“Becoming Excerpt: “Matchbook”

Chicago, Illinois

February, 1950

Walter and Myra

In early 1950 the Park Studio underwent two changes.

In February, the name was changed to ‘Walter Lewis Studio, Inc.’ The name ‘Lewis’ coming from ‘Lewis Chevrolet’ on the northwest corner of Ogden and Homan because, for some unknown reason, Walter thought the name ‘Lewis’ was a very business-like name.

In April, Walter gambled on a new kind of a camera—actually a novelty—and he borrowed money from his father-in-law to buy one: a camera that shot double-image, full-color transparencies that must be viewed through a hand held, battery operated viewer.

Three-Dimensional Photography.

For commercial photography, three-dimensional photography was an instant success, and Walter Lewis Studio, Inc. became one of the first studios in the city of Chicago to offer, in addition to conventional black and white and four-color process photography…

‘3-D.’

The competition jumped on the 3-D bandwagon quickly but not before Walter Lewis Studio, Inc. had the opportunity to take a few consequential clients away from two or three of the larger studios, and also, to build a substantial backlog of smaller clients.

In July, the note to Mrs. Pincus, the surviving, previous owner of the ‘Park Studio’, was paid off.

In September, needing space and wanting to be closer to the business, Walter Lewis Studio, Inc. relocated to a high-ceiling, four-thousand-square-foot loft in an older three-story building— having an elevator— on North Clark Street, just blocks from the ‘Merchandise Mart’, the ‘Furniture Mart’ and downtown Chicago.

March 13, 1950

Matchbook

“Norman, I said ‘no’!”

“Come on, Mitch, you’ll love it!”

“No, I don’t really think so.”

After school…

The sky was leaden and overcast. The sidewalks and streets were dry but the ground of Douglas Park was covered with a crust of soot-blotched, melting snow.

“Look, Mitch,” taking a last drag, he flipped the cigarette into the snow, “you remember what our favorite games were when we were kids, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure. ‘Cops’n’robbers, cowboys’n’indians’n’soldiers’. So?”

“Yeah, you’re right, ‘soldiers’! Only now we get to play with real guns.” Glancing at Mitchell over his shoulder. “It’ll be fun, and guess what?” Norman said, “We get paid, too.”

“ ‘Guns’?” Looking at Norman, “They give us ‘real’ guns, and pay us, too?”

“Yeah, sure real guns! And pay us, uh,” thinking, fishing, “five bucks for a couple of hours once a week. That’s twenty bucks a month, and when we get to camp…”

“Camp?” Mitchell cut in. “They send us to camp?”

“ ‘Schmuck’! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! For two weeks every summer, and we get paid for it, something like, uh,”— truly having no idea— “seventy, seventy-five bucks.”

“But,” softening, “you’n’me won’t ‘even’ be sixteen till summer. How do we get in? Ain’t we supposed to be at least ‘seventeen’ n or something?”

“ ‘Seventeen’, with a letter from your mom or dad. This guy I know, in R.O.T.C., joined and he’s no older’n’us. This guy says all you gotta do is be big enough to ‘look’ older and you’n’me look like we’re eighteen. Well, you look ‘almost’ eighteen and me at ‘least’ seventeen, and we do this: I write a letter for you saying I’m your dad and that you’re seventeen and I give my permission for you to join, and you do the same for me.”

“That’s stupid, Norm. What if they check?”

“This guy I know says that our armory...”

“On Madison Street?”

“Yeah! This guy I know says that they’re hort of men and they don’t check; least-ways they didn’t check on him and the guy he joined with.”

“And you’re sure they’ll give us guns’n’stuff?”

‘Us!’ Norman thought. “Like I told you, ‘yeah’! Well, they don’t give us guns so we can bring ’em home and play with ’em. They loan ’em to us and we use ’em at the meetings and at camp.”

“ ‘Camp’? What do we do at camp?”

‘We’! “This guy says he was talking to a guy that went last year and he said they live in barracks and go on, uh, bivouac…”

“ ‘Bivouac’? What’s bivouac?”

“That’s when you live in tents and play war games.”

“Like the ‘red’ army against the ‘white’ army, like in the movies?”

“Yeah. — still guessing— And they give us blanks for the guns.”

“You think, maybe, I’d be able to get a ‘.45’?”

“Yeah!” Knowing Mitchell’s resolve was crumbling. “ ‘Maybe’!” Norman would say anything to get him to join with him. “It’s possible. Why not?”

Walking slowly, the cigarettes the boys smoked making them feel older than their not-quite sixteen years.

“Normie, all those times, when we were kids, when I tried talking you into doing stuff…”

“Like hiding in the girls’ toilet at Chader?”

“Yeah.” Laughing, Mitchell poked him in the side with his elbow. “Like that and other stuff. You never did it because you said your mom would kill you.”

Norman poked him back. “Yeah, and she would have.”

“So how come ‘now’ you want ‘me’ to forge a letter so ‘you’ can lie to the U.S. Army and join for four years without even asking your folks? And how come ‘now’ you think your mom won’t kill you when she finds out? Or, if I’m ‘dumb’ enough to do it with you, why my mom’n’dad won’t kill me, too?”

“Mitchie, it’s ‘not’ the army, it’s ‘only’ the National Guard and there’s ‘no’ war going on now and there ain’t going to be any, and ain’t they always talking about good learning experiences and stuff like that? And besides,” looking at Mitchell, “once we’re in, we’re in, and if our folks threaten to go’n tell ’em we lied about out ages, we’ll tell ’em we could go to jail for lying to the U.S. government…”

“Huh?” His head snapping to the side to face his friend, “ ‘Jail’?”

“Nah, don’t worry, they’d never do it because, first off, they wouldn’t want us to go to jail, and also, they are patriotic ain’t they, and they’ll be proud to have their sons in the National Guard.”

“Maybe!”

“And besides,” popping Mitchell on the shoulder, “we’re too old for ’em to kill us anymore.”

“Wavering, “Ehh, I don’t know, Norm, you’re the guy that’s in R.O.T.C., not me. And you ‘never’ did stuff I wanted you to.”

“Yeah, that’s true ,” Norman smiled. “I was too smart.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, removing a package of ‘Luckys’, pressing one up he pulled it out with his teeth. Taking a book of matches from his coat pocket, Norman struck a match and, cupping his hands around the cigarette ‘Humphrey Bogart’ style, lit it, took a deep drag and let the smoke stream from both nostrils. Then, “Here,” handed the matchbook to Mitchell.

“What’s’a matter?” Giving the matches back to Norman. “You out’a juice?” Taking the Zippo from his pants pocket, Mitchell pulled a cigarette from the nearly empty package in his shirt pocket, stuck it between his lips and lit it… Transforming him instantly, so he thought, from a boy to a man.

“No!” Norman handed the matches back. “Read what it says.”

Taking it he looked at the small, folded square of cardboard:

ADVENTURE

EDUCATION

ACTION

JOIN THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD

“So, I’ve seen this a zillion times.”

“Yeah, but did you ever ‘really’ read what it what it says? Go on, open it!”

Shrugging his shoulders he opened the matchbook, and read aloud: “ ‘Summer vacation with pay. Earn while you learn. Join your peacetime National Guard’.” Closing the matchbook, “So?” he handed it back to Norman.

“So?” Come on, Mitch, it’ll be fun… And I’ll tell you something else, something it doesn’t say there. Something I know is more important to you then just about anything,” jiggling the line.

“Yeah, smart ass, what’s that?”

“What’s that? Oh, nothing much, except… How’s about girls?”

Seeing the bait, “ ‘Girls’?” the fish swam closer.

“Yeah, ‘girls’!”

Knowing his friend, Norman knew that when all logical arguments failed on Mitchell, mention… “ ‘Girls’!” he repeated for emphasis. “We wear uniforms when we take the streetcar to the armory and when we go home. And, of course, we wear ’em all the time we’re at camp, and when we...”—truly, Norman hadn’t the slightest idea—“... get time off to go to town?” Jiggling the line. “And you know how girls just love guys in uniform!”

Jiggling.

Coming closer. “They give us time off to go to town when we go to camp?”

‘Us-We’! “Of course we get time off to go to town! And you’ve heard about girls that live near army bases!”

Closer now. Nibbling at the bait. “And we’re going to be those soldiers, huh?”

“Yeah! And if we’re ever going to get fucked...” jiggling, jiggling, “...it’ll be then. You still want to get fucked, don’t you?”

The fish, the ‘really’ stupid fish, struck at the bait, “Yeah!” and ran with the line. “Of course I still want to get fucked!”

Setting the hook. “Okay, then,” Norman said. “It’s a sure thing! You’n’me are really going to get fucked in the National Guard.”

****

A storm had blown into Chicago a few days earlier, but there was no wind on this day and the temperature stood at a comfortable 47 degrees.

Though it did not feel it then, and Norman Parminter and Mitchell Lipensky had no way of knowing another storm was building. A terrible storm. A storm that would take another three months to arrive.

Chicago, Illinois

March 29, 1950

Father & Son

“Mom, Dad…”

Walter continued to read the evening newspaper.

Lowering her section of the paper, Myra looked at her son.

He’d waited nervously for dinner to end, and had even surprised his mother by helping clear the table and dry the dishes without being asked. Now that dinner was over and his parents were sitting, relaxed, reading the paper, perhaps now was the best time to tell them.

“Uh, me’n’Norman,” taking a deep breath, “have joined the National Guard.” Standing back, he awaited the explosion, but…

“ ‘Norman and I’!” His mother surprised him by first correcting his grammar, then further surprising him, said, “Your father was in the National Guard years ago. Did you know that?”

“He was?” More than just a little surprised, he looked at Walter. “No, I didn’t know that! ‘Really’? You were ‘really’ in the Guard, Dad?”

“Huh?” Walter lowered the paper. “What did you say?”

Not fully realizing what the National Guard was since the end of the war. Somehow thinking of it as a grown-up extension of the Boy Scouts. “Walter,” Myra said, “ Mitchell has joined the National Guard.”

“Oh? Did you know I was in the Guard?” Walter asked his son.

“No… Well, yeah, mom just told me. When was it?”

“Years ago. I don’t know, probably when I was, what? Seventeen, eighteen. I can’t believe you didn’t know that. Matter of fact, I’ve got a picture somewhere. Myra, where’s that picture?”

“I’m not sure, Walt.”

Going into the dining room, Myra opened the bottom drawer of the built-in hutch...—The same hutch cabinet on which, in the recessed top, Mitchell still hid his, by then, vast collection of naked lady tracings, an eight-pager he’d bought from Ronald Muskowitz and two ‘really’ good issues of ‘National Geographic.’—...and removed a gray cardboard box. The type of box that originally may have held a man’s suit. Returning to the sofa she sat down and her son, breathing a sigh of relief because the news of his enlistment—at least for the time being— had been accepted, sat down next to her.

Removing the top of the cardboard box, Myra laid it on the cushion alongside of her.

The box was chock-full of family pictures. Rummaging until she found what she was looking for. Studying the photograph a long moment, she clicked her tongue twice at seeing her forty-four-year-old husband at the age of seventeen or eighteen, then handed the picture to her son.

In faded tones of brown, the picture showed a young man standing in a shooters pose pointing a Colt .45.

Completely surprised by Walter’s appearance, Mitchell looked from the picture to his father—who was sitting upright, watching, waiting to see his son’s reaction—and back at the picture.

The seventeen or eighteen year old Walter was wearing an old-fashioned, circa ‘World War One’ uniform. The khaki, high-peaked, tri-cornered hat was held in place by means of a leather strap held snugly under the point of his chin. He wore a dark khaki tunic, a leather Sam Brown belt and holster, lighter colored khaki jodhpurs, and canvas puttees.

Though Walter was handsome and extremely youthful appearing for his age, looking at him his son, as most children, could only see an old person and Mitchell could ‘not’ equate the picture of this handsome, young soldier—whom, in a modern-day uniform would look very much like he himself looked—to the ‘old man’ sitting across from him.

Mitchell desperately wanted to say something to his father and his mind struggled to find the right words but, ‘Dad, you used to be so young’. Or, ‘Dad, you used to be so handsome’ seemed to be more an insult than a compliment. At an absolute loss for words, Mitchell hid the shock of seeing his father as a handsome, young soldier behind a bland expression and unable to articulate what he ‘really’ felt. The old photograph still in hand. “Dad, uh...” knowing he must say something. “How come you never said anything about this before?”

Disappointed by his son’s rather insipid reaction, “Oh, I don’t know,” Walter answered. “It all was so long ago, guess I just forgot.”

To Walter Lipensky the time spent in his childhood and as a young man seemed to be that of another person and that of another lifetime. Besides, he’d never considered discussing his early life with his son. After all, how does one intelligently converse with a kid who’d rather read a ‘Superman’ comic book than ‘Moby Dick’?

Seeing this as an opportunity for her husband and son to have, for once, an enlightening, friendly conversation. Thinking that they would be better off alone than with her there. Standing,“Think I’ll check on the kids.”

Feeling deserted as though now alone together they must find ‘some’ basic dialogue. Really, though, it shouldn’t be ‘too’ hard now that the father and son finally had something in common to discuss. But…

“Uh,” searching for a way to break the protracted silence. “You weren’t in the war, were you? Uh, the old one?”

Sighing, “No, Mitchell, I was too young for ‘the old one’ and your grandmother wouldn’t let me enlist and I was too old to be drafted for ‘the new one’ but I could have enlisted anyway… But I had you and your mother to think about, so…” His words trailed off and a faraway, almost pained look came to Walter’s face. “I don’t know.” He sighed again. “I guess maybe I was lucky to stay out of both of them.” Said flatly, without conviction, Walter felt a strongly suppressed urge as though he’d missed the two great adventures of his lifetime and instead had been relegated, for his entire life, into the drudgery of marriage and parenthood and everyday living.

Seeing the dark look on his father’s face and, as it almost always was, Mitchell thought this look of what he perceived to be ‘disappointment’, was directed at him.

He wanted to ask, ‘Dad, how were things with you when this picture was taken’? He wanted to ask, ‘Dad, did you like it in the Guard’? Because at Mitchell’s age even one year made a difference. ‘Dad, do you think you were seventeen or eighteen when this picture was taken’? Mitchell ‘wanted’ to talk to his father because then, for the very first time in their lives, they ‘did’ have something in common… But instead the boy felt the void of distance and years, and so said nothing.

Walter also felt this thin thread of ‘something in common’. Of some all but forgotten, familiar ground that he’d once tread upon that his son was now treading upon. At this time Walter ‘did’ feel a strong need to speak to his eldest son about his own younger years... About the years ‘before’ he became a husband and ‘before’ he became a father, but…

Walter looked at his son and said nothing.

Mitchell looked at his father and he, too, said nothing.

Possibly not knowing ‘how’ to proceed, neither the father nor the son volunteered to be the first to speak and after a few inept, prolonged moments Walter lifted the newspaper hiding his face. But not reading he considered putting the paper down and asking his son ‘if he’d like to talk to him awhile…’

...But instead, crossing his legs, Walter angled his body away from the boy seemingly dismissing both his son and the aborted conversation.

Sitting on the edge of the sofa with a faded photo of a familiar stranger in his hands the boy began to feel awkward… In a few moments he put the picture back into the box, put the cover on, stood, crossed the room and put the box back into the bottom drawer of the hutch…

Giving the father an excuse to once again lose himself in the evening newspaper…

Giving the son an excuse to leave the room.

April Through July, 1950

The National Guard…

…Was not exactly as Norman had pictured it. Although his guess was pretty close if one considers being off by more than fifty percent close.

A buck-private’s pay for each three-hour weekly drill session was $1.75. For the two weeks of summer training, $37.50. Again, contrary to Norman, Mitchell immediately discovered that in the Army or, if you will, the ‘National Guard’, the surest way not to get what you want is to want it.

The weekly sessions, though, were not too far off from what Mitchell had expected being comprised of ‘formation and drill’, formation and drill, then later in the evening, after a cigarette break, ‘drill and formation’.

Remembering his training at Baylor Military School, the execution of the well-remembered drill commands came easy, and although the twenty-five-pound field pack he was made to wear on his back and the eight-and-a-half-pound ‘Garand M1 rifle’ he was made to carry on his shoulder became heavier and heavier as the session ground on, Mitchell didn’t mind because being, maybe, just a bit overweight, he considered the time spent in the armory as exercise that the government of the United States was paying for.

Next “Becoming” Excerpt in Sequence:

“Sergeant Raphael Martinez”