50

Chapter Five

Christmas & New Years 1932/33
Loveland, Ohio
December 17, 1932

8:20 AM

Coming to the store with a container of hot coffee for Morrie, as the boys were usually off to work at one farm or another by this time where they’ll be given something to eat before starting in to work.

“They’re gone!”

“What do you mean, ‘they’re gone’? They usually are by this time.”

“No!” Handing Agie the note Jimmy had written the night before, and signed by both. “The boys, they left sometime last night.”

Disbelieving, “The boys…” fighting the urge to say ‘our boys’ “...aren’t here?” Taking the note from Morrie and moving to the window to better see:

Dear Mister and Mrs Pink;

When we first met you, you asked if Dane and me were good
boys and we said we were. But we have not been feeling so
good breaking our word to our dead mother to go and find our
father, so thought it for the best, before we get too used
to being here to go and look for him. Dane and me both love
you and if after a month, after we get to California, if we do
not find him, or if we do and he does not want us, we will
come back home.

Love to you! Me and Dane.

Signed by both boys.

"If they left ‘Last night’, and they’re walking, so how far could they have gotten?”

“So let’s go…” Morrie said “...find the boys and talk some sense into them.”

“My thought exactly! They’re going to want to jump a train…” shuddering at the thought “...so they’re going to be heading to the yards in Cincinitti, and still have to be on the road somewhere between here and there.”

8:29 AM

Now twelve years old, the red, 1920, Hudson Series ‘O’ Super Six Touring Phaeton did not come equipped at that time with heater or window defrosters. The morning cold and dry, defrosters not needed, but bundled in winter clothing, cruising slowly along Rout 22, the sixteen mile stretch between the outer limits of Cincinitti and Loveland…

“Where could they be? How far could they have gone?”

“Depends when they left.?”

“I know…” Agie said “...I was just thinking aloud.”

“If they left while it was still dark…” going on with his spoken thoughts “...doubt anyone would pick them up…”

“And there’s so little traffic here at night anyway.”

8:37 AM: Approximately seven miles from the store at this time.“Yeah! So if that’s the case…” stopping, pulling to the side of the road “...the boys couldn’t have gotten any further than here.” Both Morrie and Agie stepping from the car, shading their eyes from the morning sun. “ ‘Jimmy’!” Hands held as a minute megaphone. “ ‘Jimmy’!”Morrie yelled…“ ‘Dane’! Come home, boys...” Agie called “… ‘please’!”

But for the sound of birds and the slight rustle of leaves, all is silent.

“If they left at daylight…” Morrie suggested “...someone could have given them a lift to the city.”

Grasping. “Yeah, and they still wouldn't have looked like hobos…” both getting back into the car “... so maybe someone did pick them up.”

Pulling onto the road. “Where’ll we look for them, Cincinnati's a big city?”

Agie’s only logical answer. “The train station.” Since having Jimmy and Dane to care for, for the first time in her life becoming ‘motherly’, thinking, So glad I found those heavy jackets for my boys. Two words echoing ‘My boys’! Tears coming. “We’ve ‘got’ to find them, Morrie!”

“I know, honey. But what if they don’t want to be found? What if they feel they simply ‘have’ to do this thing!”

Sobbing now, her words broken: “What if, Morrie, they think that they’ve proven their promise to their mother by going even this far, and...They’re cold and want to come home.” Doing something he’d never heard Agnes do in their now seventeen years of marriage. “Please, God!” She sobbed. “Help us find my boys.”

10:40 AM: Transverseing every possible roadway between the rail tracks in the Atlantic/Pacific Freight Yards, constantly stepping from the Hudson shouting their names, by this time agreeing that if Jimmy and Dane were anyplace within the freight yards, within hearing their names called, and wanted to return home, they would.

“Guess they could have gone in the other direction.”

  “Alright, Morrie, maybe they did, but where’s the nearest rail yards then?”

“You know what, I’m not even sure.”

“Maybe…” hope upon hope “...they changed their minds and are back home waiting for us.”

Shrugging his shoulders. Giving up, Morris and Agnes Pinowskiz, AKA Mister and Mrs Pink returned home.

The United States of America

When Franklin Roosevelt took office, the country was in a desperate state.

He took quick steps to declare a four-day bank holiday, during which time Congress came up with the ‘Emergency Banking Act’ which stabilised the banking industry restoring people’s faith in the banking system by putting the federal government behind it energising American industry.

Loveland, Ohio

December 24, 1932

Hardware stores throughout the country, via post receive all types of promotional literature; Morrie had been following the progression of one particular advancement of a household item, growing from strictly a commercial usage to household residential— much as he had the ‘first commercially successful home electric refrigerator called the ‘Monitor-Top’ refrigerator back in 1920.

7:46 PM

“You know…” Morrie said, said, finishing the last of his first martini “...we ordered two of them”

Notation: This item so reverential that hundreds or perhaps, in a short time, thousands of trained men would be needed to install and service throughout the entire United States. So many needed that the company had instituted a program for young, mechanically untrained— as the company plans on training them themselves— men of age seventeen or slightly older that had not, as of yet, received their high school diploma, that they, the company would shepherd them through their last year of high school in order to receive their high school diploma if, at the same time, they would commit to and continue on with the companies special training program that would then lead to lifelong, high paying carriers— something Morrie had every intention of speaking to Jimmy about. If Jimmy were still here.

With Agie’s enthusiastic endorsement, Morrie had ordered...actually back ordered two; one that would be in usage while on display at the store, and one for their home. Both with no delivery date as there was no-one in the entire Cincinitti area to install it.

Back to 7:46 PM and the last of Morrie’s first martini.

Gifts given before dinner: A bottle of pre-prohibition, ‘Four Roses’ Bourbon for Mazie and Elmer. A bottle of Pre-prohibition, ‘Gordon Dry Gin’ for Agie and Morrie—Both bottles paid dearly for; ‘Slick’ the moonshiner, after all did know how to keep a secret.

Two bolts each of twenty yard long— one gingham and one blue denim material coming from the Sears cataloge for Izzy… Which he was absolutely overjoyed with.

Fur lined leather gloves for both boys, and two ‘Smith and Wesson’ .38 callable revolvers —Morrie’s idea because he wanted to try target practice again along with Jimmy and Dane, using his ‘Colt Model 1861 Navy Revolver’. The same revolver ‘Wild Bill Hickok’ and Tom Mix— so Gunny Gunderson had said… lied— along with four box’s of .44 caliber bullets, that by decree of Agie, both pistol and bullets henceforth had remained unseen in the inner far left corner of the front counter.

12/24/32: Christmas Eve family and friends dinner had been held in the Village of ‘Summer Springs’ at ‘Maize's Eats’ with her husband’s establishment, ‘Elmer’s Groceries’’ supplying whatever local grown vegetables— which just about any kind of vegetable that might be served at a Christmas Eve dinner.

8:02 PM: Drinks, featuring gin martinis; moonshine ‘gin’ purchased from the illicit moonshiner still known only as ‘Slick’! And bourbon highballs; moonshine ‘bourbon’ also purchased from Slick, and all were in… or in the case of Morrie and Agie — whom had given permission to be addressed as ‘Morrie’ and ‘Agie’ to Mazie and Elmer as the Pink’s considered the two to be their best friends—in the case Agie and Morrie, part of their martini besotted brains would not cease to wonder where Jimmy and Dane were and how Jimmy and Dane were? Are they even safe? placing a bit of a shadow over this, by this time thoroughly inebriated group of adults. Also in attendance on this Christmas Eve was the one time migrant now citizen of the city of Loveland, Ohio, was the ‘seamstress’ lovingly known as ‘Izzy’.

His stomach turning at the thought of alcohol, completely sober, Izzy, having aimlessly wandered the itinerant vagrant road for better than three years, having seen the evil and senseless brutality that mankind can sometimes… often bestow upon others of the human race, and deep down, though having no idea how horribly and quickly it had happened, deep down Izzy knew both Dane and Jimmy were dead. And unwilling to cause distress, would not say how he knew, nor did he have any idea how he himself had survived. However…

A captains mustering out payment of fifty dollars that he carried in a leather wallet held within the ‘kit bag’ slung over his shoulder, was given him upon early dismissal from the military hospital.

Remembering nothing before the, close over his head, cannon burst, or how it came to him, but beneath Izzy's U.S. Army issue long coat, held onto his belt was a sheath containing a— sharpened and pointed beyond issue— was a U.S. Army bayonet that, unknown to the crazy appearing, shell-shocked man that had been trained in hand to hand combat that, in his befuddled way, knew well enough and had, on numerous occasion forcefully protected himself with deadly accuracy.

But it was not his killer accuracy that had saved him, as he — on the hobo’s telegraph, had come to became known as ‘the crazy man with a sword that was best to be left alone.— had often saved himself from those that ‘would’ have... and ‘were’ ready to kill him for his army issue long coat, but more so his ‘crazy man’ reputation.

Throughout the three plus years, appearing at hobo jungles, the men sitting about the burning trash can containing that nights dinner of ‘hobo stew’ would move aside making room for the ‘crazy man’ that never spoke but would always place a quarter into the ‘contribution cup’.

Where it had come to him, and how he knew to use it, and where the weapon disappeared on the frigid night Izadore (Izzy) Feldman had been found tightly huddled within a U.S. Army issued, khaki long-coat lying in the narrow alcove of the once antiquities store.

8:05 PM: Adding home made ginger ale to his wife’s highball glass containing three fingers of moonshine bourbon. “What did you and Agie order?” Elmer asked.

Taking a sip, reaching for a pretzel from a bowl on the coffee table before the sofa he and Agie sat. “This company has been in business, even keeping people working during the bad, hard times.” Sipping and chewing…”

Swallowing her heavily gin infected Martini. “They’ve been making these things for years…” Agie said.

“But they’ve all been…” taking another pretzel “used in big places…”

“Like movie theaturers and hotels.” Agie added.

“And now that almost all of us have gas…”

Swallowing a mouthful. “For our autos?” Mazie asked.”

Words becoming slurred now. “No…” looking at her over the rim of his glass “...our homes.”

“Company’s factory’s in Connecticut and it’s taken all this time for…”

Agie, what the hell company are you talking about?”

“ ‘Carrier’.”

“ ‘Carrier’?” Elmer questioned. “Never heard of them!”

Near refilling her glass with straight gin, “You will!” Agie said, adding a dash of home-made vermouth. “Because they’ve invented a…”

“Furnace…” Morrie said “...a, what Carrier calls, a ‘forced air furnace’ that heats your house with gas, that’s small enough to fit— even some day, so they say, in a closet that now will go into our basements letting us get rid of shoveling coal and that dirty old furnace.”

“And I'm the guy shoveling a half ton of coal down the chute twice a year so…” looking to his wife, who shrugged her shoulders “...yeah, it’s okay with me.”

“Hows thus, uh, furnace thing work?”

“Simple, Mazie. There’s this, uh, kind of electric thermometer, called a…?”

Somehow remembering while under the influence of her now third martini. “ ‘Thermostat.” Agie said. “That you set in your coldest room for whatever temperature you want, and…?” Waiting for her husband to respond.

Under the same influence as his wife, knowing but slipping from his mind.

“I’m not sure.” Morrie mumbled. “Whenever they find someone to bring it to us, and get it going, he’ll let us know.”

Notation: The two pairs of gloves and pistols will remain stored in the unopened Sears & Roebuck shipping container postmarked ‘December 11, 1932’ until discovered, along with a carton of ‘World War Two’ army fatigue caps by thirty-two year old, Sharon Kaminsky and thirty-four year old, Clyde Murphy on August 12, 1969, three days before the start of the ‘Woodstock Music and Art Fair’.
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                                            57

                                      Chapter Six

                              Aftermath & Time Forward