The Old Scrapbook Read online

  The Old Scrapbook

  By: Dennis Higgins

  Acknowledgements:

  First and foremost, I acknowledge Bet and Ray for their otherworldly assistance.

  Also, with grateful acknowledgements:

  The family of Betty, especially her children, Jim (and Ellen) and Cindy. But also Tom and Ron and numerous grandchildren who were assisting behind the scenes.

  To my virtual sister, renowned multi-genre author and illustrator, Virginia Wright for edits and her ideas and work on the back cover.

  To my good friend, Katrina Ribordy for extensive editing.

  For the wonderful services of Ancestry.com

  For the wonderful website, fieldsofhonor-database.com, which honors the American military cemeteries from around world.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Front cover by: Dennis Higgins

  Published by Dennis Higgins through Creatspace.com

  Copyright © 2016 by: Dennis Higgins

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.

  Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is

  investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine

  of $250,000.

  With exceptions and otherwise noted, names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are

  products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,

  locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of

  the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information

  storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  ISBN-13: 978-1518663383

  ISBN-10: 1518663389

  Other Books by the Author:

  Pennies From Across the Veil

  Parallel Roads (Lost on Route 66)

  Katya and Cyrus Time Pilgrims

  Almost Yesterday

  Tomorrow’s Borrowed Trouble

  Steampunk Alice

  Dedications:

  To Betty who lovingly made this scrapbook, to her family who helped with inside information and memories of their dear mom, to Raymond who gave his life in the service of World War II, to Ray’s family (my family) who preserved the scrapbook for over seventy years.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Chicago, IL, Present Day

  Mom died last year and I was still going through her belongings. On one particular Friday night, the rain was coming down in sheets, pelting the windows of my Chicago condo. Storms always seemed worse on the third floor since moving near the lake.

  I was thinking about asking Megan out again, but we had only just started getting to know each other, and I didn’t want to push it. I spend a lot of time alone with my cat since becoming one of Chicago’s youngest successful real estate agents, selling high-end condos.

  I pulled out one of mom’s boxes of pictures and photo albums. It was difficult to sort out all those memories…her memories. It’s sad to think that once my brother and I are gone, all her memories will die with us. If I were to ever have kids, they will only know her from my reminiscence, while their kids won’t know her or her memories at all.

  I looked through a photo album of a trip she and my dad took to Hawaii. In the back she had stuffed a few miscellaneous pictures of Paul and me. I had to laugh, she marked the back of all her photos with the full first and last names. The one I held in my hand read: Paul and Kenneth Turner at Foster Beach.

  My cat, Moonshadow, came and sat on the pile of pictures on my coffee table. He often did this when he was hungry, so I thought I should check his water and food supply. I wondered if Megan likes cats. I also wondered if she was the type of person who would enjoy sitting home on a rainy night, going through old photos.

  The silly cat had both, food and plenty of water, so while I was in the kitchen I poured myself a glass of wine.

  I dug into the box of albums and pulled out the next one. Only I noticed, this wasn’t a photo album. It was made of leather and bonded with a cord. The leather was embossed with, among other things, an American eagle, planes, a tank, and a battleship. Without even opening it, it became fairly obvious to me that it was a scrapbook from World War II. But my parents weren’t old enough to be in that war. Why would mom have this?

  I opened the cover and peered down at pages of black paper with little picture-hanging corner sleeves and white ink. The first page had the words, “Bet” and “Ray”, with a black and white picture of a man I had never seen before. He was pasted in a white inked heart. I didn’t know who he was, but he looked a little like my cousin, Freddy.

  I paged through the book briefly and saw him again with a woman. They were a handsome young couple in very period 1940s clothes. He wore a suit with wide lapels, and a tie with a leaf pattern on it. She was in a polka dot dress with puffy shoulders.

  As I tried to think of who this couple may have been, I suddenly remembered my mom talking about her Uncle Raymond, who was killed in the war. That’s how she always referred to him, and that’s all I knew about him. His name was Raymond Speck and he was killed in the war. But who was this woman? It became obvious with just the next page turn, it was she who made the scrapbook.

  My mom had a large family and Grandma had other brothers and sisters. We grew up knowing all of them and partook in many family functions at their homes. But never once had I heard any stories of Raymond, much less his girlfriend, Bet, which I assumed was short for Betty. But no last name was ever written. Sadly, my mom was the last one of the family still living who would have known anything about her. Now she’s gone as well.

  I found myself fascinated with that scrapbook. From it, I learn that Ray moved to Chicago from West Virginia, as many of my mom’s family did, including herself. It is here in Chicago that he met Bet. She chronicled everything about their lives together, from how they met to the shows they attended. She added theater stubs, drawings, and many photos. What impressed me most was her sense of humor and zest for life. Her white ink pen narrated every aspect of their existence along with humorous commentary of every single picture.

  How I wish I could find a woman like her. I’m tired of dating a different girl every couple of months. The love Bet had for Ray was pure and there was something innocent and wonderful about it. I could tell he loved her, too, but I only had the look on his face in the photos to go by.

  Sometimes it’s easy to think that women of the past were not independent and strong. Logically, I know that wasn’t true. Women had to step up and work in factories, and the 1940s produced some of the strongest women in history. But in my mind I always saw them with old fashioned ideas of being good housewives and catering to their men. Perhaps that ideal came back in the 1950s and it never really appealed to me. It is obvious that Bet was a strong, witty, articulate, and independent woman.

  I tried to think if anyone would still be alive today who might know anything about who Bet was.

  As I got up to grab my phone, Moonshadow’s tail nearly knocked over my glass of Malbec. I had recently learned to enjoy the Argentinian red wine.

  I called my cousin, Ginny, and asked if she knew any stories of Raymond and Bet. Her grandmother and my grandmother were sisters and Ray was their brother. Like I said, memories are lost to generations. Ginny only knew he was the uncle who was killed in the war.

  The scrapbook contained only a couple of old pictures of Ray in West Virginia; but most of the pictures were from Chicago or other parts of Illinois
.

  I came upon one page in which they had gone with a group of friends to something called the Railsplitter’s Lodge. The trip was dated October 25, 1942. I did a Bing search and nothing came up. At first I thought it was Railsplitter’s State Park, but that was created in 1971. I assumed Railsplitter still had something to do with Lincoln and Illinois. She wrote that they were all dressed like farmers and had a wonderful time with no arguments. She called it the “Grandest outing anyone could go out on”. It must have been a treasured memory for her. She filled up three pages of pictures and handmade drawings. She had even drawn the lodge itself, along with the two structures, separated as women and men. I didn’t know if they were outhouses or if she was letting any would-be viewer know that the genders were separated. Like I said, there seemed to be an innocence about their relationship.

  It occurred to me, the scrapbook was a 1940s version of something like Facebook. It recorded pictures and places they went, along with things they did. The funny commentary was much like an early meme. Only the audience was much smaller. The scrapbook was made for herself and perhaps Ray.

  One picture had Ray and another male friend carrying Bet as she sat perched between both their shoulders. She captioned it, saying, “They wouldn’t do this to me! (Or would they?)” The next photo had her bent over a log as Ray and one of the other women playfully held pipes above her. Her caption read, “Go’wan, hit ‘er, Ray!”

  This trip and the fun they had was a memory, captured in pictures, yet lost in time. It made me melancholy.

  It also occurred to me that Bet must have been well educated. Her grammar and punctuation was flawless. Even when she playfully wrote like people spoke, as in her “Go’wan, hit ‘er, Ray!” She used the proper comma before the name, Ray, and apostrophized out the h in her.

  I sat back and sipped my wine, still looking at the page. When Ray was killed in the war, what happened to Bet? Did she find someone else who would appreciate her sharp wit and fun nature? I hoped her life was good and well-lived.

  And what of Raymond? He is my blood relative. What was his personality like? He looked happy in the pictures. In the Railsplitter group photo, he is the only guy smiling. It must have been a thing for the guys not to smile, but Ray seemed far too happy with Bet.

  As I took another sip of wine, my phone sent a notification. It was a text from Megan:

  “Hi Kenny… busy tonight?”

  “Nope, sitting at home drinking wine, listening to the rain, going through old pictures, trying to keep the cat away from all of them…especially the wine.”

  “LOL. Care for some company? Sounds like fun.”

  I told her “sure” and picked up the house a bit. She didn’t live far, just two exits off Lake Shore Drive and rush hour was just about over, so I knew she wouldn’t be too long.

  She actually arrived sooner than I thought. She must have texted me from her car. Great! She’s one of those. She will either get a ticket, or worse, cause an accident.

  She wasn’t a bit winded from climbing up my three flights of stairs. She must be in good shape.

  “Hi Kenny,” She gave me a hug and handed me a bottle of wine.

  I grabbed the wine to take to the fridge. “How did you get here so quickly?”

  “Oh, I was at a friend’s house when I texted you. She lives in your neighborhood. But she had a date.”

  I looked at her. Megan was tall with short blonde hair and big blue eyes. She was pretty, even with her hair flattened from the rain.

  “Do you want to try my Malbec or would you prefer the Rosé you brought?” I asked.

  “I’ll try yours,” she answered. “Is it dry?”

  “A little; we should probably be eating steak or pasta while drinking this, but I like it.”

  I poured her a glass and refilled my own. “Well, here’s to rainy nights and wine,” I toasted.

  “Cheers!” she said. “So you said you were looking through old pictures.”

  “Yeah, check this out. I would like your opinion on these people, just from what you see here.”

  I handed her the scrapbook and she ran her slender fingers across the embossed leather before opening it.

  “Who are they?” she asked, looking at the first page.

  “I’ll tell you later, just look through it and give me your opinion. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all, this is really amazing.”

  She looked through every page slowly, reading all the captions, occasionally giggling at the words. When she got to what would be the last page, she thumbed through the empty, unused pages at the back where a few loose photos were tucked in. She gave me a puzzled look.

  “What happened to them?” she asked.

  “First, what was your impression?”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, I see two people very much in love. The page that Bet titled “Our Engagement” sort of said it all. She is cute and funny and he is handsome, even by today’s standard. Look at this one.”

  She pointed towards a photo of the couple with the caption: Showing off our engagement ring. Ray was holding her wrist and pointing the ring towards the camera.

  “Look how proud he looks,” she noted. “So who are they, Kenny?”

  “He was my mom’s Uncle Raymond. Here, check out the loose photos.”

  She looked at the one I pointed out. It had Ray and three other men in Army uniforms.

  “He either enlisted with all the other men late in 1943 or he was drafted. Maybe that’s why he proposed to her, to have someone waiting for him back home. All we ever knew about him was that he was killed in the war. I never even knew this scrapbook existed.”

  Megan became silent, looking at what was probably Raymond Speck’s last photo. When I looked up at her face, a tear was running down her cheek. I thought that was a little odd, but I liked that she was sensitive enough to cry over people she didn’t even know. People whose lives had changed over seventy years ago.

  “So what happened to Bet?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’ve been wondering myself,” I answered. “I don’t even know her last name.”

  “She must have been devastated,” she said with her voice cracking. “They were two young people, just starting off…having the time of their lives. Fracking war!”

  “Fracking?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I watch a lot of the SyFy channel. Plus, I’m trying not to swear so much.”

  She likes science fiction; I was impressed.

  “So, Ken, don’t you have anyone in your family who might know who this girl was? Maybe she’s even still alive.”

  “I doubt it, but it is possible she could be in her nineties,” I replied. “I did call my cousin, but she didn’t know anything. But then again, she’s only a little older than me. I don’t have a lot of family left and there is no one who would remember her. I just wish my mom would have shown me this scrapbook last year. She would have at least known something about her.”

  Megan put her hand on my back and gently started rubbing it. It felt good.

  “Show me a picture of your mom,” she requested.

  I actually had a great time with Megan. She’s a lot different than I thought she would be. Even Moonshadow took to her. I trust his instincts. She ended up staying until two in the morning, just looking through pictures and trying to do some search on Raymond and his mystery fiancée.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Chicago, May, 1940

  Bet walked up the steps with her mom to her Aunt Harriet’s apartment with more than a little trepidation. She knew Aunt Harriet and Uncle James had planned on inviting James’ kid brother, Raymond. Harriet was Bet’s mom’s younger sister. She had mentioned to her a couple of times, how she thought they might be a good match-up. But Bet wasn’t sure she was ready to meet anyone. She was just about to finish her second year of high school. Bet was nearly fourteen because she had double promoted a few times in grade school. Her advanced brains and maturity level made her seem older than she was…at least in Aun
t Harriet’s eyes.

  During the summer she would be helping at the apartment and watching her kid brother while her mom, Frieda, worked as owner-operator of the Fairfield Beauty Salon on 59th Street, just a few doors down from their apartment. She really didn’t have time for a relationship.

  Bet’s dad, Otto, died when she was twelve. Her mom remarried a man named Bill, but he didn’t contribute much to the family as he was out more than he was home. Bet suspected he was seeing other women, but dared not tell her mom.

  She pressed the door buzzer and Uncle James opened the door, with a glass of beer in his hand.