Wanda the Waitress

Before we moved to the Orinoco Apartments at 3647 Main from Independence, Missouri, Mr. and Mrs. Patch had a small diner at 38^th and Main.  It was an alternative to Valentine’s Drive-In several doors north of where Mom had her beauty shop.  In the 1950s Main Street was lined with what the politicos call petite bourgeoisie or small business owners.  Most people just call them Mom and Pop businesses.  Our introduction to Kansas City began there.

America’s Baby Boomers entered grade school by the millions and their parents got jobs in the big cities and stayed there – for the most part until their children finished their education.  Stable people and hard work made Main Street a prosperous place and within a couple of years Patch’s Restaurant changed into a magnificent modern glass and steel structure replacing the old diner.  Eight foot glass windows accented by ceiling-to-floor curtains formed the east and north side of the one story building.  Along the north side there were padded stools below the counter which helped retain the appearance of a diner.  Once in a while during the week Mom would send my brother and me for hamburgers and fries; there was no McDonald’s in those days.

The east section of the building was all formal dining and on Sundays the place was packed with church goers, of course, on a much smaller scale than Kansas City’s popular downtown Forum Cafeteria.  Mr. Patch would greet the folks and Mrs. Patch would man the cash register.  The lead cook was Jim and he looked amazingly like George Fenneman, Graucho Marx’s announcer on You Bet Your Life.  As the business grew the Patch’s hired more staff and among them, Wanda, the restaurant’s most popular waitress.

Mom liked Sundays because eating out was a rarity in those days and she could socialize with other people besides her customers.  She always enjoyed talking to Mr. and Mrs. Patch who, through hard work and discipline, transformed their old diner into the jewel of the neighborhood.  Mom’s favorite waitress was Wanda who was single and had a little boy and as much as Mom admired the Patch’s, she was also a single mom who with two little boys had more in common with Wanda the Waitress.

The Fantoft Stave Church

From my Norwegian tourist book, I got the name of a woman who took backpackers in for the night.  This private house was in Paradis somewhere up in the hills that surrounded Bergen.  (I can always brag that I spent a couple of days in Paradis).  After several miles riding a bus and a few walking, I managed to find the place.  After I got acquainted with the lady, it was apparent that she liked foreigners, but not Marines, especially American ones.  I should have kept my mouth shut, but you have to give them your passport and identify yourself which meant I showed her my pink Marine Corps reservist ID. 

I stayed at the lady’s house for two or three days and went down into the city to look at the North Sea aquarium and take the Mount Flǿen cable car to see the sights from the mountain top.  Bergen is huge. Only by taking several pictures and joining them together can you appreciate the full view.  At the aquarium they had nearly all the North Sea fish you could think of including penguins (Antarctica?) and an electric shark that swam around an electrode that emitted a Geiger counter noise.

Norwegians have a wonderful park, Lille Lungegardsvann, that’s centrally located.  I spent several hours there watching families and grandparents parade among the ducks with their kids and huge baby carriages.  It’s odd, but I never saw a young man accompanying his wife and baby carriage in Scandinavia.  Another tourist destination that I did not know about at the time was located in the heart of Bergen, the Leprosy Museum at St. George’s Hospital.  I’ve only discover recently that between 1850 and 1900 Norway was called the “international capital of Leprosy.”

I also saw the famous hundreds of year’s old stave church that overlooks the city up in the hills.  It was preserved by being entirely encased in tar and pitch and was all black, of course, a photographer’s worst nightmare.   Tragically, a pyromaniac burned the place down in 1992.  Perhaps, it was a tragedy waiting to happen because I saw no security guard and few tourists.  Since it’s inception as a pagan church in 1150 A.D., it was eerie inside even though it was changed to a Christian church hundreds of years ago.  Someone placed a huge stone cross in the ground to mark the transition.

Grammy's Beatles Special

Why the camera zoomed in on the guy with the shirt with the words “HIV Positive” on it is a mystery, but the Hollywood of today is full of bizarre and twisted characters from the underworld who have their own agendas.  The Grammy tribute to the coming of the Beatles to America 50 years ago in 1964 was a flop at best even though its lineup included the last two remaining Beatles, Ringo and Paul.  Still, I watched and hoped for more because I was a teenager in 1964 and saw their first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Things have come a long way since I Want to Hold Your Hand. 

The show’s producers would have served their national audience better by retaining some of the simplicity and innocence characteristic of the event 50 years ago.  (The Grammy people could have at least held the event in the Ed Sullivan Theater.)  The Cirque du Soleil Mary Poppins figures complete with umbrellas and airborne summersaulting by wire was too much.  The close-ups of Paul’s beckoning glances to Ringo looked boiler-plate like Ringo waving his arms to elicit audience participation when he sang Yellow Submarine.  Paul’s tired eyes looked like those of an old man.  Show business catches up with you.  It was hard to watch people in their 70s rock and roll or as Bo Diddley said in one of his songs . . . “too old to rock.”

The Grammy people could have joined forces with PBS and TJ Lubinsky to produce a believable tribute.  PBS’ Doo Wop and Malt Shop specials prove the point.  They are respectful because they capture the generational relationship between the musicians and the real audience that gave them fame.  It was personal and despite what you see on TV disguised as authentic recreations, Hollywood just can’t do it, no matter how hard they try.  No one is as perfect as those who put on all that makeup and dressed up in nice clothing.  Real girls didn’t look like prostitutes in those days nor could boys or girls dance that well.  Besides, in 1964 there was spontaneity about the music – its rhythm and melody.  The songs had a good beat and you could dance to them.  That’s what the kids on American Bandstand said.  What happened in 1964 was special and you can’t bottle it.

Irritating Bergen's Communists

I came out on the west side of the mountains to the North Sea passing crystal clear lakes and deep fiords and arrived in Bergen about the end of the day.  It had been an eight hour trip from Oslo.  When the train pulled into the station I walked outside and found a vending machine where I ate a cold slimy eel - a first for me.  They eat a lot of fish in Bergen and you notice it in more ways than one. Like Norway in general, Bergen is a truly clean and inviting city although somewhat cold and damp.  In 1977 the wharf was beautiful with all the different multicolored boats and store fronts illuminated in bright September sunshine.

Tourist guide books say little about Bergen’s WWII history, but I know some of it.  It’s the port where the German battleship Bismarck left to prey on English shipping until a Swordfish’s torpedo ruined her rudder.  On April 20^th, 1944, Hitler’s birthday, a confiscated trawler loaded with tons of ammunition exploded in the Bergen harbor killing 160 people and blowing up much of the harbor area.  The Germans occupied Norway to protect their iron ore shipments that arrived in Narvik from Sweden.

Like I did in Munich five years before, I stumbled onto a communist demonstration held at the Sailor's Monument at the Torgalmenningen, but this was a manly communist demonstration unlike Munich and I told them it was impressive.  The perimeter guard teams accompanied by Dobermans were resplendent in their black leather outfits and black berets – just like our Black Panthers, only white.  The color combinations were right out of a Hollywood movie set.  The hammer and sickle flag was defiantly waving.  Oddly, their flag and banner combination of red with gold lettering was the same as the Marine Corps’.  When I lifted my camera for a picture, the red guards told me that photos were forbidden.  That didn’t make sense.  Why put on a colorful demonstration in a busy intersection with no pictures allowed?  They didn’t appreciate my criticism of the absence of English interpreters for us tourists either.  I know they must have gone back to their university dorms for a self-criticism session on this point.  I could have also talked to these people all day about the failures of Dialectical Materialism and Marxism-Leninism, but in spite of the dogs, I managed to sneak in a picture as I left.

National Archives at College Park

For a WWII researcher having ready access to our National Archives must be like a bear camped out at a honey tree.  By “ready access” I mean being in the Baltimore or Washington, D.C. area.  For the rest of us, we have to travel thousands of miles to get there and what is the reward?   It must be something like what the scientists and history professors experienced at the discovery of King Tut’s Tomb.  

I suspect our archives present a much larger challenge by their sheer size and the perception of a bureaucratic hurdle to get to them.  You’ve must have seen the last few minutes of the Indiana Jones movie where the liberated Ark of the Covenant is placed among thousands of dusty crates in a huge obscure warehouse.  Just think of the potential discoveries that have been dead-ended there!  Believe me, I know warehouses; thousands of little GSA clerks too fearful of their jobs to throw the stuff away.  I’m even running into WWII supply documents just declassified in 2007.

If you guessed I’m planning a trip to College Park for WWII research, you’re right.  I gave up on researching the Eisenhower Library for information on the 1^st Infantry division as well as the 1^st Infantry Division’s museum in Illinois.  I was never satisfied I’d learn much at those places, especially after a few disappointing e-mails.  The Mother Lode appears to be at “Archives II” which means College Park, Maryland. 

My personal interest is in the Mediterranean Base Section in North Africa and Italy (PBS) from 1942-1945.  I’m sure I’m not alone because of the 80 million Baby Boomers, there are thousands who should be curious about retracing their father’s footsteps in that forgotten theater of war.  Services of Supply (SOS) was more than beans and bullets.  It included medical, transportation, engineering, signal (communications), chemical, and more – all that was required to sustain combat units that made up a much smaller percentage of American troops.  The allure of a story is strong because there are few grass roots and personal accounts written about the place and time.  So far, what’s impressed me is the size and scope of it all – the huge ships and convoys, the distances, the setting (deserts, the sea and islands), and the impersonality of it all where one GI is basically on his own among millions who will be here one day and gone the other.

It would be wishful thinking for there to be a research tour to the archives for older Americans especially after all the cutbacks I’ve been hearing about like the Saturday Shuttle service and the diminished research times.  Although it’s an individual undertaking, the trip should not have to be stressful, so for now I’m trying to figure out the trip’s logistics. The only thing I want on my back this time is a coat.