Thursday, November 18, 2010

Umnak Island, 1 September 1944

My darling…

This is just a note. I just finished work this morning and am dog tired but the day is so nice that Jack and I are thinking about climbing our mountain. We will probably compromise on a walk to the sea but since I didn’t write yesterday and haven’t had a chance today I’m whipping this one off before running over for breakfast. The reason I didn’t write yesterday was that I spent all my time working on a New Yorker piece about the library. I have it in final shape now, ready for retyping , and I’ll send you a carbon. ...

The last time I was over to the library I had a talk with the librarian who wrote all the marvelous reviews. He is from Chicago, not Brooklyn. He was drafted right out of high school and placed in the MP's. From there he was transferred into cooking school, and I know you’ll remember the gag about there being a lot of good cooks in the army. After that he got in artillery and came to the Aleutians as a gunman. But up here he decided to try something different. When he heard they needed a librarian he decided to try. “I submitted a list of my qualifications,” he said. “There was one man more qualified. He had been with the Library of Congress. But his commanding officer would not release him so the job became mine.” I can hear the real librarian gnashing his teeth. He is probably filling some useful niche—like filing clerk. 

...

No letter from you yesterday but the one of the day before, telling of Bill’s [Bill Speidel] incredible performance with the Boilermaker paper on press day, was a gem of purest ray serene.
And now this does it, for I must eat if I am to tackle any pinnacles today.
M

Sunday, September 19, 2010

19 September 1939, Paris -- "It will take longer now"


The Morgans and Daniels reached Paris from Bucharest two weeks after France declared war on Germany, and several months before the actual German invasion. Known in English as the Phoney War, this period was called la drĂ´le de guerre in French, a joke of a war. Obviously it wasn't a joke for Poland, but France was still predicting that the Nazis would not make it to Paris.

Dear Frank [Sadler]:

Only a few blue lights are burning in the Gare de Lyon. The windows of the station are painted black. Stacks of sandbags are piled around key pillars in the big building. About fifty feet from the baggage wagon on which I am sitting, a group of nuns are ladling soup for refugees from the outlying districts. Why women and children should be brought into Paris is more than I can guess. There must be a hundred guards in the stations. Stretched out beside our luggage on the platform below me, Rosa is catching up on lost sleep.

This is our fourth day out of Bucharest. Ordinarily the trip to Rotterdam would take about 48 hours, but that would mean a trip through Germany. When we succeeded in getting tickets on the Holland-America line from Rotterdam to New York, we thought it might be possible to go by way of Berlin, but the consul at Bucharest wouldn’t even consider issuing a visa. Consequently we have had to make a detour half way around Europe: through Jugoslavia, Italy and France. By now we agree with Sherman about war. 

Rosa with the bagged up boat, May 1939
When we left England Rosa and I were travelling with exceptionally little baggage. We had our portable typewriter, a duffle bag and a small grip. By the time we were ready to leave Roumania, the situation was different. In the first place there was our boat, the Romur. It was in two big bags, one of which resembled a fat laundry sack and the other an overgrown golf bag. Then we had a cheap but enormous suitcase loaded with souvenirs, camping odds and ends we couldn’t bear to throw away, books, newspapers, napkins, a sun hat, a broken flashlight, and a Roumanian nightgown. Or course we still had the little grip, the duffle bag and the typewriter. The crowning touch, however, was the pottery with the blanket wrapped around it. While we were in Rucar, we saw the peasants making enormous wool blankets. They sheared the sheep, carded the wool, made the thread, wove the blankets, dyed them and combed them. We bought one. In Bucharest we found a little shop where we could buy peasant pottery for ridiculously low prices—so we bought a complete tea set. With the blanket tied around the ceramics for protections, Rosa has coddled that tea set halfway across Europe now. 

Adding to our baggage woes have been our travelling companions. Although half-back Paul, our fellow American, is travelling light, our Australian friend and his wife have fifteen suitcases between them. He has all the goods he accumulated in three years away from home while she, a refugee from Germany, has everything she ever owned. 

We left Bucharest on the fifteenth at 11 a.m. It took two taxis, crammed unbelievably full, to get us and our baggage to the station. European third class couches are divided into compartments designed to seat eight or sixteen. We piled into one for eight, managed to arrange our baggage so that we could find seats afterwards, and then locked the door. We refused to open it until the train was well under way.

Everything went smoothly until about one o’clock the next morning. By that time we were in the middle of Jugoslavia. Then the train stopped at a squalid little station and we were told we had to change trains. Paul opened a window while Howard and I dashed out to the platform. Then he passed the bags out to us. The porters came to help, were refused because we had no extra money for tips, and stayed to admire. It was like one of the old fashioned comedies in which fifteen men got out of an Austin. The poor porters almost dislocated their jaws, their mouths fell open so far as bag after bag poured from the window. We had an hour and a half’s wait in a pouring rain before our train puffed into the station. It was impossible to find a compartment to ourselves this time, so after stowing the baggage as well as we could, and finding seats for the girls, Paul and I alternated at pacing the hall until the train pulled into Zagreb at eight in the morning. From then on we had the compartment to ourselves until we reached Trieste at about noon.

We had three hours in Trieste, so we went sightseeing. Down at the waterfront we scandalized the natives by going wading. In several places I tried to cash an American Express Check, but no bank was open during the lunch hours. When we returned to the station we had to fight for seats on the train to Venice, but managed, by wild flailing of the Romur’s paddles and accidental dropping of small bags onto other passengers’ heads, to get a compartment to ourselves.

In Venice we paused long enough to change trains and to catch a glimpse of garbage and gondolas by the Grand Canal. Rosa and Howard gave us a real scare by almost missing the train. There was an awkward wait in Milan—from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. The benches in the waiting room were crowded so we slept on the floor. Rosa, Howard and I went to see the cathedral at 5 a.m. and almost missed the train.

At Torino there was an especially long way to shift baggage between trains, so we stole a porter’s wagon, loaded the luggage onto it, and started to move. Then the porter saw us. The repercussions were nearly international. All the porters and the station cops gathered around to stick out their chins like little Duces and their hands like any porters. After screaming like wounded eagles for ten minutes we finally settled for 5 lira, telling the porters to apply the rest to Italy’s war debt to us. 

No sooner did we cross the French border than that French secret service grabbed us. We were led into a little room in the station and a gaunt and Gallic man with an enormous nose began to question us. At first we thought our visas, acquired in Roumania after a two day fight with the U.S. and French consular officials, were no good, but it developed that the Intelligence Officer wanted to know if we had noticed anything about troop movements in Italy. We told him all that we knew and in return he waived customs examination for us. 

The trip from the border to Paris should take six hours. We were on the way for nearly two days! There were four changes of trains, four fights with porters, a mad scramble for forgotten baggage, and several interesting talks with a little Scotch lady who was doing refugee work in Poland when the war started.

Adding to our fun has been the fact that we ran out of money in Italy. Actually we are not broke for I have an American Express Check and Howard a Cook’s Traveller Cheque, but nobody is willing to cash them for us. With the last of our Italian money we brought fruit, bread and jam. The fruit and jam are all gone, but we still have a little bread. There is a penalty for mentioning food in our compartment. 

"The morning papers are full of the news of the Russian invasion of Poland. We heard of that for the first time from the French official at the Italian border. None of us can figure it out and we’ve decided to study surrealism rather than international politics. At least surrealism isn’t supposed to make much sense."
We pulled into Paris about five hours ago, and while the Australian and his wife slept, Rosa, Paul and I went for a walk around the darkened city. The streets are not completely dark. Every other light is painted blue and left burning. There are guards on all the bridges and near each important building. Surprisingly few of the buildings have sandbag protection and there are no balloon-barrage sausages floating around. We saw no anti-aircraft guns, but all of the windows in the stores are webbed with tapes, which is supposed to keep them from breaking in case of an explosion nearby.

The morning papers are full of the news of the Russian invasion of Poland. We heard of that for the first time from the French official at the Italian border. None of us can figure it out and we’ve decided to study surrealism rather than international politics. At least surrealism isn’t supposed to make much sense. The people we have talked to are angry and disappointed about the Russian defection, but they still feel that they can and must beat Hitler. The most common statement we have heard is: 

“It will take longer now.”

Our train is supposed to leave at 9 a.m. for Brussels. We hope it won’t be much longer now.

As ever,



Wednesday, June 30, 2010

1937 -- Working on the Washie

Murray left UW immediately after his last exam, not waiting to pick up his diploma. He had achieved that Depression-era rarity, a paying job in his field, right out of college. He moved into a hotel in Hoquiam and went to work for the Grays Harbor Washingtonian, known to most as the Washie. He and another UW journalism graduate, Pete Antoncich, comprised most of the news staff and each routinely churned out a dozen stories a day. Rosa was home in Tacoma after her freshman year at UW, picking up work as a family helper and hospital aide .

June 16, 1937

2 p.m.
 
Dearest Rosa,

One of the troubles with this job is that with all the writing I have to do, I never get a chance to write.

Monday was one of those days, for me. It was marked by an after-convention let-down in me and in the town as far as news and news-writing went. I just couldn’t seem to find anything of any interest whatsoever. Pete was also working on the beat and he seemed to get everyplace that there was any news just a few minutes ahead of me. I was pretty disgusted.

I came up with 13 stories, all of them quite unimportant except for an interview with the city engineer on some paving projects. None of them rated the front page.

Yesterday, however I went out for features. I found out quite a bit of stuff about how the city library is run, palled around with the assistant librarian for a while and finally got her to give me the annual librarian’s report. It was the first time that it had been made public. It was a pretty good story. My stuff made the front page three times, and I had just about everything that was written locally. Besides that, I turned in several stories that are being held over because the paper was too tight yesterday. So I’m happy again.

My hours are somewhat like those I kept on the Daily, but now that the convention is over there isn’t nearly as much work to doing this as there was to putting out the paper at school.

I get up around 12, eat brunch at the Women’s Exchange, and then loaf (theoretically) till a little after three when I start out on my beat. (Actually, I’ve been going to work around 1 so as not to take any chances of missing anything because of my inexperience, but today’s the day I’m starting to wait before beginning work).

Hoquiam in the '30s -- credit: HistoryLink.org

I report at the office around six o’clock and check over the Aberdeen World for stories I missed and for rewrite material. Then I eat dinner.

After dinner I start writing my stuff and anything new that comes over the phone. This takes just about all evening. I’m pretty well mopped up with my work by 11:30. Then I wait till a little after twelve, check at the police station for late news and head down here to the hotel.

Before going to bed, I check through my notebook to see what tips I have for the next day, and I type them out onto a sheet of notebook paper (the little pocket book, not the big one). Since it’s pretty late to use even a silent typewriter in a hotel, I usually hit the hay then and read for a little while before going to sleep.

Yesterday, Pete, who is the sports editor, made up the sport page for the first time down here. George, the city editor, has been doing that. If Pete is to continue making up the sports as I believe he is, it means that I will do almost all over the local news work instead of sharing some of the work with him. It won’t make any difference on the number of hours that I spend at the office however, but will just mean that I will have to type a little faster to get done in time.

From work to play is always an easy jump, but if the weather keeps up as it is, I don’t know when I’m ever going to get the chance to play. You see, it has been raining. And how! And all the time! And wet rain! So I haven’t played any tennis, or done nothing, notsoever, nohow.

Well, sweet, I just don’t feel up to doing any more on this right now, and it will be after delivery and pickup time if I wait till I get another chance, so I’ll call this one off.

Be a good kid, sweet, and keep right on loving me and my dog. How is our little Beeg Mike getting along? I’ll write later (probably Friday) and let you know where I’ll be able to get home this weekend or not.

All my love,  

Forever,

Murray

 

 

June 18, 1937

Dearest Rosa,

I’m so glad that Big Mike is devilish enough to take my place satisfactorily – but I’ll bet that he hasn’t got my imagination. However, that idea about chewing on your bare feet does have possibilities.

...

Yesterday was one of my best days as far as getting stories went. There was nothing even remotely important from a financial or political angle, but I picked up 20 stories during the day, an all time high for me. Furthermore, I remembered to get a long story on the local boy scouts leaving for the national jamboree and it scored a clean beat on The World. Little things like that make you feel good, and especially good when the scouts are due to leave from Aberdeen, the World’s home bulwark, and when the scout office which I phoned for my information is less than a block from the World office.

In about twenty minutes, I have to leave for the Emerson Hotel to cover the chamber of commerce luncheon. That is the sort of stuff that gripes me. I’d never join a luncheon club if I could help it, and now I have to attend them and furthermore, do what no one else bothers to do: listen to the speeches. Last time it was manganese; this time the Lord only knows what! At the Kiwanis club luncheon it was tuberculosis.

I don’t know if I told you last week-end about buying a new trench coat, but it’s sure a lucky thing for me that I did. There hasn’t been a dry day down here this week, although it’s finally showing signs of clearing up some today. I’ve wandered around well-swathed in water-proof all week. So far, I haven’t even gotten in the Ford since arriving Monday. I’m darned if I intend to use my own gas for covering the beat, and so far I haven’t had time (or the weather) to take the trip down to the ocean or anything. Besides, the weatherman seems to have been bringing the ocean to Hoquiam. ...

Monday, June 21, 2010

Murray sees the Boys in the Boat--Olympic Games, Berlin, August 15, 1936


Dearest Rosa, 

It’s after twelve now and in the morning I have to get up really early in order to prepare for leaving here for the Hague, so this letter will be of the dashed-off variety. 

Yesterday was about the most thrilling for sports that I’ve ever had. The reason, of course, was the crew race. After the Germans had won the first five races at Grunau the British gave me a big spine tingle by breaking the jinx. Then the next race brought on Washington against the field. I went absolutely nuts all the time during the race. In the first place, Washington was last till after the half-way mark, and even though I knew that they specialized in making good finishes I didn’t want them to gamble on their ability. Then with about 500 yards to go they were third, way back of Hungary, Italy and Germany who were fighting it out. Suddenly they really turned on the heat and started to move. 
Murray wore a borrowed Husky sweater to the Games

Great chucks of water flew up as the blades smacked into it. Coming like a shot the Husky Clipper nailed Italy about sixteen yards from the end and moved out to win by .4 of a second. My voice is still lingering around Grunau somewhere because I haven’t been able to find it since. Incidentally, I fear that I bewildered the poor Germans with my shouts for “Washington.” They still don’t know who I was rooting for. 

Gee but it will be swell to start heading for home pretty quick. I’m pretty well fed up with foreign food and foreign voices. Gee what I wouldn’t give for a good American dinner right now, and a bed that has springs which are not instruments of torture. 

And would I love to see you. Oh, gee, darling, but I’m really lonesome over here. But it won’t be so terribly long now. 

I just can’t stay awake any longer, hon. All my love.

Really and forever,

Murray

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Hyde Park, 1936 -- "the safety valve of London"


Murray and his father spent the summer of 1936 in Europe. His dad had speaking engagements in England and Scotland, and Murray acted as his secretary and traveling companion. It was the summer before his senior year at UW, and their last chance to spend extended time together. After a last-minute scramble, they got tickets and accommodations and went on to the Olympics in Berlin. 

London
Wednesday, July 8, 1936
Dearest Rosa, 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and my letter desk is littered with letters that I have started to you at one in the morning and have been unable to get myself going on more than a paragraph or two. But this time I’m starting in the morning and I’ll go on until I tell all the things that I have stored up to say. This is, I’m sorry and really ashamed to say, my first letter since Sunday so I have plenty to talk about. 

In the first place I “discovered” Hyde park and had an adventure last Sunday night. 

Hyde park, as you probably know, is the safety valve of London. It is the place where people go, mount soap-boxes and shoot off their faces in any way they like that does not insult decency or offend the King by name. Lying just on the periphery of the City of London proper—that middle district with which is connected all the pomp and business which Old England connotes—the Park is accessible to all, and popular with both the scatter-brained who want to talk and the more intelligent who want to observe the phenomena. 

Last Sunday evening I visited the park for the first time to attempt to play the latter part. It was a tremendously interesting, impressive scene. The Sunday crowd packed the open spaces in the lawn almost solid. Standing about two feet above the crowd at intervals of fifteen or twenty feet would be the speakers, haranguing for Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, the Salvation Army, The Sisters of Charity, The League of Nations, The Empire Union, Armament, Disarmament, Free Trade. 

Murray Morgan photo
The dominating classes of speakers were the Salvationists and the Communists. Their joint cries of Repent! Repent! for he Gave His Life to Save YOU! and What the Hell Right Have They to all the Good Things in Life! were curiously mixed, coming out in a jumble which seemed to typify the jumbled minds of both the speakers and the listeners.

During the years in which speakers have blown off steam in the Park, certain customs have grown up, traditions have been established, and rules—unwritten but obeyed in letter and spirit—have been made. A good speaker is not to be heckled; one who is not so good must be ready to defend himself verbally at all times. All questions must be answered. In answering questions, a speaker should be free from heckling until he tries to hedge. No violence is allowed at all, and it is usually considered unethical for a debate to spring up in the crowd which diverts the attention from the main speaker. 

It is only natural, too, that such a wild-eyed gathering as is usually found in the park should have its characters of special interest and of even less than normal brain power. Such characters are the subjects of the most heckling, the most abuse, and yet they are the ones who shining-eyed carry on the work, glorying in their chance to improve the British nation by letting the masses hear the wisdom of their minds. 

The most impressive to me is “Jack” the red-bearded salvationist. He comes nightly, sets up his stand, and speaks of Salvation, earnestly and forcefully, almost oblivious to the ridicule of the crowd. From a distance Jack appears to be the American ideal or prototype of the Communist. He has long red hair and a flowing red beard, speaks with much arm waving, and while the sound of his voices carries far, the words are not distinguishable at a distance. 

I went over to hear this giant attacking the dirty dogs of Capitalism but instead fund him begging the crowd to “Love one another, all of ye. But of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Repent and ye shall be happy (You don’t look happy, Jack—from the crowd). Repent as I did and all your sins shall be forgiven (Maybe we haven’t done what you did Jack). Rejoice in the Love of God and all will be peace. (Say Jack, Does your wife sleep with you?) Shut up you. Now, rejoice…”

It was funny, in a way, but it was more pathetic. That shining-eyed saint really thought that he was helping, and he did so want to help. And all the time the crowd grows larger and larger as it does wherever a subject for heckling is found. Finally it would break out singing hymns just to drown Jack out, but, unperturbed, the red bearded giant would merely join him in the singing, leading the song with the sweep of his long forefinger.

Another of the interesting studies is “Tom,” a crazy old coot with a cockney accent and an unchanged voice despite his sixty-odd years. Every Sunday, I am told, he sets up his stand and tells how he has written letters to the various heads of the government telling them how to run their business, and how they have done it. He also offers to sell to the crowd the letters they have written in reply.

He was my first experience in the park, and I almost died laughing at him. Evidently several members of the gathering had heard him before and knew his lines as well as he did. Consequently, just when he would start to shout in emphasis, about three of the crowd would raise their voices to a steamwhistle pitch and make a chorus of “And this is the letter that I got in reply from the old man himself.”

Tom would nod, thank them, and then ask if anyone wanted to buy this sacred sheet, typed, quite evidently, on the same machine as all the others he had been trying to sell. He must be a marvelous man, hon. He had a personal letter from George Washington thanking him for the way he had told the Americans of defeating the British. He had one from the doctors who had saved the King from death seven years ago, thanking him for his advice. He had one from everyone worth mentioning except Theodore Roosevelt—but he said he didn’t agree with the New Deal!

...

I was in the crowd listening to Jack, when I noticed a really pretty girl standing right in front of me with her mother. I talked to the mother a little bit about Hyde Park, and could not help hearing the girl argue that she wanted to stay in the park and hear some more talks, while the mother was protesting that it was time to go home. Eventually the two left but it was not long before the girl came back to the crowd herself. I noticed her, gave her a mental congratulation for out-arguing her mother who, by the way, should never have permitted herself to be out-argued since the park is inhabited mainly by streetwalkers on Sunday night, or rather, the women are of that class—the men have hardly taken up the “oldest profession.” But anyway, this girl came back. 

When the meeting broke up, almost everyone started heading for the group over to our left, and I went too. The girl was about twenty yards to my right. Looking in that direction, I saw some guy come up to her, take her by the arm. She whirled and started to talk very fast, jerking away, so I figured that Mama had been right and should not have left her daughter alone in the park. I breezed over, took her by the arm, and said with a wink which she evidently caught on to, “Got company, Mabel?”

“No, this fellow thought he wanted to walk with me.”

I took another look at the guy, slightly larger than I was and about as tough-looking as they come. With my knees playing Chop-Sticks and my heart shaking hands with my tonsils (which oughta come out), I put on the toughest accent I could and yodeled without my voice cracking:

“Ya better get da hell outten here, see. Scram, mugg.”

To my relief and grateful astonishment the guy scrammed, probably because the bobbies would not have relished seeing a couple of the boys mixing it up in the park. Sooo, I walked with the girl over to the next big group and then she thanked me, said she’d tell her mother what a kind fellow I was, and wound up with a most cordial invitation for me to “Scram, mugg.” It was a good laugh and after a few minutes I did pull out. Adventure?

I have had several other trips down to the Park since, but the most exciting and amusing thing that happened to me occurred when I entered in the only argument that I really got interested in. Some fellow who called himself a “Christian Communist” was belaboring the Catholic Church as never having done a good thing it its entire existence, a fault which his religion did not have. I broke in to ask him if he could imagine Christ so bitterly attacking everything and everybody connected with another religion that did not agree with his and if he could say that his religion made him better than any catholic that ever lived. I also explained that I was not a Catholic and had never been connected with that church. 

As he so often did when arguing he tried to change the subject. He said: “Why do you have to ask your question in that affected American accent. I’ve lived in America for several months and can tell when someone is trying to pretend to be something he is not. Aren’t you proud of your English tongue, or why do you affect Americanisms?"

I congratulated him on his living in America and then told him I was born there, had lived there all my life.

He then started to bawl me out for trying to evade the question by a dialogue on accents! And was continuing on that till a high-pitched voice yelled from somewhere: “I sy. Yow blinkin well started him hon haccents yowr blinkin self.”

I miss you every minute, hon, but I’m not going to write about it anymore as it makes the feeling too acute and it makes the receiver feel it too—I know how I feel when I get your letters.

By the time that you get this letter, hon, there won’t be much more than a month before I’ll be home and it will be well over a month since I’ve gone. So keep counting the days with me. …