another guy—my Steady Eddie.

Well, Steady Eddie’s mother insisted that he drive her to visit friends and relatives on Friday nights, so he asked if that was okay with me. What was I going to say? I agreed. But no way was I going to sit home alone Friday night. Cliff was an okay second choice.

Then, Steady Eddie enlisted in the army. We couldn’t even write because mail didn’t go back and forth. I knew he was a prisoner of war and in the Bataan Death March because I read it in the paper. The Bataan Death March was a horrible thing.

Early in the war, thousands of Americans were captured in the Philippines and force-marched across the Bataan Peninsula.

Along the way, they were starved, beaten, beheaded, shot, and bayonetted. Eventually, Masaharu Homma (the Japanese general who headed the march) was charged with forty-three different counts of war crimes and sentenced to death by a firing squad.

Anyway, there was no future with my Steady Eddie, so I called in the second string.

Back in the ’40s, there were rules for dating: First, the guy always asked the girl out. If she accepted, he set the time and picked the place. Both dressed up—coat, tie, white shirt, shined shoes for guys; dress, stockings, heels, white gloves for girls. When the guy picked up his date, he was not allowed to sit in the car and honk the horn. He had to get out, ring the doorbell, and endure the once-over from her parents. First-date fresh flowers were a must.

Then, there was the “how-to-walk rule.” The guy walked curbside, so he could protect his date from getting hit by a car or splashed with mud. At the end of the evening (girls had a midnight curfew), he walked her to her door, thanked her for a “lovely evening,” and if it was the first date, he shook her hand.

Never, ever kiss your date goodnight on the first date. After all, she was a “good girl,” with a reputation to uphold—if she wasn’t a “good girl,” he could play by an entirely different set of rules!

41

Anyway, Cliff and I double-dated, went to shows, drank Cokes, and went swimming. We danced a lot because almost everyplace had a jukebox and some even brought in dance trios.

I was a good dancer. My Steady Eddie was a good dancer. Cliff was a terrible dancer. Still, with me, he got lots of practice.

Usual Reasons I decided to marry Cliff for the usual reasons—I must have been in love with him. Plus, I thought he was cute and would be a good husband.

Back then, Cliff was a nice, gentle person—not an old crab like he is now.

I don’t remember if Cliff actually proposed, but I do remember he asked Mother if he could marry me. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what he said. But somehow or the other, we decided to get married and picked out a ring. Cliff had to save up his money before he could buy my ring, but one day, he brought it to my house and said, “Here’s your ring.”

Alex and Ryan did something very special. Not Cliff. Cliff was never that type of person.

Women Worked Cliff and I got married October 4th, 1942. Our wedding wasn’t particularly large. My cousin wore pastel green and was my maid of honor.

My two good friends wore yellow and were my bridesmaids. That was it.

World War Two was going on, and Cliff was in the navy, but he hadn’t been sent overseas yet.

Right after our honeymoon, he went to Navy 42

Cliff and Ruthie, 1942

Pier in Chicago, where he was stationed. I sort of remember moving back and forth from Saint Louis to Chicago a couple of times, so I could be with him. What I really remember, though, is when we moved to Sanford, Florida, and rented a tiny apartment over a garage.

I was pregnant with CJ but went right out and got a job working for ship’s service on the navy base. During the war, women worked. We believed it was our patriotic duty.

One day, I was sitting on a stool, with my feet hooked around the brace. Somehow the stool jilted, and I fell off.

Paralyzed With Panic My fall was scary, but it wasn’t anything compared to what happened at our apartment . . .

To get to our apartment, we had to walk up a flight of stairs to a landing where our door was. Well, one night I woke up and heard this terrible rattling on the landing. I thought somebody was trying to get in. I was paralyzed with fear. I wanted to get up and get something so I could whack him on the head if he got in. But I couldn’t move.

I just laid there for a long, long time. Finally, the noise stopped. The next morning, I discovered a raccoon had been on the porch, trying to get in our trash barrel. That’s how I found out what panic is. That’s how I know people can truly be paralyzed with panic.

It was just unbelievable.

Mr. and Mrs. Clifford J. Stock October 4, 1942

For Cliff and Ruth Stock, the Simple Fifties, Swinging Sixties, and Spicy Seventies were three decades of magical moments. Fun. Fulfillment.

During these years, their three children—CJ, Steve, and Donna—grew up. During these years, they learned what it means to be family.

44

Looking Back . . .

Simple Fifties 1950-1959

F

inally. The war was over. The boys were home. The United States of America was victorious. Former G.I.s and Rosie Riveters didn’t lose time—between 1946 and 1964 the nation’s maternity wards overflowed with 76 million baby boomers.

The baby boom and the suburban boom burgeoned hand in hand. On the outskirts of big cities, “Levittowns” built up with mass-produced, modest, prefabricated, tract houses. A ranchstyle came standard with a white picket fence, backyard, attic, carport, picture window, built-in TV and Hi-Fi, pink or aqua kitchen appliances, and a green-tiled, blue-tubed bathroom. The G.I. bill subsidized its $8,500 price tag with a 5 percent, 30 year, fixed-rate mortgage.

The “little woman” furnished her American Dream with a Formica and chrome dinette set, sectional couch, fiberboard credenza, and kidney-shaped coffee table. She arranged twin beds, separated by a blonde nightstand and covered with chenille bedspreads, in the master bedroom. She covered her floors with patterned linoleum. She accessorized with colorful Melmac dishes, stainless steel canisters, sunburst clocks, fiberglass lamp shades, oval area rugs, framed floral prints, and figurine-filled shadowboxes.

Neighborhoods were straight out of Norman Rockwell’s “Slice of American Life.” Men brought home paychecks. Women cared for families. Kids respected their elders. No one locked their doors. Life was good. Easy. Conventional.

And to keep it that way, How to Help Your Husband Get Ahead printed “Wifely Rules.” Twenty to be exact.

1. Fix meals he likes.

2. Ensure his home is clean, comfortable, welcoming.

3. Comb your hair, apply makeup, and put on a pretty dress before you prepare his breakfast of freshly squeezed orange juice, fried eggs, bacon, buttered toast (homemade strawberry jam on the side), and coffee.

4. Hang a mirror in the kitchen so you can powder your nose, touch up your lipstick, and fix your hair the moment his car turns into the driveway.

5. Dab cologne behind your ears. Then, greet him with a smile and kiss after his hard workday.

6. Do not allow your children to make noise and bother him.

7. Use your womanly intuition—a good wife knows the instant she kisses her husband if he is tired and needs to be left alone, if he is angry and needs to vent, or if he is happy and needs affection.

45

8. Always show appreciation for your husband’s efforts and encourage him unconditionally.

16. Share your husband’s interests, but leave him alone when he wants to be alone.

9. Listen attentively, but never, ever offer advice.

17. Always remember you are Mrs. “Brown.” Make your husband proud of you when you are with him in public.

10. Learn about his job so you can ask intelligent questions about his day, but never butt in. Never question or complain when he works late. Say kind words about his secretary.

11. Support his need to get additional training. But do not press him to be more ambitious or hardworking than he is. Instead, praise him and offer gentle encouragement.

12. Heighten your ability to talk about whatever interests him by reading— get a library card and frequent your local library.

13. Quit your job (if you have one) if it interferes with his needs or ambitions.

14. Do not burden him with your concerns or stories, when he first arrives home from work, while he’s in the midst of an activity, or when he is telling his news or stories.

15. Avoid nagging. Example: He might be too tired to take out the garbage, so do it yourself.

46

18. Never, ever, ever say anything embarrassing or negative about him in public.

19. Politely espouse his good qualities in public.

20. Recognize your sexual hang-ups and try to overcome them. Always make sure your husband is satisfied.

Food was basic. Tasty. Mrs. Homemaker donned her apron and spent most of the afternoon preparing dinner. At six o’clock sharp—no excuses—the entire family sat down to the “meat and potatoes” dinner table.

Roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy were favorites.

Bisquick biscuits, hot out of the oven, were slathered with real butter and honey. Heavily salted Del Monte canned corn was a staple. Molded Jell-O salad was a showpiece . . .

Televisions, a brand-new electronic wonder, glowed in living rooms. In 1950 alone, Americans bought more than four million, rabbit-eared, black and white TVs. To watch in color, they simply stuck a square of vinyl to the screen and colored on it. The Magic Drawing Screen kit, complete with four Crayola crayons, cost a quarter.

Jell-O Pineapple Salad 1 c. homo. milk (whole) 16 marshmallows (¼ lb.)

1 (3 oz.) pkg. lime Jell-O 2 (3 oz.) pkgs. cream cheese #2 can crushed pineapple in heavy syrup, undrained ½ c. whipped cream (for salad) 1 c. whipped cream (for decoration) ⅔ c. Hellman’s mayonnaise Maraschino cherries with stems Heat milk and marshmallows until almost melted. Pour over Jell-O and stir until dissolved. Add cream cheese. Beat until smooth. Add pineapple with juice. Cool, but do not allow to set up. Add whipped cream and mayonnaise. Pour into mold. Chill until firm.

Unmold. Top with additional whipped cream. Add Maraschino cherries for decoration.

Dessert always followed dinner. The Betty Crocker Cookbook featured a recipe for no-fail apple pie, topped with vanilla ice cream. Kids drank whole milk, mixed with Bosco Chocolate Syrup. Mom and Dad lit cigarettes and poured cups of caffeinated coffee, stirred with cream and two, maybe three, teaspoons of sugar.

Almost overnight, Americans couldn’t live without weekly episodes of Bonanza, I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, and Perry Mason.

They imitated Donna Reed and her perfect, white, middleclass family. After all, Donna’s problems were solved in thirty minutes (actually, twenty-two, subtracting time for Maxwell House coffee and Lucky Strike cigarette commercials). But at eleven p.m., on the dot, stations signed off to “Oh, say can you see . . .” and the Indian Head test pattern filled the screen.

Television didn’t completely upstage other forms of entertainment . . . Americans listened to doo-wop and rock ’n‘ roll on portable radios. They went wild when Elvis Presley—the King—gyrated his hips and belted out, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.” They read from Dr. Suess’s The Cat in the Hat, chuckled at “Peanuts” comic strips, and marveled at “The Blob” on the big screen.

They laughed until they cried at knock-knock jokes . . .

Knock, Knock!

Who's there?

Banana.

Banana who?

Knock, Knock!

Who's there?

Banana.

Banana who?

Knock, Knock!

Who's there?

Orange.

Orange who?

Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

47

Unemployment was a mere four percent. Median household income came in at $3,000. A brand-new car set families back $1,500. Bread cost 16¢ a loaf, milk 22¢ a quart, chuck roast 59¢ a pound. Gas sold for 20¢ a gallon and included double S&H Green Stamps. A tourist spent five bucks at Disneyland—for admission, food, and a souvenir.

Little girls wore pink Alice in Wonderland watches and played with life-sized baby dolls, bassinettes, doll houses, and Little Lady toy ranges, complete with utensils, pots, pans, and a cookbook. They spent countless hours stitching doll dresses on toy sewing machines, washing the doll family’s clothes in Little Sweetheart electric washing machines, and cleaning playhouses with Kiddie Cleaning Sets—just like Mommy’s.

Little boys played in a different sandbox. They socked Joe Palooka bop bags, shot each other with double-holster pistols during rough and tumble Cowboy and Indian games, built cars, bridges, and even elaborate cities with Tinker Toys, explored outer space with Captain Space Solar Academies, and ran countless organic and inorganic chemistry experiments with Chemcraft Deluxe Laboratories.

Slowly, Americans spoke out against racial inequality and injustice. In 1954, the Supreme Court heard Brown v. Board of Education. Justices ruled that “separate educational facilities” for black children were “inherently unequal.” This was the first nail in Jim Crow’s coffin. In protest, many Southern whites withdrew their children from public schools and enrolled them in all-white segregation academies.

On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a Negro woman took a seat on a bus.

48

A White man boarded the bus. He looked around. All seats in the “White Section” were taken. The driver commanded passengers in the first row of the “Colored Section” to stand. Three obeyed. Mrs. Rosa Parks did not.

The driver stopped the bus. He called the police. Two officers booked, fingerprinted, and incarcerated Mrs. Parks. The police report documents she was charged with “refusing to obey orders of bus driver.” Mrs. Parks was found guilty of violating segregation laws, given a suspended sentence, and fined $10 plus $4 in court costs.

But that was not the end of Rosa Parks’s story. Thousands of Negros staged a thirteen-month boycott of Montgomery’s city bus system. Momentum built when leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association and members elected a twenty-six-year-old minister named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as its president.

One year later, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional, and Mrs. Rosa Parks—a forty-two-year-old seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama—claimed her place in history as “the mother of the civil rights movement.” Baby steps.

But forward.

Underneath the tranquil good life, the Cold War between the United States and Russia escalated. In 1951, Russia started testing hydrogen bombs. America countered with an all-out nationwide Alert America campaign . . .

Bert, the comic book character, taught millions of American schoolchildren to “duck and cover” under their desks.

School officials issued metal ID tags.

Teachers herded children into steam tunnels in the bowels of school buildings for bomb drills. Booklets and films provided “Survive an Atomic Attack!” suggestions. Spotters were assigned to watch the skies for anything that looked suspicious. Newspapers reported radiation readings next to daily weather reports. Air raid systems were activated.

Civil defense was fine. Probably necessary. But Americans wanted more.

While Congress debated the merits of large city evacuations versus massive community shelters, anxious homeowners controlled their own destiny.

Bomb shelters, costing from $100 to as much as $5,000 for an underground suite with phone and toilet, sold nationwide. Popular Mechanics magazine published a fallout shelter blueprint for the do-it-yourselfer. The government, though, warned that a shoddy shelter would “broil its occupants to a crisp.”

Nonetheless, Wall Street investors predicted the bomb shelter business could gross up to $20 billion in the coming years (if there would be coming years).

Survival stores around the nation sold air blowers, filters, flashlights, fallout protection suits, first-aid kits, and water. General Foods and General Mills sold dry-packaged meals. Families

with well-stocked shelters lived in fear that after a nuclear attack they would be invaded by neighbors who neglected to build their own bunkers. Many ordered contractors to construct shelters in the dead of night, unbeknown to nosey neighbors.

Major airlines, Detroit automakers, IBM, and Wall Street provided employee shelters.

Public buildings, with deep basements, became designated public shelters. The Federal Reserve designated banks for postwar check cashing. And a farmer in Iowa built a fallout shelter for two hundred cows.

Hollywood produced nuclear war doomsday films—“On the Beach,” “The Last Man On Earth,” “The Day the World Ended.” Not to be outdone, television created its own version of doomsday—in the premiere episode of “The Twilight Zone,” an astronaut returns to Earth to discover that a nuclear war has left him, like Adam, alone.

Time passed. Russia backed off. The bomb never dropped.

As the peril of nuclear holocaust faded, backyard bomb shelters became wine cellars.

Americans heaved a sigh of relief and resumed their tunafish-salad-on-Wonder-Bread life . . . Comfortable. Simple.

Predictable.

49

Clifford Jay Stock

Ruth remembers…

Get Up and Walk!

CJ was born September 30, 1944. His full name was Clifford Jay Stock. He was more or less named after his dad. You see, Cliff’s dad’s middle name was Jacob; Cliff’s uncle’s name was Jacob; Cliff’s middle name is Jacob. Clifford was fine with me, but I wasn’t crazy about Jacob, so we shortened it to Jay and named our first child Clifford Jay. But we called him CJ, because we didn’t want to say Cliff over and over.

What I remember most about CJ’s birth is I would probably still be sitting in that darn hospital if my friend didn’t say, “You’ll never have that baby if you just sit there. Get up and walk!”

I did. And that’s when I had the baby.

Same-old . . . Same-old CJ was born when Cliff was in the navy, and we lived in Florida.

My mother couldn’t come to help me because she worked, but Cliff’s mother came right away. After Cliff left for overseas, CJ and I returned to Saint Louis and lived with my mother in the apartment where I grew up.

When we got on the train headed to Saint Louis, my mother-inlaw said, “You have to be careful with little boys because when you take off their diapers they have a tendency to urinate all over the place.” Well, she helped me change CJ’s diaper, and guess what—he soaked her beautiful new suit.

50

(left) Hilda Anna Wittmann Stock Florence Adeline Hood Schwartz

Life didn’t change after I had a baby. It was pretty much the same-old . . . same-old, except I couldn’t get up and go as easily as I did before. I didn’t go back to work. My mother worked, and I stayed home and took care of CJ. That was okay by me. I didn’t have any problem going from a working-woman to a stayat-home mom.

Good Little Boy

Loner

CJ had a great sense of humor. When Mother and I were training him to go potty by himself, we’d all three be in the bathroom. While CJ was sitting on the pot, she wiggled his little foot, and he laughed his head off.

CJ was a loner. Very shy. But if you got him in a corner, he talked your arm off. He was knowledgeable, so people liked to talk with him. But when the kids came by and yelled, “CJ, come out and play,” he’d say, “I can’t come out right now,” and sit inside and read his book.

He was a normal child. He wasn’t crazy about food. But he liked milk, so he drank lots of milk. CJ talked early and walked by the time he was a year. The navy sent Cliff overseas when CJ was only three months old. He was gone a year. We had a picture of Cliff, and I showed it to CJ and told him that’s your daddy and blah, blah, blah.

CJ was a good little boy. He liked to have me read to him and was perfectly happy playing all by himself with his Lego toys.

He was a fairly placid child—actually he was placid his entire life. Well, one morning, when he was in kindergarten, he said, “I am NOT going to school.”

I thought that was strange, but I wasn’t a very understanding mother. I said, “Yes you ARE.”

Even when CJ got to be a teenager, he wasn’t rebellious. Still, after he made Eagle Scout, he worked as a counselor at the scout camp and came home one weekend with a Mohawk haircut. He was leery about showing it to me and his dad, but we thought it was fine.

As a teenager, CJ still liked to read, and by then, he liked to run.

He was on the track team and was a good runner. He had a few close friends, but he didn’t really associate with anyone other than his best friend Al. I remember the night he and Al wrecked the car . . . They were out in bad weather, when the car slid off the road and hit a pole.

CJ called me and said, “Mom, I wrecked the car.”

Come to find out, CJ had a problem at school—he wouldn’t cooperate. The teacher called me and said, “Mrs. Stock, I don’t know what we’re going to do about CJ. He always loved story time, but now he won’t join in.”

Well, I didn’t care about the darn car. The first words out of my mouth were, “Are you and Al okay?”

I said, “We? . . . We? . . . You do whatever You need to do.”

I said, “Yeah. Are you and Al okay?” He just kept telling me about the stupid car. I thought he probably had two broken arms or something worse. Come to find out, he and Al were fine.

I figured she was at school and knew how to handle the situation better than I. Well, I found out later that she made CJ sit in the closet and wouldn’t let him out until it was time for the kids to go home.

Looking back, my mistake from the beginning was I didn’t ask CJ why he didn’t want to go to school. I should have. That was a lesson for me. From then on, when my kids or even my grandkids didn’t want to do something, I always asked, “Why not?” before I acted.

He said, “But, MOM, I wrecked the car.”

“Little Toot” CJ played the guitar. He took lessons from our friend who owned a music store and caught on quickly. CJ always had a good singing voice. Even as far back as kindergarten, he was the kid who sang in class plays. He loved listening to records. I put records on his record player, and he sang along with them.

51

One of his favorites was “Little Toot.” He listened to that record over and over again. To this day, I can still sing all the words.

The Army After CJ graduated from Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, he went in the army. About 1970, he was sent to Vietnam. Cliff and I don’t know much about his Vietnam experiences, except he was in intelligence at a headquarters location, so he didn’t go out into the field. CJ only told us about stuff he thought we should hear.

He described the pond next to the headquarters’ building: Natives drained sewage directly into the pond and raised vegetables around it. CJ showed us pictures of cabbages bigger than basketballs. The Americans wouldn’t touch that food with a ten-foot pole, but the Vietnamese sold their vegetables in openair markets full of flies, and the locals gobbled them up. Yuck!

CJ liked the service. He planned to stay in, but a certain situation made him change his mind. You see, his best friend was a black guy. When they were captains, they were neck ’n‘ neck with ratings they got on their tests, but the black guy made major and CJ didn’t.

During those years, the army offered a good bonus to people who got out. So CJ took the money and ran. He said, “There are only so many slots for promotions, and if the army only promotes people like the black guy, I’ll never have a chance.”

CJ didn’t have anything against the black guy. He thought the army didn’t play fair. He and the black guy remained good friends for a long time—he was even at CJ’s wedding, when CJ married Annie.

52

CJ (left) and Steve around 1975

Got Quitted After CJ got out of the service, he didn’t do anything, except sit in our garage. Basically, he went in the army as a career officer and came out as a hippie.

Eventually, he got into crafts and wanted to go to craft shows full-time. He did get into some shows, but it didn’t work out for him to do crafts full-time. Then, he wanted to write a book, but he never got around to it. Eventually, he decided he wasn’t going to make any money or go anyplace with crafts or writing a book, so he taught high school English.

CJ taught for a year. At the end of the year, he flunked seven kids in his senior essay class. These kids hadn’t turned in a single paper all year, so CJ wouldn’t pass them. The problem was, before they could be admitted to college, they had to complete at least one semester of English composition.

Well, the parents complained. So, the principal called CJ into his office and said, “You can’t flunk these kids.”

Anyway, he took the $10,000 and opened a bookstore. And that’s where he ended up.

CJ said, “I did it, and I won’t change their grades unless they turn in at least one paper. Then, I’ll give them an incomplete.”

Good Person

The principal jumped out of his chair and yelled, “OUT! . . .

OUT!” Well, along with teaching, CJ sponsored the debate team. The debaters’ parents tried to get the principal to change his mind and keep CJ. He refused. Now, I’m sure CJ had words with the principal, which didn’t help matters. So, in the end, CJ quit.

Actually, he didn’t quit. He got quitted.

Before CJ went to Vietnam he married Julia, who is the mother of their two children Christina and Suzanne. About a year after CJ got back from ’Nam, he and Julia divorced. About a year later, he married Annie. It’s sad, but Cliff and I have only seen our granddaughters about five times in their entire lives.

CJ had principles, and, bless his heart, he stuck to them. Way too many people don’t, you know.

I want Christina and Suzanne to know their dad was a good person. Cliff and I were proud of CJ for many reasons—we were proud of him when he became an Eagle Scout. We were proud of him when he graduated from Purdue and got a commission in the army. We were proud of him when he opened his bookstore, because that’s something he always wanted to do.

Bookstore

And, you know, you should always do what you want to do.

After that blow-up, CJ attended a junior college, where for one reason or another he took a course in roping. The next thing I knew he went to work for a junior college in Chicago. He started out teaching in the art department and was the liaison for the teachers’ union. About six months later, the head of the business department asked CJ to work with the computers in the business office.

CJ had fooled around with computers, so he took the job. He and his boss got along very well, but after he’d been there a few years, they hired a new boss. The new guy came in and changed everything. You know how that is: The new broom sweeps clean.

Well, CJ and his new boss didn’t get along, so when they offered him $10,000 to retire, he took it. CJ had collected books for years. His entire basement was full of books . . . and stuff—who knows what all. The truth is CJ was a packrat. You could hardly walk through his house.

Cliff remembers . . .

Missed the Whole Thing When Ruthie told me she was pregnant the first time, I thought, Well, I guess that’s just what happens after people get married. Back then, parents didn’t know if they were going to have a boy or girl, so I had to wait and see.

I took Ruthie to the hospital, and after the doctor took a look at her, he said, “She’s not going to have this child until tomorrow.

I’m going home. You do the same.” It didn’t make sense to hang around the hospital, so I went home and went to bed.

53

Ruthie, CJ, and Cliff 1944

Well, Ruthie’s friend didn’t agree with the doctor. She said, “No! Ruthie is going to have the baby tonight,” and stayed at the hospital. This gal lived right behind us, and about eleven thirty, she ran out in the yard and hollered, “Cliff, you have a boy.”

I missed the whole thing.

Free Baby The next morning I got up and went to the hospital. Actually, it was an old house that wasn’t much of a hospital. But that’s the navy for you.

Anyhow, by the time I got there, CJ was in bed with Ruthie. I took a quick look and left to find the doctor. Come to find out, Ruthie’s doctor was at a party the night before and didn’t make it back in time for the delivery.

Luckily, a local, civilian doctor was there to deliver CJ. When I asked him how much I owed him, he said, “Nothing. Your wife needed a doctor, and I was here.”

I said, “I gotta’ give you something. What kind of cigarettes do you smoke?”

He said, “Lucky Strike.”

So, I went to the base and bought him a carton of Lucky Strike cigarettes. He was tickled to death because during the war, cigarettes were really hard to come by. Most people couldn’t get them at all, but I could get them on base.

Because it was a navy hospital, the hospital didn’t cost me anything, either. So, except for a carton of Lucky Strike cigarettes, CJ was a free baby.

A Picture The navy let me off work that day, so I could see Ruthie and CJ. But the big problem was I couldn’t stay. I had to get right back to the base. When I called my mother to tell her we had CJ, she said, “That girl can’t handle a baby all by herself.” The next thing we knew she hopped on a train and came down to Florida.

I took Mom, Ruthie, and CJ home for Thanksgiving, and we went home again at Christmas. Right after Christmas, I was put on a draft to go overseas, and in January of 1945, when CJ was only three months old, I got orders to go to Jinamoc Island in the Philippines.

I was never in combat and Jinamoc Island was never under fire. I was in charge of a crew that repaired flying boats— airplanes that took off and landed on water. They were very large and carried bombs and ammo. Because they were so unwieldy, they didn’t go after big Japanese ships. Instead, their main mission was to look for and bomb Japanese subs.

I was gone about a year, so I didn’t see CJ again until he was fourteen months old. All I had was a picture that Ruthie sent me. Ruthie and CJ were out on the front lawn of the apartment building, and CJ was wearing sunglasses. I carried that picture around with me for years.

When I finally got home, CJ looked different—kids do look different after they get past three months old, you know.

Anyhow, I was only home a couple of weeks before I got a job. And you know how it is? You get busy. I worked five and a half days a week—sometimes six. By the time I got home at night, CJ was ready to go to bed.

55

Smart Little Guy

Army Captain

CJ loved books. He loved to read. One year, as soon as he got his schoolbooks, he sat down and read every page before school even started. After the school year got going, the teacher called Ruthie and said, “I can’t get CJ to sit in his seat. When we have reading lessons, he gets up and looks out the window.” Sure he did. He was bored. CJ was a smart little guy. He remembered everything.

CJ went to Purdue University, where he majored in English.

Purdue is a land grant college, and back in the ’60s, men who attended land grant schools had to take military training. CJ graduated from Purdue in 1965, when he was twenty-one years old. The very day he graduated he received his commission in the army.

Eagle Scout CJ started out as a Cub Scout, and he made it all the way to Eagle Scout. Eagle Scout is the highest rank a boy can achieve in the Boy Scouts of America. It’s not easy to become an Eagle.

Boys have to earn at least twenty-one merit badges and show what’s called Scout Spirit through the Boy Scout oath, law, leadership, and service. Plus, they have to plan, organize, lead, and manage a big service project. Then, they have to go on camping trips, all alone. CJ worked hard. I was very proud of him when he received his Eagle feather. After all, Once an Eagle, always an Eagle.

Hee! Hee! Hee! Al was CJ’s best friend. One New Year’s Eve, Al came over to the house, and everybody went out except CJ and Al. When Ruthie and I got home, there was CJ crawling out of the bedroom to the bathroom, and Al was in bed going, “Hee! Hee! Hee!” Well, CJ was in his first year of college, and come to find out, he brought one of his experiments home with him. He had a jug of apple juice that he’d fermented, and he and Al were drinking that stuff. I had to find out what it was, so I took the jug down to the kitchen, took one taste, and dumped the rest down the sink.

That was terrible stuff. Just terrible. But I have to laugh because I can still see CJ crawling along the wall.

56

He started out as a second lieutenant, and after seven years, he got out as a captain. This was during the Vietnam War. CJ didn’t go to Vietnam until about 1970, and by then Steve was in Korea.

So we had both boys overseas at the same time. That wasn’t easy.

Eagle Scout Court of Honor Before he becomes a scout, a boy must take the scout’s oath:

On my honor I will do my best To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

While taking this oath the scout will stand, holding his right hand raised level with his shoulder, palm to the front, thumb resting on the nail of the digitus minimus (little finger) and the other three fingers upright, pointing upwards: This is the scout’s salute and secret sign.

CJ Stock Eagle Scout

Enter the Sixties. For many, the sixties were a romantic fantasy, viewed through the haze of marijuana smoke and set to the beat of three-cord rock songs. But the decade remembered nostalgically as the days of peace, love, and rock ’n‘ roll were not only about “wearing flowers in your hair.”

58

Looking Back . . .

Swinging Sixties 1960-1969

T

he flip side of the sixties beat out a different rhythm.

Riots . . . Long, hot summers . . . Assassinations . . .

Rock-star obituaries stained with LSD. And, most prominently, a war fought and lost in dense jungles, eight thousand miles away. It was an unpopular war—a war fraught with everlasting ills of Agent Orange and post-traumatic stress disorder—a war that defamed the brave Americans who risked their lives to protect the country that mocked them.

The sixties was a decade of diverse fashion trends . . . Mary Quant invented the mini-skirt. Jackie Kennedy introduced the pillbox hat. Women wouldn’t be seen without false eyelashes. They wore culottes, go-go boots, stiletto pointy-toed heels, bikinis, and PVC (yes, plastic) box-shaped dresses. “Going braless” was in.

“Mod” influences crept into men’s ultraconservative business attire—ties grew wider, collars longer. Plaid suits hung in closets alongside their traditional gray, navy, and black counterparts.

Nehru jackets, paired with beads, compromised conformity and counterculture.

The Beatles. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles! Let's bring them on.”

Accompanied by ear-splitting screeches from the mainly teenage audience, John, Paul, George, and Ringo—The Fab Four— opened with “All My Loving.” Concerned that The Beatles’ shrieking fans would steal attention from acts that followed, Ed Sullivan scolded his audience, “If you don’t keep quiet, I’m going to send for a barber.”

The February 24th cover of Newsweek featured a picture of The Beatles. The caption read, “Bugs about Beatles.” Inside, the reviewer said, “Visually, they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian/Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair.

Musically, they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah!”) are a catastrophe.” The author ended by saying, “Odds are they will fade away, as most adults confidently predict.”

So much for adult odds makers. Beatlemania crazed the nation.

Four young lads from Liverpool changed the world.

The evening of February 9, 1964, seventy-three million Americans sat in living rooms in front of black and white TVs. At 8 p.m., Ed Sullivan welcomed viewers to The Ed Sullivan Show— one of TV Guide’s fifty greatest TV shows of all time. After a commercial interruption from Aero Shave and Griffin Shoe Polish, the camera panned back to the host.

At 8:05, Ed Sullivan announced, “Yesterday and today our theater’s been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation, and these veterans agreed with me that this city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves

59

Ruth Handler watched her daughter, Barbara, play with paper dolls. Most dolls were infants, but Barbara assigned adult roles to her dolls. Thinking there was a market-gap, Ruth presented her idea for an adult-bodied doll to her husband Elliott, cofounder of Mattel, Inc. Elliott rejected it. Mattel’s Board of Directors rejected it.

Undaunted, Ruth returned from Europe with a German doll named Bild Lilli. Lilli—a blonde bombshell, working gal— was exactly what Ruth envisioned. So Ruth, along with Mattel engineer, Jack Ryan, reworked Lilli . . . Barbie debuted, wearing a black and white striped swimsuit and swinging her signature topknot ponytail.

During Barbie’s first year of production, 350,000 delighted customers shelled out $3 each, to buy Ruth’s innovation. Mattel reports that today (2010) three Barbies are sold per second. Her average price tag is $23. Do the math, Elliott.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy—JFK—was the youngest-elected President of the United States of America. His January 21, 1961 inaugural challenge to, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” sparked courage—hope— in American hearts. First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, was an international icon of style and sophistication—intelligence and intrigue. “Jack ’n‘ Jackie” were America’s version of royalty.

On November 22, 1963, JFK’s motorcade wound through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. The single crack of an assassin’s bullet changed history, forever. As the world mourned President Kennedy’s murder, the classic line from his favorite musical—“Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, 60

for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot”— assumed new meaning.

The Sixties civil rights movement began peacefully enough. In August 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Two, maybe three, hundred thousand marchers and millions more TV viewers heard him proclaim, “I have a dream . . . .” Dr. King’s speech had the single-most influence on passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

On April 3, 1968, Dr. King spoke at a Masonic Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. He called for unity and nonviolent protest. He challenged Americans to live up to the country’s ideals. On April 4th, a sniper’s shot rang out. After emergency surgery, Martin Luther King Jr.—the leader who refused to allow violence to disrupt the civil rights movement—was pronounced dead.

The Supreme Court ruled that prayer in public schools was illegal—a decision that encouraged young people to turn from mainstream western religions and seek enlightenment from mystic eastern religions. Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary suggested minds could be expanded with LSD. Then, there were hippies—the counterculture epitome of sex, drugs, rock ’n‘ roll. Flower children dropped out of a mainstream society allegedly dominated by materialism to live in communes, forego careers, revel in free love, protest the war, protect the environment, practice astrology, strum guitars, eat vegetarian diets, head-trip on drugs, and embrace holistic medicine. It was the Age of Aquarius. The Whole Earth Catalog provided all life’s necessities.

Hippie fashion was a psychedelic wonderland of flowers and tie-dye. Women’s ankle-length skirts worn with sandals, micro-

minis worn with knee-high boots, skimpy halter tops worn with nothing drew distain from their conservative sisters. Men’s bellbottom fringed jeans, wide belts, headbands, feathers, and leather vests stirred scoffs from their conservative brothers.

July 20, 1969, at 4:18 p.m., EDT, Houston announced, “The Eagle has landed!” Apollo XI was the first spacecraft to land on the moon.

Both women and men grew their hair long, pierced their bodies, and inked tattoos. Bare feet were commonplace. They wore Native American jewelry, chunky rings, long beaded necklaces, jangly ankle bells, rimless granny glasses, and floppy hats. Then, there was the ubiquitous, international peace symbol—“I mean, mellow out, man! Make love, not war.”

Americans held their collective breath as a Lunar Module camera provided live television coverage of Mission Commander Neil Armstrong stepping foot on the lunar surface. From two hundred thirty-eight thousand miles away, his voice came through loud and clear. “That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”

Public gatherings—part music festivals, sometimes protests, always reasons to celebrate life—were fundamental to hippie culture. The first Human Be-In was held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in January 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco’s Summer of Love—an event that memorialized the Haight-Ashbury district as the epicenter of America’s counterculture.

Then, in August 1969, an estimated half-million young people from across the United States descended on Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York. They skirted road gridlock, streaked naked, endured thunderstorms, waded through ankle-deep water, slid in the mud, waited hours for portable toilets, made do with limited food, shared water, cut their bare feet on litter, birthed babies, and tripped on acid.

Ignoring all else, they listened to rock ’n‘ roll—Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana. The Woodstock Festival will forever stand as an icon of the hippie counterculture movement.

Alan Shepard was the first American to travel to outer space.

John Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth. Then, on

Luther M. Terry, M.D., American’s surgeon general, released a report concluding cigarette smoking is “a cause of lung cancer and laryngeal cancer in men and a probable cause of lung cancer in women.” Subsequently, Congress approved acts that required health warnings on cigarette packages and banned cigarette ads in broadcasting media.

The Internet began as a Cold War project to create a communications network immune to a nuclear attack. The 8-track tape player flooded the mass market. The microwave oven revolutionized home cooking. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring awakened concern for the environment. Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed spurred the consumer movement. Dr. Denton Cooley transplanted the first human heart. And a team of scientists cloned the first vertebrate—a South African tree frog.

Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique. Suddenly, in sorority houses, garden clubs, and coffee klatches across America, talk shifted from pleasing a man, mascara, and muffin recipes to women’s rights—NOW (National Organization for Women) was organized; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was amended to include women; the birth control pill was widely available; abortion for cause was legalized. “Women’s Lib” was born.

No doubt. The Swinging Sixties were flamboyant. Freeing. Fab. 61

Steven Phillip Stock

Ruth remembers…

Ordinary Day Our second child, Steven Phillip, was born on July 1, 1947. Phillip is a family name . . . Cliff’s grandfather’s name was Phillip; Cliff’s father’s middle name was Phillip; Cliff’s nephew’s middle name was Phillip. And Steven? Well, we just liked it.

When Steven was born, Cliff and I still lived with my mother, in the same apartment, in the same building where I grew up. My mother worked as a salesperson for a hardware company. Cliff worked for the Saint Louis Car Company, designing trolley coaches and streetcars. I stayed home with the kids.

My day was an ordinary day—I’d get up in the morning, feed the kids breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Give them a bath. Put them to bed. Every so often, I’d clean, do the wash, and whatever else a mother has to do.

The apartment was tiny, but we managed very well. Mother was easy to get along with. I open my mouth when I shouldn’t. Not Mother. I don’t remember ever having an argument. Plus, she and Cliff got along well, and she loved the kids. Mother passed in 1975, when she was eighty-four, and until her final day, she was a nice person.

Steven Phillip Stock age 7

62

Good Eater Steven slept through the night, right away. By the time he was only a month old, he drank eight ounces of milk—a whole bottle—every time I fed him. The problem was he was still hungry. I called the doctor, and he told me to give Steve cereal.

I was surprised because CJ didn’t eat cereal for a good two or three months. With CJ it was give me the milk. With Steve it was give me the meat and potatoes. He was always a good eater.

Gobble-de-gook Even though CJ had been an only child for thirty-three months, he was never jealous of his new brother. Steven was a good baby and a normal child. He walked pretty much on time, but he didn’t talk very early. He didn’t have to. CJ talked for him. I’d ask CJ what Steve said, and he’d tell me. It was all gobble-degook to me. But at least somebody understood Steve.

One day, when Steve was about three, he said, “Look! Look at the ’pider.”

My mother said, “What?”

Steve repeated, “Look at the ’pider.”

Well, after Mother asked him, “What?” about four times, Steve looked at her, put his little hands on his hips, and said, “I SAID look at the bug!” With that, he turned around and stomped off.

From early on, Steven liked to build with Lego toys. He and CJ built garages for their cars, but the problem was CJ took the wheels off everything he could get his little hands on. Steve never had the appetite for reading that CJ did, but they both liked to listen to kids’ records and play board games.

As a family, we did normal family stuff—took the boys to the park—took them to the zoo—took them on picnics. We bought one of those little blow-up wading pools, and they went outside and played in that.

Cold Water Steven was a good little boy. But he did have a temper. If he was outside playing and I heard him yell, I ran out as fast as I could because he was a great one to use his fists. One afternoon, he picked up a rake and went after another kid. Fortunately, I got there just in time to save that little boy from a good whacking.

I read someplace that if you throw cold water on an angry kid, it cools them down. Well, one morning, CJ and Steven were in the hall fighting. CJ was a little taller, so he could hold off his brother. But Steve didn’t give up. He kept socking away. I knew I had to do something, so I ran to the kitchen and got a bucket of water. It didn’t do a bit of good. But I still had to clean up the whole darn hall.

When CJ was in kindergarten, there was another little boy named Larry who lived downstairs. Well, for some reason I never did figure out, the minute CJ got home from school, Larry ran out and started hitting on him. CJ took it.

I finally said, “CJ, if you hit Larry back just one time, he’ll stop whacking away at you.” CJ didn’t listen. So my mother said, “I’ll give you a dime, if you hit him back.” CJ listened to her and gave Larry a big old sock. Larry ran in the house crying his head off, and that was the end of it.

But my point is this: If Larry had hit Steven—even once—Steven would have whacked him back and gone about his business.

63

Mrs. Bees

People Person

Steven liked school, but he didn’t do too well. Here’s why: When we moved to Belleville, he was in the first grade. Well, the school sat about a half a block back from the street, with a big lawn in between. The first graders’ classroom windows were on the front side of the building, so you could hear their teacher yelling at the kids all the way out on the street. I’ll never forget the teacher’s name—Mrs. Bees.

Steve was a people person from the get-go. The instant he heard kids call his name, he was out the door.

Every morning, Steven fidgeted so much while he was eating his breakfast I got antsy just watching him. He was a calm kid, so it took me a long time to figure out his problem was Mrs. Bees.

I went to the principal and said, “Do you know Mrs. Bees yells at those kids?”

He said, “Well, she’s an older lady, and this is her last year, and blah, blah, blah.”

I told the principal I wanted Steven transferred out of that class, but my error was I didn’t say, “Do it! Or I’m going further with this.”

As I got older, I became more aggressive, but back then I wasn’t. I should have been because Steve didn’t get the education he deserved. He was gypped because he didn’t learn to read well. He liked to read, but he didn’t do it well. And you know how that goes with kids: If they don’t do something well, they don’t practice.

I tried to help him, but I didn’t know much about teaching somebody to read. So, when he started middle school the principal and I talked, and I finally got Steve a tutor.

To this day, Steve likes to read, but he doesn’t read fast. I try to tell him that you don’t have to read every word. Cliff doesn’t read fast either, but he can tell you every sentence. I can tell you every fifth sentence.

64

He liked to play ball and was good at sports. He swam well and liked to play games. Actually, all three kids liked to play games, but Steve was the one who was highly competitive. CJ liked to win, but he wasn’t all that keen about it. If CJ didn’t win, he took it. Steve was friendly about losing, but you better believe he was down ’n‘ dirty out to win.

Over the years, Steven learned to control his temper—because of his business he had to. Now, he takes lots of guff and it rolls off him like water off a duck’s back. He turned out to be a gentle person who is well liked. But being gentle is not the only reason Steve is so successful in business—he’s honest and lives by the Golden Rule.

Excellent Salesman Steve fell into running his own business. He started out working for Cliff at Stock and Associates. Pretty soon, he got an offer from a young guy who ran a conveyer company in New York. He offered Steve a good deal, so Steve took it and moved to New York. That was Steve’s first experience selling. I never saw Steve as a salesman—actually, I never thought about it, but he’s an excellent salesman.

Then, on a trip to Denver, he met a guy who had the Bally line of refrigerated walk-ins. The guy offered Steve a good deal to work for him, so Steve took it and moved to Denver. Come to find out, this guy wasn’t taking care of business. Steve went out and sold, but the guy never paid him. That went on for two or three months. This guy had some real problems, and when they all came out in the wash, Bally took the business away from him and gave it to Steve.

Steve’s Way Steve built the business from there. He even added refrigerated buildings to his repertoire. It’s not easy. You see, when a customer wants something built, the first thing Steve does is take all the measurements and figure out how the equipment will fit. Then, he figures out how much the project will cost and adds on his profit. He presents the bid only after he does all this work, and he’s always in competition with other companies.

Depending on how big the job is, just figuring out the bid can take up to a week. So, Steve worked out a system whereby he puts everything on the computer, and no matter what the customer wants, he just looks at the computer and gets the information he needs. For a small job, he can run up an entire building in about three or four hours.

to her, and eases her into her day. Then, he fixes her breakfast before he drives her to school. Many times, he takes her to her music, ballet, and art lessons.

I tell Steve that when Paige is ready to look for a husband, she’ll have a hard time because girls compare men with their fathers.

There aren’t many fathers like Steve. It just won’t be the same.

Actually, Paige is lucky, twice—Annette is a smart woman and a good mother. She is dedicated to music and works hard as a piano teacher. Annette introduced Paige to music, dance, and art, and does anything and everything in her power to help Paige learn.

Annette furthers Paige’s experiences by traveling with her all over the world. She is proud of Paige, loves her, and wants the best for her.

After Bally found out what Steve did, they had him give a talk to other people who work for the company. I don’t know if they use his program or not, but they’re foolish if they don’t. It’s so easy to do it Steve’s way.

Lucky Twice When Steve and Annette got married, they really wanted a child.

Annette couldn’t get pregnant, so they tried in vitro fertilization.

And, Bingo! Their daughter Paige was born. Steve was crazy about Paige from the day she was born. They are great friends.

They laugh about the same things. He teases her. She teases him back. I pray that nothing happens to Paige, because Steve would go down the drain without her.

Paige is a lucky girl. She has an exceptional father, and I hope she knows it. There aren’t many men who relate to their children the way Steve relates to Paige. Paige gets up very early in the morning to practice the piano and violin before she goes to school. Steve wakes her up, sits with her a couple minutes, talks Steve, Annette, and Paige

65

Proud I’m very proud of Steve for how he is raising Paige. I’m proud of him for the way he handles himself around people and the way he builds his business.

And by the way, I think he’s good looking. I tell him he’s a handsome man, and that gives him a giggle.

Cliff remembers . . .

Zonked Out The night Steve was born I took Ruthie to the hospital. This time I stuck around. But, in those days, fathers didn’t get anywhere near the delivery room. They had to sit in the waiting room and watch the clock. The first time I saw Steve was after he was cleaned up. He was a big baby, with blonde curly hair.

From the get-go, Steve was a different baby than CJ. The very first day Ruthie brought him home from the hospital, he slept all through the night. He was supposed to get up for his 4 a.m. feeding. But he never woke up, even once. Ruthie fed him at ten o’clock, and he zonked out until morning.

No Bedrooms Even though we had two kids, only thirty-three months apart, our life didn’t really change. We still lived in the apartment, in Saint Louis, with Ruthie’s mother. It was more crowded, but other than that, everything was about the same.

66

CJ and Steve around 1949

The apartment had a big living room, with a closet at the end.

There was a small dining area. A dressing room was adjacent to the dining area. The bathroom was in back of the dressing room.

The kitchen was back of the dining area. From the kitchen, we could go out on the fire escape. That was it. The apartment didn’t have bedrooms. We put up a cot, and Ruthie’s mother slept in the kitchen. Ruthie and I slept on a rollaway bed in the living room. CJ slept on the couch. Steve slept in a baby bed.

We didn’t take the boys out often when they were young. Getting them ready in that small apartment, taking them out, bringing them back, and putting them to bed was too much of a hassle.

Ruthie and I pretty much stayed home, too. Maybe one or two weekends a month we went dancing at the White Horse Inn. The bands played polkas and other music, and we liked to dance.

The White Horse Inn was a bring-your-own-bottle place—all they served was mixers. Grandma got the honor of staying home with the kids, but she didn’t mind.

Real Scouting Steve didn’t go as far in scouting as CJ, because when he was a second class scout we moved, and he didn’t pick it up again. That’s the same problem I had—my brother was an Eagle Scout, but when I came along behind him and got through tenderfoot and second class, the troop fell apart, and I didn’t go any further.

But when CJ and Steve were in scouting in Belleville, I became very active in the council and ended up as a camping commissioner for the Boy Scout Cahokia Mound Council. After we moved to Chicago, I was asked to attend Northwest Suburban Council troop meetings and observe what was going on.

So, I got all dressed up in my uniform and visited a couple of meetings. The kids were just messing around, and the fathers were deciding where the kids should go on campouts. They didn’t ask the kids a thing.

I went back to the council and reported that the kids weren’t getting real scouting. You don’t do it that way. You get the kids involved. You find out where they want to go and what they want to do.

It isn’t scouting for parents. It’s scouting for kids.

Nobody listened to me. So, I finally threw up my hands and told the Suburban Council, “If this is the way you do things up here, I don’t want any part of it.”

CJ and Steve Real Scout Outing

67

Cliff, Ruthie, Steven, and CJ 1947

Popcorn Thieves

Stuck to His Guns

We didn’t have any problems with Steve. But I do remember the day Steve and CJ came home with five ears of popcorn. “Where did you get that popcorn?” I asked.

After Steve got back from service he worked for me in the office at Stock and Associates. My business designed commercial and institutional kitchens. Some of our big accounts were Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Northern Illinois University, and a bunch of jails.

“There’s a whole field of it, Dad. It’s just out there, so we took it,” they answered.

I said, “You can’t just take somebody else’s popcorn. That’s stealing.”

Ruthie drove the boys to the farm, made them tell the farmer they were sorry, and give him back his popcorn. We wanted to teach them they couldn’t just help themselves to whatever they wanted.

The farmer was so nice about the whole deal, we weren’t sure the lesson dug in. But I guess it did because as far as I know they never stole anything else.

Big Beer Blast When Steve was in his first year at Northern Illinois, he and his friend asked to borrow our car so they could pick up some beer.

Come to find out, they wanted Coors beer, and at the time, Coors didn’t ship beer across the Missouri state line.

No problem. They drove all the way to Kansas City, and loaded up the car with so much beer they couldn’t see out the back window. It’s a wonder they didn’t get arrested. I don’t know how they refrigerated all that stuff. I guess they had one big beer blast when they got back.

Well, I could really have sat down on Steve because he didn’t show up for work until nine-thirty—ten o’clock. Then, at three o’clock, he left to manage the Little League ball team.

But it didn’t bother me too much because of everything he did for the kids.

Here was Steve—a young man going out and devoting time to kids. All I could think was, If Steve doesn’t do it, who will?

Steve started playing baseball in Saint Louis, where he played by the rules of the George Khoury League. The league’s mission statement is “The Khoury League is interested in the child that nobody else wants.” They have a rule that every kid on the team gets to play.

Well, when we moved to Chicago, that wasn’t the case. Steve had to put up with parents who thought their kids were superior players and should be in the game every minute. You know how it is—a MY kid is special kind of thing.

But, to his credit, Steve said, “No! Each kid plays at least three innings.” And that’s what he held to. I’m proud of him because he stuck to his guns.

69

The Seventies were big.

Everything was big . . .

Tower-sized stereo speakers . . . Monster console television sets . . . Pit couches . . . Afros and bushy sideburns for men . . .

The Farrah mane for women . . . Four-inch platform shoes for everyone. America’s credo was, “If it’s bigger, it’s gotta’ be better.”

70

Looking Back . . .

Spicy Seventies 1970-1979

E

ven clothes were big—and loud. Fabrics were a kaleidoscope of splash—vertical and horizontal stripes (on the same outfit), plaids, checks, and polka dots (in places polite polka dots would never dream of showing their stuff).

Anything that dangled or glowed in the dark was “bad.”

Women chose hemlines that matched their mood . . . Maxis swept the floor. Midis ended just below the knee. Minis covered the butt—barely. Hot pants were the shortest short-shorts imaginable—actually, hot pants left little to the imagination.

waistcoat. After all, white looked great under ultraviolet disco lights and gave him confidence to “boogie” all night long.

But wait. It got worse. Leisure suits were polyester shirt-jackets, teamed with matching pants. Their potent colors forced fashion police to wear protective eye lenses. Their accompanying tightbodied, pointy-collared, boldly-patterned, silky shirt was open to the chest—and lower.

Burning incense transformed bedrooms into havens heightened with sensual sage and sandalwood. The world, though, was not so mellow or inviting. On April 30, 1975, the People’s Army of Saigon and the National Liberation Front captured Saigon. The Vietnam War was over. Almost four million people (military and civilian) were dead. For what?

The simple, slinky, stretch-jersey wrap dress was versatile— accessorized with knee-high boots it went to the office; slingback sandals transformed it to a sexy date dress. The well-dressed woman scoffed at jeans that did not have a Vanderbilt or Fiorucci label on the butt.

Glam was in—spandex leotards, slinky scarfs, feather boas.

Glitter was everywhere—metallic threads, synthetic satin, sequined strapless boob tubes. Bright blue or green shadow shimmered on eyelids. Pink jell sparkled on cheeks. Lip gloss was essential.

Men went to fashion hell and returned as peacocks wearing plaid bellbottoms with wide O-ring belts, high-heeled boots, dress shirts with puffy sleeves and embroidered collars, bib-sized neckties, and wide-legged plaid suits with huge lapels.

Metal studs, choker necklaces, ID bracelets, and medallion pendants worn with open to the navel polyester shirts were featured in GQ. And for the man who really wanted to “make the moves,” there was the white polyester suit with matching

Coups overthrew governments and wars raged worldwide.

Diplomats were held captive for 444 days during the Iran hostage crisis. Palestinians kidnapped and murdered Israeli athletes and coaches during the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich. Armed federal sky marshals protected passengers from international skyjackers.

71

Conditions in the United States were equally disturbing. It was an era of uncertainty, anxiety, fear, cynicism, even paranoia . . .

Southern Airways Flight 932, carrying the Marshall football team and boosters, crashed into a mountainside. There were no survivors. Eastern Airlines Flight 401 took off from JFK Airport. Just 18.7 miles west-northwest of Miami’s runway Nine Left, the jet crashed into Florida’s Everglades. Sixty-nine passengers, eight flight attendants, and two ghosts survived.

The inflation rate topped out at just over thirteen percent. Combined with stagflation (a simultaneous increase of inflation and unemployment), interest rates rose to an unprecedented twelve percent, plus, per year. The stock market plunged. A recession followed.

Johnny opened his monologue with THE perfect line, “You know what's disappearing from the supermarket shelves? Toilet paper.

There's an acute shortage of toilet paper in the United States.”

After the Mideast oil embargo, oil cost quadrupled almost overnight. Gas was rationed. Customers with license plates ending in odd numbers could buy gas only on odd-numbered days; those with license plates ending in even numbers could buy gas only on even-numbered days. Odd or even, lines were long.

Johnny’s audience didn’t think this was funny. The next morning, twenty million television viewers swarmed supermarkets and bought every roll of toilet paper in sight.

Stores tried rationing. Customers continued grabbing. By noon, shelves were empty.

The national maximum highway speed was set at 55 mph. Year-round daylight savings time became the law of the land. Newspapers ran cut-outs folks could attach to light switches: “Last out, lights out. Don’t be fuelish.” Detroit’s gas-guzzling luxury cars were transformed to economy models rated by “miles per gallon” instead of “gallons per mile.”

72

Then, there was the great toilet paper shortage. Toilet paper, like all paper, is manufactured with oil. Well, on December 19, 1993, NBC’s Tonight Show started like thousands of shows before it . . . Doc Severinsen raised his baton. The live band responded with “Johnny’s Theme.” Ed McMahon introduced the host, “Heeeeeeeeeer’s Johnny.” The show went down the toilet from there.

Johnny apologized for the false scare. Too late. The stampede continued. Scott Paper produced videos of plants in full production. Not good enough. The panic fed itself. A month passed before America’s bathroom habits returned to normal.

During July 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend impeaching President Richard M. Nixon. Days later, in a nationally televised address from the Oval Office, President Nixon said, “I have never been

a quitter. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. . . . Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency.”

One month later, newly appointed President Gerald Ford issued a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes Nixon committed or may have committed. The Watergate Scandal rocked the nation. Faith in government was at an all-time low.

Still, the seventies was an engaging era—one of creativity and change.

The innocent fifties family TV sitcoms were replaced with shows with urban, edgy settings and social consciousness themes. All in the Family’s bigoted Archie Bunker barbed blacks, Hispanics, Communists, hippies, gays, Jews, Catholics, women’s libbers, and Polish-Americans. Mary Tyler Moore’s independent, single, successful Mary Richards demanded equal pay for women and promoted pre-marital sex and homosexuality. Charlie’s Angels’ trio of sexy private detectives initiated T&A TV (Tits and Ass Television); Home Box Office (HBO) became the nation’s first pay-television channel.

Video game arcades were suddenly as common as convenience stores. Space Invaders set the pace for the shoot-em-up genre. Pac-Man led the popularity pack.

Apple launched the first mass-produced computer—the Apple II. Its initial price tag was $4,999.99—for the CPU only. The Atari 2600 was the first plug-in gaming console.

During the 1972 Olympic Games, Team USA’s swimmer Mark Spitz won seven gold medals. And a 4'11", 82-pound, sixteenyear-old, Soviet gymnast— Olga Valentinovna Korbut— captured the world’s collective heart. President Richard Nixon claimed the Sparrow from Minsk did more to reduce Cold War tension in sixteen days than dignitaries did in five years.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade constitutionalized the right to abortion. In 1972—the same year Gloria Steinem launched Ms. magazine— Helen Reddy recorded “I Am Woman.” Right on cue, women had an anthem to support the Second Wave of Feminism.

They joined hands and roared as “strong, invincible” women.

Still, the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was three states shy of ratification.

Saturday Night Fever spurred disco mania. Disco clubs were decadent. Glamorous. Super-tweeters and sub‑woofers, the size of mini-vans, hung from ceilings and blared out electronic synthesized dance music. High-tech lighting, animated multicolor lasers, and fog machines transformed ordinary dance floors to sophisticated stages. Caucasian conservatives joined gays, Hispanics, and African Americans to

73

do drugs, engage in promiscuous sex, gyrate their hips, and raise their arms to the beat of unrestrained self-expression.

Not to be outdone, food made its own statement of decadence and sophistication. Anyone who was “hip” owned a fondue pot and served meat, cheese, even chocolate fondue. Ritz crackers squirted with a Cheez Whiz spritz, meatballs swimming in grape jelly, pineapple cheese balls, Lipton’s “California Dip,” and Jell-O poke cakes were “awesome.”

Potluck tables were laden with Watergate salads (pistachio pudding mixed with canned pineapple, whipped cream, mini-marshmallows, and nuts), 5-cup salads (sour cream, coconut, pineapple chunks, mini-marshmallows, and mandarin oranges, garnished with maraschino cherries), and seven-layer salads (iceberg lettuce, bacon, peas, red onions, shredded cheddar, and cauliflower, dressed with mayonnaise mixed with sugar).

Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor sabotaged the 700-calorie per day, ketosis-driven, quick-fix Scarsdale Medical Diet. But their Pig’s Trough beat grapefruit, spoons down, any day.

Granola was healthy. Orville Redenbacher introduced Gourmet Popping Corn. Alice B. Toklas brownies were “groovy.”

Hawaiian Punch, Tang, and sangria were “to die for.” Cold Duck, Blue Nun, and Harvey Wallbangers were even better. But if you were really classy you drank Mateus Rosé—after all, it was imported. And dessert wasn’t dessert unless it was topped with Cool Whip.

No one who lived through the seventies will ever forget lava lamps, strobe lights, pet rocks, Twister, Rubik’s cube, mood rings, toe socks, water beds, crystals, Ouija boards, Foosball tables, swag lamps, black lights, beanbag chairs, head shops, or streaking naked.

But the most nostalgic memory is the ubiquitous yellow smiley face: Have a Nice Day! The Spicy Seventies were, well, spicy. Sometimes, a single word says it all.

Donna Chaille Stock

Ruth remembers…

Good Planners Donna Chaille was born March 22, 1950. She wasn’t named after anyone. Cliff and I liked the name Donna, and my mother liked the name Chaille—you don’t even recognize it as Shelly.

My friend, Tess, and I decided we would get pregnant at the same time, so we could go to the hospital and give birth together. That was pretty dumb, but we did it anyway. Well, Tess goofed. With Donna, I got to the hospital three months ahead of her. Cliff and I were good planners. Our kids were right on schedule—thirty-three months apart.

Piece of Cake After Donna was born, six people lived in our tiny apartment in Saint Louis. We practically sat on top of each other. To make life more “interesting,” Donna came home from the hospital with colic. Hour after hour she cried . . . and cried . . . and cried a high, piercing cry. There was nothing I could do but sit up in a chair and hold her on my shoulder all night long.

Neither one of us slept, nor did the rest of the family.

Fortunately, she got better after about a month.

Life with three kids wasn’t that much different than life with one or two kids. When you have one child, it seems like a lot of work. But when you have more

Steven, Donna, and CJ 1950

children, it really isn’t any more work. When you have one child, you think, I don’t have time to do this, that, or the other thing. But when you have your third child, you think, I have plenty of time. I’ll volunteer someplace!

I would never have just one child. If you have an only child, it’s lonesome for the child. Plus, having more children helps you as a parent. With your first child, it’s hunt and peck the whole time. Cliff and I were much harder on CJ than the other two. By the time Donna came along, parenting was a piece of cake.

75

Good Sense of Humor Little girls really are different than little boys. When boys get mad, they give you a sock. When girls get mad, they scream and squeal. Donna wasn’t particularly a squealer, but her good friend, Jana, was.

Other little girls came to our house, but Donna and Jana were together the most. They played dolls, and the year they were about eight, they decided they wanted to learn to roller skate.

The streets in our neighborhood were paved, but I wouldn’t let the girls skate there for fear they’d get hit by a car. So, I strung a rope from post to post in our basement. They pulled themselves along the rope and got to laughing so hard they could hardly stand up. I got to laughing so hard I could hardly hold my movie camera—back when the kids were young, I took lots of home movies.

Donna was a “girly-girl.” She wore slacks and shorts, but she really loved to dress up in her cute little dresses. She liked to read, play games, and play with her dolls. She loved her Rose Marie doll. Even though the boys were busy being boys, there was never a problem between them and Donna. They accepted her.

From the time she was a little girl, Donna was friendly. One afternoon, when she was about five, our minister came to our house to visit. We were sitting in the living room talking, when Donna drug in one of her dolls to show him. He looked at it politely, and blah, blah, blah, made nice talk.

Donna left, all smiles, and pretty soon, back she came with something else. She did that about four times before I excused myself, grabbed Donna by the hand, marched her to her bedroom, and said, “You do NOT do this again.” She was going to haul out her entire toy chest.

76

Donna, CJ, and Steve 1953

Scolding Donna didn’t faze her one bit. She just laughed and laughed. Donna came to this world with a good sense of humor.

Poor Powder

Mermaid Mamas

We moved to Chicago in 1959, when Donna was nine years old. My mother moved in with us. Well, that took care of kids’ chores—just like when I was growing up my mother did ev-reething! My kids didn’t take out the garbage. They didn’t clear the table or do dishes. They didn’t even make their beds.

Donna learned to swim in Belleville. Actually, all three kids learned to swim from the same swimming teacher I had when I was a child. Donna was a good swimmer, but after we moved to Chicago, she was even better because we joined the Y, where she learned synchronized swimming.

All they did was feed Powder, our dog. Even so, that was a real hassle. They’d argue: It’s your turn. . . . No! . . . I did it yesterday.

Poor Powder. He was hungry and didn’t care who fed him.

The Chicago Y had just started a synchronized swim class, and I joined. The girls were all amateurs, except one. She had competed before and was good, so she swam with us

Steve, Donna, CJ, and Powder 1955

77

and helped us. We invited all our friends to our first show, and everybody had a good time. Well, our teacher told us that if we wanted to do another show, we had to take responsibility. So, we formed a club and named ourselves Mermaid Mamas because we were all mothers.

The men weren’t about to be left out. So, they started their own group—Neptune Kings—and Cliff joined. Pretty soon, Donna and some other young children took lessons and swam in the shows, too. Swimming format, at that time, was different than it is today. We didn’t just wave our arms around—we told stories and actually entertained our audience.

Donna got better and better, and it wasn’t long before we performed duets. She also swam solo. She was so good she competed in the American Athletic Union games. This is a very, very big deal, because it’s a national competition. Donna won second place in the Chicago area.

She would have won first place, but I forgot the darn tape. We had pieced together music, and without the tape she lost her rhythm and remained motionless in the water in the middle of her routine, so the judges took a point off her score.

Neptune Kings Cliff (third from left, back row)

78

Ruthie and Donna

Judges Goofed You know, when you’re raising kids you don’t think to keep track. I’ve since wished I’d kept a diary about what my kids did while they were growing up. I hope my granddaughters keep diaries about their kids.

Anyway, I don’t remember when Donna first showed signs of her artistic abilities. But I do remember, at one time or another, all three kids were into crafts. They all made sand stuff, and beaded stuff, and Indian stuff. But that was just stuff. Donna could draw, and she could draw well.

When Donna was in seventh grade, she won first prize in an art contest. Then, when she was in eighth grade, the judges goofed.

She won something, but it wasn’t first prize. I saw her drawing— it was a panther, in a tree, hanging over a branch, like cats do.

For an eighth grader, she had the proportions just right and you could tell immediately it was a panther. But in looking back, the contest was for Halloween, and the person who won first prize drew pumpkins, cornstalks, and bats into his picture. Donna didn’t bother.

One Thousand Pounds of Peanut Brittle Donna started out in scouts as a Brownie. Then, when we moved to Chicago, she moved up to Girl Scouts, and I was her troop leader. In Belleville, I had been both a leader and a trainer, so after we got to Chicago, I offered my services as a trainer. They only called on me one time, so I guess I wasn’t too adequate.

Still, this is a good story . . . The first time I got up to speak in front of a group of ladies, my mouth got so dry I couldn’t get my tongue off the roof of my mouth. You’ve heard about cotton mouth? It’s for real. My talk was supposed to last a half hour, but I spoke maybe five minutes.

Anyway, all three kids sold stuff for scouts. The year the boys sold peanut brittle, we had to leave our car out in the cold weather because we had one thousand pounds of peanut brittle in our garage. But the troop sold every ounce and made lots of money. We worked out a catch-deal, where the boys knocked on a door and asked something like, “If I can tell you where you were born, will you buy a box of peanut brittle?”

Of course, the answer was something obscure, so everybody always answered, “Sure!” Well, it didn’t really matter what the boys said, they were so cute people pulled out their billfolds and bought a box—or two—of peanut brittle.

Donna sold Girl Scout cookies. In those days, the girls went door to door. Nowadays, kids set up at a grocery store, and that’s a lot better. But one way or another Donna and the other girls managed to sell every box of their cookies.

Bright Idea When Donna was in Brownies, my assistant and I took the girls to the campground, but not for overnights. When they got to be Girl Scouts, I got the bright idea to take them on a real camping trip. So, we went off to a lodge in Wisconsin.

The very first night the girls bedded down on the floor. Like girls do, they giggled and carried on until the wee hours. Well, the cabin was heated by a potbellied stove with a sheet of wood underneath. About five o’clock in the morning, I woke up and saw a glow coming from the wood. I was scared. Terrified.

I roused the girls and made them go outside and sit on benches.

Come to find out, after the stove heated up, the glow turned the wood red. Still, it’s a wonder I didn’t get in big trouble for that one.

79

Flag Ceremony

Charlie Brown

For some reason, I didn’t get along with the woman who was chairman of the Girl Scout troops in Chicago.

I’ve had very few people in my life who took exception to me. She did. I don’t know what I said or did to her, but she didn’t like me. What’s more, she took it out on the girls.

Donna was a good girl. I never had a bit of trouble with her.

Even as a teenager, she didn’t rebel. The rule was she had to be sixteen before she could date. She was a junior leader at the Y, so she was acquainted with boys, and her brothers brought their friends around. But she never dated very much until Charlie Brown came along.

One year, she asked my girls to perform the flag ceremony at a rally for troops in the entire area. We were excited. I wasn’t sure of proper protocol, so I called the army and asked exactly how we should place the flag. I was told to always place the flag to its own right. So, with that information, my girls worked hard and put together a very nice formal ceremony.

They practiced and practiced until everything was perfect.

I can still see them marching into that rally, so proud.

Well, as soon as they sat down, this woman stood up and made a derogatory remark about my girls in front of everybody. They were crestfallen. I got so mad because it wasn’t me she was slamming. It was the kids. The next year both Donna and I quit the troop.

80

Donna, the Girl Scout

Chuck Schwabe was seventeen, a year older than Donna. He was a junior leader at the Y, and that’s where they met. It was love at first sight.

The family met Chuck the night of their first date. He came to the house, knocked on the door, and everybody, including the dog, ran to greet him . . . CJ wore his Don’t Mess With My Sister! T-shirt. Steve glared and gave him the third-degree.

When Donna introduced Chuck, Cliff didn’t even smile. All he said was, “You WILL have her home by ten o’clock.” It’s a wonder Chuck ever came back.

He did . . . again . . . and again . . . and again. As a matter of fact, Chuck came over every single night. Well, that didn’t last long.

I put my foot down and said, “Donna! That’s not allowed. You can pick out date nights.” They were teenagers, so my idea went over like a lead balloon. But I stuck to my guns, and they picked out Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.

I didn’t like a single thing about Chuck. But, to my credit, it’s hard to form an opinion when you first meet somebody, especially a young man who wants to date your sixteen-year-old daughter. Still, I figured Chuck was probably okay because he was active in the Y—at least he was okay enough that I allowed him to come back.

Donna and Chuck dated through the summer of 1966. Then, in September, Chuck and his family moved to Toledo, Ohio. Every so often, he visited and they went out. When Chuck started

Donna and Chuck 1967

college at Bradley University in Peoria, he invited Donna to come up. We wouldn’t let her go because she was still in high school, and we thought she was too young.

For teenagers, they had a very unusual long-distance relationship.

Donna got letters from Chuck every single week, and she spent hours writing to him. He must have spent every dime he made

on their long-distance telephone calls. Every so often he drove to Arlington Heights and stayed with his best friend Bob. But the real reason he came back was to spend time with Donna.

Donna was still in high school, but Chuck didn’t care. He enjoyed her social events as much as she did. I especially remember the evening they went to Donna’s holiday dance. Donna wore a pretty dress I made for her, and Charlie Brown grinned like a Cheshire cat. He didn’t look a day over twelve.

In 1968, Donna started college at Northern Illinois University.

After two years at Bradley, Chuck transferred to Northern, and that’s when the love birds discovered trouble in paradise—after they were finally in the same place at the same time, they fought like cats and dogs.

Trouble or not, during the spring of 1971, Donna and Chuck were engaged. Cliff and I knew what we were supposed to do— start planning an October wedding. Donna and I picked out a pattern for her wedding gown, bought the material, and selected the buttons and bows. I brought everything home, measured, cut out the pattern, pinned, and started to sew.

Donna asked her girlfriends to be in her wedding, and wrote out a guest list. We looked around until we found a place to hold the reception, and Cliff wrote a big check for the nonrefundable deposit. We were almost there. Then, Donna dropped the bomb.

The wedding was off! Well, Cliff took one look at his depleted bank account and almost had a heart attack.

Life went on. Every so often, Chuck called Donna and tried to figure out exactly what went wrong. I think because Donna and Chuck had been together steady from the time she was sixteen, she needed some space. Well, Chuck hung on for dear life. And as we all know, everything worked out just fine . . . except for Cliff, who had to pay the deposit for the reception hall twice.

82

Donna and Chuck 1966

Anywhere, Anytime During Donna’s teenage years, I worked at Fusion. Donna worked at Fusion. Chuck worked at Fusion. Fusion was a small manufacturer that used punch presses to punch out their products on sheets of metal. One thing they made was clock faces for Miller grandfather clocks.

Anyway, we had to drive back and forth. It was a one-hour trip each way, so I had to get up very early in the morning, which I’m not so great at doing. About ten o’clock, when it was time for my break, I slipped into the inspection room, where women sat around a long table. Underneath their table was a metal brace about eighteen inches wide that they put their feet on.

Brown and the girls ate dozens of burned cookies—or maybe they trashed dozens of burned cookies.

Then there was the infamous day Brandy (the Dalmatian who ate anything and everything, including dog poop) ate Donna’s lunch . . . Donna herded the Schwabettes and Brandy into the Chevy Astro van. After three trips back to the house to grab what they forgot, they finally took off. No surprise, they were running late. So, Donna pulled into McDonald’s, ordered lunch, and jumped back in the van.

The girls opened their Happy Meals . . . “MOM! Carissa got a better toy.” . . . “No I didn’t! Jena did.” . . . “Did NOT. Look at Kira’s.” . . . “MOM! She grabbed my French fries.” . . . “MOM! She touched me.” . . . “MOM! She . . .”

Well, I laid down on that brace and took a little nap. At the end of my fifteen minutes, they woke me up, and I went back to work. One day, the boss walked in. But the ladies never said a word. They kept working. I kept sleeping.

Well, MOM had enough. She held the wheel with her left hand.

She grabbed her hamburger with her right hand. She turned around. She waved her hamburger. “Stop it. Right now!”

I was like Charlie Brown—he can (and does!) sleep anywhere, anytime.

In half a heartbeat, Chomp! Brandy licked her lips. No lunch for MOM that day.

MOM!

Mothers and Daughters

I never liked to cook. When the kids were growing up, I tended to cook the same thing every night, especially Thursday—Thursday was scout night. In the morning, I fixed a big pot of chili, so after the meeting, all I had to do was heat and serve.

Donna and I didn’t have a single conflict. We were close, just like me and my mother. My mother passed many of her characteristics on to me. I passed them on to my daughter. She passed them on to her daughters. And I’ll bet the Schwabettes will pass them on to their daughters. There’s just something about mothers and daughters.

Donna, though, was a natural cook. I allowed her in my kitchen to fix whatever. Why did I care if Donna was in my kitchen?

Somebody else was cooking! Too bad for me that Donna didn’t really get into cooking until she got married.

Anyway, Donna had an amazing way of multitasking. She baked bread, cookies, brownies, and a cake—all at the same time. But more often than not, she dashed off and got involved with a sewing project and forgot all about what was in the oven. Charlie

I was very proud of Donna. Parents are always proud of their kids and what they accomplish, so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why. I do, though, want to tell you that I was especially proud of Donna for being a good mother. She handled Jena, Kira, and Carissa very well. All three grew up to have Donna’s strong values.

83

I Know I thoroughly enjoyed Donna’s company. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed the boys, too. But I was closer to Donna.

Our tastes were the same for just about everything.

I remember when Donna and Chuck picked out their silver.

The minute she showed it to me, I asked, “Don’t you recognize the pattern?”

“Well . . .” she did, but she didn’t.

“It’s the same silver I have,” I said.

After Donna and her family moved to Coral Springs, Florida, it wasn’t unusual for her to call, all excited, and tell me about a dress pattern and material she picked out. I listened a minute.

Then, I said, “I know. That’s the same dress pattern and material I just bought.”

And, at the time, I lived in Grand Junction, Colorado.

started talking and never stopped. We had this uncanny way of picking up our conversation right where we left it— practically on the very same sentence.

I’ll never forget the night we went out to eat in a swanky restaurant near Beaver Creek Resort. As usual, Donna and I were in our own world. We had to stand in line until our table was ready. But we didn’t care. Donna and I could gab and laugh anywhere. Well, after about five minutes, Chuck tried to get our attention. We ignored him.

We had a nice meal, Chuck paid the bill, and we got up to leave. On our way to the car, Chuck said, “Gee, it’s too bad.”

“What’s too bad?” Donna asked.

Hurt—So Good Donna and I shared belly laughs about everything, and nothing.

I can’t count the number of times we started to laugh and couldn’t stop. We laughed so hard our sides hurt. After what seemed hours, we calmed down. But we weren’t finished—one of us looked at the other one, and we burst out laughing all over again.

To this day, I can’t remember what we laughed about. But I do remember we laughed until it hurt—so good. Cliff and Chuck never figured it out. They looked at us and shook their heads.

That made us laugh even harder.

It didn’t matter if Donna and I were apart an hour, a day, a week, a month, or a year. The minute we saw each other, we

Chuck, always the perfect gentleman, opened the car door and said, “It’s too bad you and Ruthie didn’t want to meet President George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara. While we were waiting for our table, they were in line right behind us. I tried to introduce you, but—” He closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side.

Donna and I just looked at each other.

For the first time ever, we didn’t say a single word.

Donna and the Schwabettes

85

Forever Friends Donna made friends and hung on to them for life. I can’t put my finger on it, but there was something about Donna that people liked. Jan (Miner) Holden is just one example. Jan and Donna were friends from the day they met in junior high until the day Donna passed.

Donna kept her friends from college—Myra Gresko, Nancy Loraine, Audrey Wallace. She kept her friends from Reston— Anne Strange, Nancy Mercure, Pam Custer. She kept her friends from the first time she lived in Florida—Peggy Aiello, Karen Brusca. She kept her friends from California—Jill Dunkin, Pat Vorreiter. She kept her friends from the second time she lived in Florida—Kim Olshove, Debbie Stainton.

When Donna was ill, her friends came immediately. To my way of thinking, that’s unusual. You don’t often hear of people who are willing to disrupt their lives, travel across the country, and stick around to help you.

One Store-Bought Dress My mother loved to sew. I had one store-bought dress in my life, and I made Mother take it back because I didn’t like it.

She was very good at picking out things that looked nice on me. She found a pattern, worked it up, in all the right colors, with all the right accessories. I learned to sew from my mother.

When my kids were little, I made their clothes—shorts, slacks, Donna’s pretty little dresses. I even made coats. After they got older, I stopped making the boys’ clothes, but not Donna’s.

Then, one day, I did to her what my mother did to me—took her out and bought her a dress. I thought she’d really like it. She didn’t. She wore that dress one time.

Jena and Kira got married after Donna passed. Donna’s friends gave them showers and did all the things a mother does for her own daughter’s wedding. I know Donna’s friends will do the same for Carissa. When I think about it, keeping friends was another way that Donna and I were alike. I held on to some of my friends forever. My best friend from high school was my best friend until she passed.

I guess it all worked out. Donna didn’t like to shop, and lucky for her, she didn’t have to. I made her clothes, and if she needed underwear, I went out and bought it. She spent her money on candy or something special she wanted.

Donna was good at offering advice—to everyone. There were times when even I, her mother, called up Donna, asked for advice, and she straightened me out.

I taught Donna to sew when she was in the eighth grade. During the ’60s, sheath dresses were popular. Well, a sheath dress was a simple first dress for Donna to make. She liked it, and almost better, when she wore it to school, the kids said, “Wow!” That encouraged her to continue sewing. With sewing you learn by doing, and the more she sewed, the better she got. Donna got so good she even made her girls’ prom dresses.

If anybody in the family, or for that matter anybody in another family, needed help, Donna was there. She was a caring person and had very high morals. As sick as she was, when I had my knee replaced, Donna hopped on a plane and came right out to Grand Junction, Colorado, to help me. From there, she went directly to Illinois to help Chuck’s dad’s second wife, Marie, 86

who had a hip replacement. Marie’s daughter didn’t bother, but Donna was there. She was just that type of person. Maybe that’s why people clung to her.

Wow!

I taught Steve to sew, too. And to this day, he can still run a seam. CJ was more into beadwork and polishing rocks. He made

an Indian headdress that was really something else. Actually, all the kids were into handicrafts.

I guess that came from my mother. She embroidered doilies that we put on arms of the chairs. And she could fix plugs and most anything else around the house. I can, too—it’s simple. Besides that, who wants to depend on a man?!

Leisure Suits I even got Cliff sewing in his spare time. We bought a sewing machine from Sears, and back then, after you bought your machine, Sears gave you free lessons on how to operate it. So, Cliff went on down to Sears and took his lessons. Then, I taught him how to cut out patterns, pin, stitch a seam—everything.

Well, leisure suits were popular. They were made out of polyester and were the ugliest things you ever saw. The second time CJ got married he wore a bright yellow leisure suit. Cliff didn’t make that one, but he made a few for himself.

Cliff enjoyed sewing and was a good seamstress. He made casual shirts and cowboy shirts. He even made a Western-style cowboy jacket. When he first started sewing, we had two sewing machines and sewed together. Then, after the boys moved out, we put three sewing machines in their old room, including a big commercial machine my mother bought me, and ended up with four or five sewing machines.

Schwabe Time Donna was never on time. Never. Ever. Her junior high was clear on the other side of Elmhurst, which was a long way to walk. So, I drove Donna to school every morning and picked her up every afternoon. In the morning, I sat in the car and waited until she moseyed out the door. Then, I went flying up the street. At the beginning of the school year, we picked up another girl. That didn’t last long. We were always late, so her mother made her walk.

I must admit Donna’s habit of being late was probably my fault. I’m on time now, but when I was younger, I was always late. I don’t know how that started, because my mother was always on time. Actually, my mother was ready at least an hour ahead of time. Not me. I always got to school late and had to run down the hall to get to class.

One afternoon my friend Rachel said, “I can’t figure out why you’re always late.”

All I could say was, “I don’t know either.” And I didn’t. It bothered me because when you’re late, you’re jittery.

Anyway, there was one occasion when Donna was on time— her wedding. I still can’t figure out how that happened.

Donna wanted to get dressed at the church. Okay. Fine. The girls were at the house, we got ourselves ready, climbed in the cars, and left.

The problem was we forgot the bride. Can you believe it? Donna had to drive herself, and her gown, to her own wedding. She made it, though, and on time. I’ll never forget the look on Chuck’s face—shocked comes close, but doesn’t really do it justice.

My entire family was always late. Chuck sat waiting while everybody bustled around him. But he never said a word. He claimed it didn’t do any good. Besides that, he just knew he could change Donna after they were married. HA! He did everything possible—fibbed about the time they were supposed to arrive—set every clock in the house ahead—built in additional travel time. Nothing worked. Finally, Chuck gave up and succumbed to Stock Time, which all their friends called Schwabe Time.

At least people stopped blaming me.

87

Donna and Chuck’s wedding day Left to right: Cliff, Donna, Chuck, Ruthie, and Grandma Schwartz

Cliff remembers…

Finally Donna’s birth was easy. The only problem was Ruthie’s friend Tess didn’t get pregnant on time, so Ruthie had to stay in the hospital all by herself. She was lonesome, but I couldn’t hang around because I had to fix our new house.

I’ll tell you what happened . . .

You see, when Ruthie got pregnant we were outgrowing the apartment, so we looked around and bought a piece of property in Saint Louis. Then, even after all the hassle of buying, we decided we didn’t like the property. So, we sold it and looked over on the east side, back in Illinois.

We found a 40-acre farm, with an old brick farmhouse on the property. The house had wainscoting in the kitchen and lots of other interesting features. Even better, the land and the forty acres only cost $4,000. I thought it was a good deal, but Ruthie wasn’t so sure.

Eventually, we agreed that because the farm was five or six miles out in the country the kids would have to ride the bus to and from school, and that was a big problem. So, we looked around some more and found nice building sites, but they all had the same problem—the kids would have a hard time getting to school.

We weren’t sure what we were going to do, but we finally found a 200-acre land development site in Belleville.

Berkley Lane and Steven Street The owner platted out his development, so he knew where he was going to run the streets and how the lots were situated.

While we walked around looking things over, he told us we could name a couple streets. So we named one Jay Street, after CJ and another Steven Street, after Steve. One street was already named Berkley Lane, which was the name of the town where we had once bought property in the Saint Louis area.

We picked out two quarter-acre lots at the corner of Berkley Lane and Steven Street and made plans to build a house. After our lots were staked off, we dug a hole in the big open field and positioned our house in the middle of a half-acre of ground. It was great.

Build an Ark Early spring, after the water dried out, my dad and I jumped down in the hole and poured the footings. Then, we ran the basement walls up with concrete blocks. On the Fourth of July, I took my vacation and, in just two weeks, my dad and I laid the blocks and secured the footings for a 1,500-square-foot house.

By Labor Day, we had steel beams in the basement, joists in, and decking on. We were ready to go up with the super-structure.

Now, mind you, we did all this on weekends only.

By October or November, we had our house under roof. Then, we had a little problem . . . The house was backfilled, but we didn’t have the gutters up. Starting January 3rd it rained . . . and rained . . . and rained, until over three inches of rain flooded the parameter of our house. I thought we might have to build an ark instead of a house.

89

After it stopped raining, I drove out and took a look at the damage. Sure enough, one of the concrete walls on the back gave way. The fortunate thing was the steel beams we put in the basement were larger than beams people normally put in a house, so one side of the house only settled three-eighths of an inch.

My dad and I got in as soon as we could and pumped out the water. After it dried a bit, we got some screw jacks and pushed up the beams on the side where the wall gave way. Then, we tore that wall out and rebuilt it up to where the beams were sitting.

After that, we could go ahead and finish.

But it took a long time. It was at least six months before we could get in and do the work.

90

Donna’s Room

Donna and Powder 1952

On top of all this, when Ruthie got pregnant, we didn’t know if she was going to have a boy or a girl. I had built one big room for the kids, but after Ruthie had a girl, I had to change it. My dad and I added a wall, another window, another closet, and a hall. We put the boys in the back of the house and Donna’s room between our room and theirs.

We had to do all this before we could finish the inside. That meant Ruthie and I, two little kids, a brand new baby, and Ruthie’s mother had to live in that tiny apartment another year.

Donna was a year old before we moved into our new house. But we made do just fine.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Their Money

Girls are a lot different than boys. But Ruthie and I had a theory.

We didn’t treat the kids any differently. We didn’t hide them from each other or separate them. One morning, CJ was getting out of the shower, when Donna walked into the bathroom. She was just a tiny thing—two or three years old. Well, CJ had one leg up on the bathtub drying it off. She ran right over to him and rang his bell. Ding. Ding. Ding.

When Donna was about ten, I started giving all three kids an allowance. Well, as long as they spent my money, they didn’t think twice about what something cost. But as soon as they had to spend their allowance, they got real fussy about what they bought. After all, they weren’t going to waste their money.

Real Swimming Pool

Great Sense of Humor

After we lived in our house a couple years, the kids got tired of their small rubber wading pool. One morning, they asked, “Dad, can we have a real swimming pool?”

John Maloney was our friend from the Y. When John’s birthday came around, Donna and Steve went to his house and wrote Happy Birthday, John on his front lawn with toilet paper—in those days, kids thought TP-ing a house was the best prank ever.

I was ready to leave for work and didn’t pay much attention.

“Okay. If you guys dig the hole, I’ll put in a pool,” I said. They kinda’ laughed and kept eating their cereal.

Well, I went off to work and didn’t think any more about the real swimming pool. Big mistake. By the time I got home that night, all the neighborhood kids were in our yard digging. The hole was already big, and a pile of dirt at least five-feet high was in the middle of our yard.

All I could think was, What in the world am I going to do with this big hole? Ruthie and I talked about it and decided to square it up and level it out. It was the middle of summer, really hot, but we went ahead and poured concrete, water-proofed the inside, and laid cement blocks around the whole thing. It took a couple of weeks, but after we finished we had a real pool, 10 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 32 inches deep.

The kids loved it. But we had a little problem . . . The real pool didn’t have a drain, so when it was time to change the water I had to drain the whole darn pool.

When John got home from work and saw this big mess in his front yard, he was as mad as a hornet. He had been T-Peed before and was sure the neighborhood kids were guilty. He ran in the house and yelled to his wife, “Look! Those darn kids did it again.”

Lucky thing I told his wife what they were up to. She said, “John, come over to the window and look out on the lawn. What does it say?”

He looked and kind of meek-like said, “Oh. I guess it says Happy Birthday, John.”

Well, John was a scuba diver, so he had an air tank. He bought a big box of balloons, blew them up, and when Donna wasn’t home, threw them in her room and slammed the door. There!

Her room was so stuffed with balloons she couldn’t get in.

Donna got home, opened her door, and the balloons flew in her face. She just laughed. That was Donna. She had a great sense of humor.

91

Parade Once a year, the school kids in Belleville formed a big parade. Donna loved to march in that parade—actually all three kids loved to march in that parade. Afterwards, there was a fair in the park with rides for the kids. The whole day was kid-oriented.

Here’s something kinda’ interesting . . . The kids in town didn’t get new clothes for Easter. They got new clothes for parade day. After all, they marched down the street with everybody in town watching, so parents wanted their kids to be dressed in the best clothes they could find.

Each school had to come up with a float. The Union School kids (our kids’ school) decided they wanted a horse. So families got together and made a horse out of wire and paper. We even mounted a horse carriage on top of the float. Instead of making the job easy by nailing chicken wire on the float and sticking Kleenex into the holes, the kids made white flowers, and we tied each and every one onto the wire. It was a big job, but we had lots of fun.

Typical Donna I was proud of Donna for everything she did to help people. Even as a teenager, she helped in the church. We belonged to Trinity United Church of Christ—Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s jerky minister, eventually became its pastor.

Trinity United was on the south side of Chicago in what used to be a very hotsy-totsy area. But by the time we went to church there, lots of the people had moved up north, so the old, empty buildings were converted to office spaces.

Anyhow, Donna and a few other kids bought buckets of paint and on weekends went down and helped paint this church. I think those people could have painted their own darn church, but they didn’t.

That was typical Donna.

92

CJ, Donna, and Steve

Typical Donna

94

Looking Forward . . .

2010–TIME IMMEMORIAL

F

amily stories are never complete. They don’t begin. They don’t end.

They are timeless. They celebrate new love, marriage, birth, and meaningful moments. They survive economic crisis, social upheaval, war, and the passing of loved ones. They linger to teach us who we were, who we are, who we can be.

Family stories aren’t ours to horde. We’re obligated to give them away. In doing so, they become the glue of human connections.

The Stock/Schwabe family is blessed. Through the stories of Cliff and Ruth Stock, the family has a lens that will, for time immemorial, allow descendants to look back and learn from the past. Then, look forward and create their own stories.

Judith . . .

Cliff and Ruthie, I know you have been married sixty-eight years. You have been through some very good times and some very hard times. In telling your story, you looked back. In doing so, you divulged wisdom that will help your descendants look forward.

Let’s start with parenting. What advice do you have about being a good parent?

But I was still upset and kept worrying that CJ might really be irresponsible. Shortly thereafter, I went to see my pediatrician.

Now, this doctor was advanced, so his thinking was good. Solid.

I told him what CJ’s teacher said and admitted I didn’t really know what to do about it. I told him I was worried that, as CJ’s mother, I was doing something wrong.

Cliff . . .

He said, “Listen, I don’t see any of this in CJ. Don’t pay any attention. You aren’t doing anything wrong.”

You should get involved in the things your kids are involved in—the things your kids are interested in. If your kids want to be scouts, you should get involved in scouting. If your kids want to be on the swim team, you should get involved in the swim team.

We had been going to this pediatrician practically since the kids were born. I trusted him. So, when he added, “If, as a parent, you do what you do with love you’ll never go wrong,” I felt comforted.

Meet your kids’ needs. Help them out. You can’t depend on a person who has no relationship with your children to carry through for you.

And that’s good advice to pass on . . . If, as a parent, you do what you do with love you’ll never go wrong.

Ruth . . .

Judith . . .

I’ll start with an example . . . When CJ was in the fifth grade, the teacher called me up and said, “I’m having trouble with CJ, and blah, blah, blah. He’s very irresponsible, and blah, blah, blah.”

Well, when I found out this teacher boxed the kids’ ears I went to the principal and had a fit. She could have deafened CJ.

What did you enjoy about being a parent?

The principal told me this teacher had a problem. Apparently, she had been ill, and her niece fell out of a hayloft, and blah, blah, blah. She was bothered by all this and took it out on the kids. The principal did nothing. Not a thing.

So, I went to the teacher, and we had a big, old brouhaha. I said, “Do not dare put your hand on my child.”

96

She asked me what I wanted her to do, and I said, “Have him write one hundred times I will not do such and such. It will improve his penmanship as well.” She agreed.

Cliff . . .

I liked the fact that we had three kids who were all good kids. We didn’t have problems with any of them.

Ruth . . .

I’m proud of all three kids because of their goals, their lifestyles, and their morals. We never had a problem with any of our kids getting drunk, although they did tip a few every so often. But drinking was never a problem, and certainly drugs were never on their schedules.

Judith . . .

Ruth . . .

What did you DO to end up with three good kids? What should your descendants DO to end up with good kids?

Have fun together. We had fun together. To this day, Steve remembers stopping at the A&W root beer stand for root beer floats on our way to scout camp.

Cliff . . .

Pay attention to them. We did. We did things together as a family. Ruthie was a Cub Scout den mother and a Girl Scout leader. She was always involved with the scouts. I was too.

Every Sunday morning and every Christmas morning, we sat around the breakfast table and ate Lincoln waffles. Lincoln waffles are a family tradition that goes clear back to my mother.

When I was a kid, the Lincolnaire was a soda shop, alongside the Lincoln Theatre in Belleville, where they made Lincoln waffles.

Everybody in town loved those waffles. Well, two of my aunts worked in the soda shop, and somehow they talked the owner into giving them his recipe. It was like gold.

The company my dad worked for made waffle bakers. He brought one home, and my mother made Lincoln waffles for our family. But after Ruthie and I got married, I took over as the waffle baker.

The Schwabettes will find this hard to believe, but we didn’t take our kids to McDonald’s until they got to be teenagers. A hamburger, French fries, and drink only cost thirty cents, so it wasn’t because we couldn’t afford it. It was because McDonald’s wasn’t around until then!

We took our kids to drive-in movies. After the war, Cliff had a part-time job where he stood at the entrance to drive-ins with a little clicker and counted cars. The motion picture studios got paid by the number of cars and didn’t want the theatres to cheat. I’m not sure what they did about the people who snuck in hidden in trunks of cars.

Anyway, our family went to drive-in movies with a family that lived down the street. We were too chintzy to buy popcorn and pop, so we took it with us. One night, our friends were supposed to drive, but they called and said, “Our Jeep broke down. Can you come and get us?” So, we picked them up, and there she was—carrying a big ole‘ roaster pan full of popcorn and enough pop for five kids and four adults.

Judith . . .

Let’s talk about marriage. Today, in 2010, the divorce rate is about fifty percent. You’ve been married sixty-eight years. Your marriage has survived good times and hard times. What advice do you want to pass on about marriage?

Ruth . . .

Other than losing the kids, I don’t think we’ve been through any real bad times. Do you, Cliff?

97

“Every kiss. Every hug.”

Ruth and Cliff at their Mermaid going away party

98

Cliff . . .

Ruth . . .

Well, you talk about bad times. I guess working for sixty-five dollars a month was pretty bad.

YOU PUT UP WITH THE OTHER PERSON WHEN THEY ARE NOT MINDING YOU!!!!

Ruth . . .

Judith . . .

OH, CLIFF ! All things equal, we got along pretty well.

Okay, that’s Ruthie’s advice. What do you want to say, Cliff?

Cliff . . .

Cliff . . .

Yeah, we got along pretty well.

I guess we got to a point where we didn’t have anybody else.

Judith . . .

Ruth . . .

But when you look back what did you DO to stay together for sixty-eight years and “get along pretty well”?

Yep. Nobody else would have us, so we had to stick together!

Judith . . .

Ruth . . .

So, you stick together. But isn’t marriage more than sticking together? How do you stay in love for sixty-eight years?

Unfortunately, that’s true.

Cliff . . .

It’s just that you finally get used to the other person.

Ruth . . .

(Sings) Every kiss; every hug; seems to act just like a drug; you’re getting to be a habit with me. That’s what it is.

You can’t look at marriage as something you can hop in and out of, like kids do nowadays. You have to go into marriage with the idea that’s it—there ain’t no more.

Cliff . . .

You have to do things together. You have to do things together with your kids. That’s what we did.

Ruth . . .

We did lots of things together. We had fun. Cliff doesn’t have a real good sense of humor, and that was one of his defects. But the kids did, so they made up for it.

Judith . . .

Okay, Cliff, it’s your turn. Did Ruthie have any defects?

Cliff . . .

No. She didn’t have any defects. Well, maybe she did—she got mad at me and I just kept quiet.

Judith . . .

Sometimes in-laws cause problems in a marriage. What did you learn about in-laws? What advice do you want to pass along?

Ruth . . .

It’s not always easy to deal with in-laws. But keep in mind inlaws are important because they are part of your mate’s life.

Hopefully, the grandkids’ in-laws will keep out of their business and not bother them—not like this in-law! Sometimes I just can’t keep my mouth shut and that causes problems. My advice for in-laws is to KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT. But, when they don’t, you should always stand by your husband or wife. That’s what’s important. Then, you can accept the inlaws for what they are and put up with almost anything. You see, marriage has to be fifty-fifty.

Judith . . .

I want to ask you about losing your children. One of the most difficult things a person can go through is losing their children.

That’s not supposed to happen.

Cliff . . .

No. They’re supposed to live longer than you do.

Judith . . .

And you lost two children in less than a year.

Cliff . . .

We lost them in four months.

99

Judith . . .

How did you cope with that loss?

Cliff . . .

It wasn’t easy either time. It should have been easier with Donna because we were there when she was diagnosed with cancer. It was Christmastime, and we were at their house. We stayed until April and watched her go through chemo and put on a wig.

Then, after she got to California and was diagnosed with leukemia, both brothers showed up. CJ took off work for a couple weeks and helped the family move and get settled. After he went home, Donna went back in the hospital, where they took her blood counts down to zero, and then brought them back up.

But the doctor decided that treatment wasn’t working too well, so he decided to take the stem cells. I asked about the chances of a sibling having acceptable replacement cells, and was told that it is one in four. I said, “Well, we only have two other children, and it’s too late to have more.” So, the two boys took the tests, and when the results came back, we had two identical matches.

That’s unheard of.

Even as sick as she was, Donna never lost her sense of humor.

When she heard both brothers were a perfect match, she said, “I pick Steve. He’s better looking.”

Years later, Chuck and Donna returned to Florida. Their friends helped them get settled, and Donna picked out paint colors for their apartment. Well, in less than two weeks, Donna was bedridden, in terrible pain, and spent most of the day sleeping.

Dr. Harris recommended Hospice care. Family and friends came from all over the country to say their last goodbyes.

Donna 2005

100

Shortly after Lee and Audrey Wallace arrived from Lexington, Kentucky, the Hospice nurse asked Donna, “On a scale from

one to ten, what is your pain level.” At that very moment, Lee walked into the room.

I was next to her when she was born. I was next to her when she passed.

Donna pointed. “THAT’S my pain level,” she said.

I never told anyone this before, but I KNOW for certain that my mother met Donna in Heaven.

Everybody laughed. Until the very end, Donna kept her sense of humor. Her friends loved her for that—and SOOOOO much more.

I’m really not unhappy, but I miss Donna. I know she’s better off, because she isn’t suffering any more.

Ruth . . .

Judith . . .

That’s not answering the question, Cliff. The question was how did you cope?

Did it take you awhile to get over it too, Cliff?

Cliff . . .

I know, Ruthie. But I’m saying that everything seemed to be going along fine, and Donna lived another eight years after she was diagnosed. Still, all that time, I had her cancer in the back of my mind. Then, we found out that the breast cancer metastasized to the liver. Usually, when cancer reaches the liver, that’s it. I said to Ruthie, “I don’t think she’s going to make it.”

Ruth . . .

I still didn’t believe it. I just DID NOT believe it. I figured she’d come through, somehow. When Chuck called me and told me it was time, I left for Florida with my mind made up that she’d be okay. Then, I got there and saw her. That was the first time I realized she wasn’t going to make it.

It’s a blessing. But in a way it’s my fault she’s no longer here. I got down on my knees and begged God to heal her fully and completely. And He did. But just not in the way I thought He would. He healed her fully and completely by taking her from this Earth to her home in Heaven.

It’s harder for me now than it was then because then I was in La La Land. It wasn’t real. I didn’t accept it. My buddy was gone.

Cliff . . .

It was hard on me, but . . .

Ruth . . .

You NEVER get over it. The only regret I have is that I wish I had been there sooner. I wish I had been in California to help her, but I really didn’t know how bad she was. Even though she was sick, I was sure she was going to make it. But CJ was a total shock.

Cliff . . .

I don’t think CJ was well when he got to Florida for Donna’s celebration of life, which was in May of 2006.

Ruth . . .

I don’t think he was either, Cliff. I have regrets with CJ that I never had with Donna. When CJ passed, we hadn’t seen him for a long time. We hadn’t even seen his bookstore yet. We saw him in May of 2006 at Donna’s celebration of life. He had leukemia then. But he didn’t tell us. The next time we saw him was four months later, in a casket, at the funeral parlor. He was so skinny.

He had bones sticking out all over the place.

101

Judith, you warn your daughter, “Don’t EVER do that to me!”

Kids need to tell their parents if they are seriously ill. As a parent, it’s better to know ahead of time than to have a shock like we did. If you know ahead of time, you can pray for them. You can help them in various ways. Chuck needs to tell the girls, too, “Don’t EVER do that to me!”

Judith . . .

Ruth . . .

That’s all you can do. Just be there for each other.

Judith . . .

How did you keep your faith?

Ruth . . .

What did you do to comfort each other?

Cliff . . .

When one of us started feeling bad, we hugged each other.

For me, that’s never been hard. You see, to an extent, I believe in predestination. I believe there is a path you intend to follow.

But sometimes God says, “NO! Go this path,” and you are put on God’s path regardless of your plan.

God puts you there because you have a lesson to learn in that direction. So, you might as well accept it. You might as well learn your lesson. The way I believe is we’re here to learn our lessons. There are so many times that God hauled me out and helped me, how could I not believe?

So, when the kids passed, that helped me because I knew that was the best thing for them. When you’re sad about death, you’re not sad for them. You’re sad for you. You have to accept what is.

It’s the way you handle your lessons that makes a difference.

It’s what you believe. You can’t condemn people because of their race, color, or creed. You have to try your best, and not be ugly to people because that’s all part of the lessons you must learn.

Your faith holds you up during hard times. When you lose your children, or your pets, or face all the other hard things that happen in this life, that’s when your faith can really hold you up. It helps you get through it all.

Judith . . .

So, Ruthie, you think God put you on a path to learn a lesson?

Ruth . . .

102

Ruthie and Cliff 1998

Yep.

Ruthie

Judith . . .

Judith . . .

Do you know what that lesson is?

Will you please give us an example?

Ruth . . .

Cliff . . .

Nope. I don’t. But I hope I learned it.

It’s because of the church Ruthie and I belong to now. We’ve only been there two years, but it’s like going into a family. People you see every Sunday get to know you, and they talk to you like one big family. The pastor and everybody are like family. You feel that’s the place you’ve got to be. That’s where your commitment is.

Judith . . .

How did your faith help you, Cliff?

Cliff . . .

I think my faith is probably stronger now than it was before the kids passed.

When I look back, I realize how important it is to have a church family.

103

Judith . . .

I’ve observed the remarkable commitment you have to each other. I was surprised to hear you say that you don’t think you’ve gone through difficult times. Cliff, isn’t your diabetes difficult for you?

Cliff . . .

Yes. It is.

Judith . . .

What about for you, Ruthie? I never hear you complain.

Is Cliff ’s diabetes difficult for you?

Ruth . . .

Cliff

Well, I think . . .

Cliff . . .

Judith . . .

I want to say something here . . . With diabetes you have to know what it is, the way it is progressing, and what could possibly happen. The only other diabetic I know of in our family is my cousin.

So are you saying there are some things in life you can’t change?

Ruth. . .

No, Cliff. Your mother wasn’t sure your cousin had diabetes.

She said, maybe, but no one really knows if anyone else in your family is diabetic.

I tell Cliff he should be glad he doesn’t have something worse.

It could be really bad. He’s had diabetes for thirty-five years, but the doctor tells him that in view of his condition, he has very good health. You’ve got to be grateful for the little things.

Cliff . . .

That’s right.

104

Ruth . . .

Right! And you might as well accept them.

Judith . . .

When you look back, what did you learn about things you can’t change? What wisdom do you want to pass on?

Ruth . . .

Go with the flow: Grin and bear it. Get over it!

Cliff . . .

Accept what you have and be glad.

Judith . . .

Ruth . . .

What blessings or hopes do you want to pass on to your family?

I have to say one thing . . . We were blessed when we got Chuck.

When Donna was first diagnosed and the doctor said she was terminal, he wanted to give her chemo and nothing else. But Chuck wouldn’t allow it. He told that doctor he was going to take Donna and find a good doctor.

Cliff . . .

The blessing I want to pass on to my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren is a long and pleasant life. Whatever they do with it is up to them.

Ruth . . .

Learn your lessons and move on.

Judith . . .

What do you hope people will remember about you, Cliff?

Cliff . . .

The fact that I was here.

If it hadn’t been for Chuck, Donna wouldn’t have lasted anywhere near as long as she did. He was good to her. I appreciate the way he took care of her. I look at him as another son.

And there’s one more thing . . . I appreciate the fact that you [Judith] are good for Chuck. After Donna passed, Cliff and I were sure he was on his way down—even out. He had a real hard time. But you helped him. You accept everything he went through. You never want him to forget Donna and their life together. We’re glad to have you as part of the family. And I don’t tell you this to make you feel good. That’s how it is. Chuck lucked out, and so did we.

Judith . . .

What do you hope people will remember about you, Ruth?

Ruth . . .

Certainly not that I was a good cook! But I hope the grandkids remember that I did things with them whenever I could. Now that Paige lives near us, Cliff and I try to pick her up at school about once a month and take her out to lunch. Donna liked it when my mother and I picked her up at school and took her to McDonald’s and hauled her back. I think Paige likes it, too.

Judith . . .

Is there anything you want to say that we haven’t talked about?

Donna and Chuck

105

Ruth . . .

You’re right. We’ve had a blessed life, Cliff. Even in hard times, we pulled out of it. We never really suffered (knock wood) other than losing the kids.

Judith . . .

What did telling your story mean to you?

Cliff . . .

It means that people in the future will know how we started out in life, what we went through, and how we’re ending up. It was kinda’ interesting to look back and remember the important things—the fun things. I hope our grandchildren and beyond can use what we learned to make their lives better. We are family, you know.

Left to right: Ruth, Cliff, Florence Battles, Bud Rintz, and Judi Rintz

Judith . . .

What about you, Ruth?

106

Cliff . . .

Ruth . . .

I want to say we’ve had a nice association with people in our business and with people at the Y. We’ve made lots of friends, and over the years, we’ve been active with those friends. We celebrated New Year’s Eve with people from the Y.

You asked some hard questions, but they made me look back. And, you know, when you look back you remember things that help you—and hopefully others—learn from the past and create a better future.

We took a yearly camping trip in our trailers with one couple from the Y. We got to see a lot of the United States. We enjoyed all the things we did with the Y people. I have lots of relatives, but we never lived near them, so we didn’t do anything with them. But we sure enjoyed everything we did with our friends. Over the years, I’ve learned that friends are very important.

I don’t feel we’ve had a spectacular life. It isn’t anything anybody would write a book about.

Judith . . .

But we are.

Cliff and Ruthie

107

We love you Cliff.

Clifford Jacob Stock 1920-2013

August 1942

Top row: left; Ainsley, Jena, Rylan, and Ryan, right; Kira and Alex Bottom row: left; Bowie, Emerson, Rocco, and Carissa, right; Judith and Chuck

Between The Lines Thank you, Kira Layne-Schwabe Hettinger, Esq. I’m proud of you on many levels. I’m especially proud of you for asking me to rescue Papa and Grams’ story from its lonely computer file and present it to you as your 2013 Christmas gift. Because of you, Schwabes—present and future—will look back, then look forward through a different lens. Because of you, Papa and Grams will be honored, loved, and remembered for time and eternity.

So, my dear, Merry Christmas 2013, and beyond. May the joy of the Christmas season fill your heart every day.

Thank you, Chuck Schwabe, my husband and friend, for supporting my quest to be the best personal historian on the planet. I love you to the moon and back. You are my person.

Thank you, Enid Grigg, designer extraordinaire, for bringing Looking Back, Looking Forward to life through compelling, caring design. Your creativity is unsurpassed.

Thank you, Dee Moustakas. Your laser-focused proofreading skills are the best, bar none.

Thank you, Jena, Ryan, Rylan, Ainsley, Kira, Alex, Carissa, Emerson, Bowie, and Rocco for accepting me, embracing me, trusting me. Thank you for loving me. I wish you love, laughter, and loads of joy as you live your stories. May God grant you peace. I bestow my favorite Irish blessing . . .

May the road rise up to meet you, May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face, The rains fall soft upon your fields, And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Now, Cliff and Ruthie . . . thank you for the hours we spent together remembering, laughing, and crying.

Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for trusting me to be the storyteller.

Some flash lighting for a brief moment and are soon forgotten. Others leave a lasting endearing glow. Through their story, Cliff and Ruth Stock’s wit, wonder, and wisdom will live forever.

Love,