The Karen Files, pt. 11

Another in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the life of our mother:

It’s kind of intriguing, as one rifles through old photos of a loved one, especially a parent, to see that person slowly but surely become the person you remember.

We’ve not presented the photos of Karen that we’ve shared with you in any chronological order, but if you go back through the previous ten editions of The Karen Files, you’ll see what we mean, even if you never met her.

Hi-res view

There’s a hint of the Mom we recall from our childhood and adolescence in this photo, though she’s not quite there yet. Perhaps, if we were to put this into anthropological terms, this photo might be called the “missing link” between Karen as a youth (she was only 21 when she got married, 22 when she gave birth to our older brother, and 25 when we came along) and her years as a settled-in (but never staid) wife and mother.

We love the red lipstick Mom’s wearing here and the casually saucy flair she’s exhibiting, with that great 1950s blouse she’s sporting and the plaid pants. (What do you want to bet they were Capri pants?)

This picture was probably taken in the late 1950s, but the precise year is uncertain. We think it must be the house our family lived in until 1964, and that’s probably my parents’ bedroom, which was in the southeast corner of the house (none of this is of even remote interest, dear reader, but we’re just stretching our memory muscles here).

Anyway, there’s a confidence in this picture that sets it apart from some of the others we’ve shown you. Mom never lost her sweet and gentle side, but she was a strong woman, too, and you can see that quality starting to show in this picture.

The Karen Files, pt. 10

Another in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the life of our mother:

We very much like this snapshot of Karen and her father, Cecil, Sr., but it carries with it a poignancy, too. (Let’s face it, when you lose a parent, every photo of them you come across is poignant, but this one is particularly so.)

We like the mood of this shot. Karen looks so happy, and her father appears at ease and content, as well. It appears to have been shot outside the home of Cecil and his wife, Frances, in Okemah, Oklahoma, and we’d guess the year to be 1950 or so, as Karen looks to us to be a bit younger than she appeared at the time of her wedding to Lloyd, in 1954.

Hi-res view

This photo is sort of a bridge between the Granddad we knew and loved dearly (we were fond of all our grandparents, but Cecil was especially dear to us) and the young man we’ve discovered for the first time recently while sorting through all the photos that Karen left behind. We wonder if Cecil was yet wearing glasses at this point in his life. Perhaps he was, but only for reading — or it could be that his vanity convinced him to leave them behind on a table inside as they stepped out to snap this shot.

It’s not hard, in this photo, to see exactly what Lloyd found attractive in Karen. Hers is an open and friendly countenance, and she appears ready to take on the world (which she certainly did). She kept a positive outlook throughout her life, and that attitude is apparent in this picture.

We also like the bobby sox.

But the photo stirs up mournful feelings as well. We’re reminded that both Cecil and Karen were afflicted with Alzheimer’s, that these two smart, dedicated, generous souls, who loved each other so and were so beloved by others, met the same sad, debilitating fate.

Both faced it with courage and a stiff upper lip, which was no surprise to anyone who knew them, but it’s sad to think they were both so reduced by the illness that they battled so hard.

Still, it’s nice to see them in better times, both looking happy and hopeful. They each had many wonderful years ahead of them at this point in time, before the tough times took over.

The Karen Files, pt. 9

Another in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the life of our mother:

Some years ago, our father underwent heart surgery. We flew down from NYC to OKC for a few days, to spend some time with Dad before the surgery and to be with him for two or three days after.

He was already in the hospital in preparation for the surgery when we arrived, so there wasn’t much to do but shoot the breeze. With the surgery just 36 hours away or so and the unaddressed but undeniable possibility hanging in the air that these might be our last conversations (they weren’t, thank heaven—he came through the surgery with flying colors), we spent a lot of time reminiscing, talking about his childhood and youth.

We were already vintage-clothing buffs by then (though we’d not yet started wearing hats, which we do with regularity now), and it occurred to us that we’d never seen Dad in a hat. Did he ever wear them? Was he excited, when he became a young man, that it meant he got to start sporting a fedora?

No, he said, he and his crowd didn’t often wear hats. He owned one or two over the years, but he’d never worn them much.

Hi-res view

But when we sorted through the boxes and boxes of family photographs upon Mom’s passing in April, we came across a pair of photos of Dad in a hat (in one, Mom’s wearing a scarf, which we have only the vaguest memories of her ever doing, and in the other, she’s wearing white gloves, which we don’t ever recall seeing).

The first one dates to the early sixties, we’re guessing—Mom’s gone blond, and they’re standing in front of the house we lived in till 1964.

We like that Dad looks like kind of hipster-y in this shot—he’s got the stingy-brimmed fedora so popular today (with a higher crown than one tends to see today, and with what looks to be a center dent on the top of the crown, with no indentations in the front of the crown—hey, hat wearers notice these things!). He’s also got the David Byrne-esque closed top button (though we’re probably dating ourselves by mentioning Byrne; his days as an arbiter of hip are probably long past).

Mom looks pretty sharp, too. Healthy and happy and vital. This photo makes us smile (and not only because it confirms that Dad did occasionally wear a fedora).

Hi-res view

The second photo’s from a few years later. Mom and Dad have had a new home built (we resided there from 1964 through 1974), and it’s kind of modern and space-age-y—an angular structure with towering wrought-iron gates that led through an entryway into a square courtyard around which the house was built. It so stood out in that surburban neighborhood that our grade school pals were convinced that we were wealthy (we were not).

In this photo, taken in the aforementioned courtyard, Dad could be wearing the same chapeau as in the earlier photo, but we suspect it’s a different one (not drastically different in style, though), and, as we mentioned above, Mom’s wearing gloves, which pleases us but also surprises us—we don’t remember her ever doing so. We suspect Mom and Dad are on their way to church (perhaps it’s Easter morning, which might explain the corsage). Here, Dad looks much more Mad Men-esque than in the previous photo, a young Don Draper (only without the philandering).

So it’s nice to know that, in wearing fedoras, we’re carrying on a minor family tradition. Ours sport a wider brim than did Dad’s, but that’s a mere detail.

The Karen Files, pt. 8

Another in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the life of our mother:

Our parents were never stuffy—not in the least—but still, some of the stories of their early years together are a little hard to imagine.

We mentioned in an earlier installment of The Karen Files that Karen and Lloyd, for two or three years in a row, operated a temporary fireworks stand with our neighbors and friends, the Youngs.

As we said in that previous post, that scenario puts us in a mind of a never-produced I Love Lucy script in which Lucy convinces Ricky and the Mertzes that selling fireworks is the way to quick and easy riches.

But then, truth be told, we always experienced a sort of transference when watching I Love Lucy (in reruns only, mind you—we’re not that old—though those reruns were ubiquitous in our childhood). We felt, in an odd way, as if we were watching the early years of our parents’ marriage when we watched Lucy and Ricky’s misadventures.

Hi-res version

Not that Lloyd is Cuban (he was born and raised in Oklahoma; still lives there today) or musical (take our word for it—or ask him to sing “Wake Up, Little Suzie,” if you don’t believe us). Nor was Karen a dizzy dame ala Lucy. And theirs was a very equal partnership—it was not the patriarchy that the Ricardo household was.

But Lloyd did have dark, curly hair in those days, piled high as was Ricky’s. And though Karen may have been far less dizzy than Lucy, she was no less fun or sassy.

Still, despite our childish tendency toward conflating the Ricardos with the Leveridges, it’s still hard to imagine our folks operating a roadside fireworks stand. It’s equally hard to imagine them smoking (which we can faintly remember them doing just that—Karen gave up her Kools in the early-to-mid-’60s, and Lloyd, who was always more of a cigar guy, though only at the office, gave up his Swisher Sweets in the early ’70s).

And it’s hard. too, to imagine them in a bowling league. Again, our parents were not snobs, and though their financial circumstances rose and fell with the passing years and the tides of fortune, they were not, strictly speaking, blue-collar workers (Karen did work the night shift at the newspaper for a time in their salad days, though for most of our childhood, she was a homemaker, and as the owner of an automobile dealership, Lloyd came home with grease under fingernails after many a 12-hour day).

Still, the Honeymooners, they were not. But for a while, they did both go in for bowling. The late ’50s and early ’60s were, it seems to us—we have no evidence whatsoever to back this up—the heyday of bowling in the U.S., and if that’s so, it’s not surprising two young marrieds like Lloyd and Karen would want to join in the fun.

We have no memory of having seen either of them in action at a bowling alley, but we do recall encountering, stashed in the back of their closets, those small pieces of luggage that held their bowling balls. We recognize and remember quite well the robin’s-egg blue of Mom’s bowling ball, as seen in the above photo.

We’re guessing this picture was taken in 1959 or ’60. It’s clearly Christmas time, and Mom seems pleased as punch as she shows off her new ball. We remember well, too, the homemade Christmas decoration in the background, a Christmas tree made of a round wooden disc for a base, a wooden dowel rod inserted into it, and layer after layer of decorative netting slid down upon the rod, each a bit smaller in circumference than the one below it. Tiny balls are then attached to the netting and a small cardboard angel placed atop the dowel rod to complete the Christmas tree effect.

We like imagining Lloyd and Karen at 66 Bowl, enjoying a burger, an ice-cold Jax beer and even the occasional smoke, while competing for a league championship at the local lanes.

The Karen Files, pt. 7

Another in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the life of our mother:

It’s easy, sometimes, to think of our parents as somehow older than they are. We too often were guilty of thinking of Karen as being of the Greatest Generation, of imagining her listening and dancing to the big bands during the height of the Swing Era.

But she was born in 1933. She was just a child when Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and the rest were flying high. Heck, she was just 11 when Glenn Miller died.

She remembered and enjoyed that music, sure, much as we remember and enjoy the pop music of the 1960s, when we were kids. But it wasn’t the music of her adolescence and young adulthood. She grew into young womanhood during the post-big band era, when the focus moved to vocalists. Big bands were still around, sure, but they weren’t the dominant force they had been.

Hers was the era of pre-rock ‘n’ roll vocalists like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat “King” Cole, Patti Page, and Margaret Whiting.

For that matter, Karen wasn’t so old when rock ‘n’ roll began to capture the nation’s attention. She was 21 when Bill Haley and the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock” in 1954 and 23 when Elvis Presley‘s recording of “Heartbreak Hotel” became a No. 1 hit in 1956. She wasn’t likely to be found among the squealing teens at a Presley performance, but she wasn’t necessarily old enough to view the young rock-n-roller with the alarmed disapproval so many of her elders did. Presley was, after all, less than two years younger than Karen.

Similarly, we’re often a bit surprised to be reminded that Karen was just a kid during World War II and the events that preceded the United States’ involvement in it. This was brought home to me by the documents that make up this week’s installment of The Karen Files, which we found while sorting through the thousands of snapshots and documents Karen left behind.

The documents accompanying this text are pages from ration books. Until coming across these, we had no idea that children received ration booklets, too. It makes sense, though; obviously, a family of ten would have greater needs than a family of three, so assigning each child their own ration books (to be used, no doubt, by their parents) seems the ideal way to assure that each family gets what’s coming to it.

We’ve scanned and posted all the pages of the ration books for your consideration here. Perhaps many of you have seen ration books before—after all, every American had one, and of those millions of books, surely not a few got stashed when they were no longer needed, for later generations to come across, as we did, in dusty cartons long stowed away in attics or basements.

We learned a few not terribly weighty details about Karen’s life in May, 1942, from these documents. She lived at 509 South 4th Street in Okemah, Oklahoma (we knew she had grown up in a different house than the one where we visited our grandparents, but we didn’t know where it was). She was nine years old, stood four feet and one-half inches tall, and weighed 68 pounds. Her eyes were blue then, as always, and her hair was listed as blonde (light brown, we’d have to call it). Again, these details have no real import, but small things can have an impact when you’re trying to imagine loved ones at particular points in their lives.

We wish we’d thought to ask Karen what the heck she thought of Elvis Presley when he hit the national stage or how it felt to be a child during World War II. There are so many questions that we don’t think to ask our folks, even when we spend a lot of time thinking about the old days. Then a loved one’s mind grows feeble, due to illness or advanced age, or a life comes unexpectedly to an end, and it’s too late to ask.

View all this week’s Karen Files images.