The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion (14 page)

And, sure enough, on her first solo landing, she did pretty well. The next week, Poppa drove her up to Grand Rapids to get her pilot’s license. Poppa was so proud and showed it to everyone who came in the station. Fritzi was happy to have her license, but privately, her heart was broken. When she had gone to Grand Rapids, after she had gotten her license, she made Poppa drive her over to the hotel where Billy lived and had knocked on Billy’s door to surprise him. A tough-looking woman with frizzy red hair had come to the door in her nightgown. She found out that the whole time she had known him, Billy had been living with Gussie Mintz, his second-string wing walker from Altoona.

What a fool she had been. He had never been the slightest bit interested in her and probably never would be. It was hard being around him after that, but Billy had never led her on, nor had he made any promises, so what could she do?

After that Fritzi started doing a few shows now and then. Billy would call her whenever Lillian Bass, his first-string wing walker, was not available and Gussie was too drunk to go on.

Soon, Billy began to see that not only had Fritzi taken to flying and performing stunts, she’d invented a few of her own. She didn’t do the usual girl stunts. She went out on the wing and stood on her head, jumped through hoops, and did the jitterbug five hundred feet up in the air. As Billy told his mechanic one night at the hotel bar, “That crazy kid has more guts than brains. Damn,” he said. “She reminds me of me at that age, and that ain’t good.” Billy took a swig of his drink, then said, “Now if I was a nice guy, I would send her packing, but I ain’t a nice guy, I guess.”

The mechanic, who had been with Billy for eleven years, said, “You’d better watch out, buddy. The next thing you know, that little gal is liable to have
you
jumping through hoops.”

A few months later, when Lillian quit wing walking for good to get married, Billy called Fritzi in Pulaski and told her the first-string job was hers permanently, if she wanted it.

Did she want it? She jumped at the chance. Momma did not want her to go, but she could also see how unhappy she was. Her other three girls were homebodies, but not Fritzi.

Fritzi gave her notice at the pickle factory. One week later, Billy got her a hotel room where he lived and she moved to Grand Rapids for good and started traveling with the Flying Circus. To Poppa’s delight, the move was headline news in Pulaski.

P
OINT
C
LEAR
, A
LABAMA

T
HE NEXT MORNING
,
AFTER
E
ARLE LEFT FOR THE OFFICE
, S
OOKIE WAS
sitting at her kitchen table, looking at Earle’s big road atlas of the United States, trying to find the town of Pulaski, when Netta knocked on the back door. Sookie got up and went to the door.

“Hey, Sookie, I saw Dr. Poole leave a little while ago, so I thought I’d run over and see if you needed anything from the store.”

“Oh, thank you, Netta. I’m fine, but come in, and have some coffee.”

“No, I can’t stay. I’m still in my hairnet.” Netta looked over at the table and said, “I see you’ve got your road maps out. Are you going on a trip?”

“No, I was just looking at a map of Wisconsin. Have you ever been to Wisconsin, Netta?”

“Nope, sure haven’t. Have you?”

“No, I don’t know anything about it. Do you?”

“Nothing much, except … isn’t that where the horses with the big feet come from? I think they’re pulling a wagon of Budweiser beer. Don’t they call it Milwaukee’s Finest?”

“I think you’re right.”

“And they like their cheese. And Wisconsin may be where Daisy
the Contented Cow comes from, but I could be wrong. But if you’re not going there, why are you looking at it on the map?”

“Oh, no reason. I just woke up and was curious about where it was, that’s all. I’m surprised at how far up it is, almost as far up as Canada. I wonder how cold it gets in the winter?”

“I wouldn’t know, honey. Well, I’ll leave you to your map. Call me if you need me.”

As Netta walked across the yard back to her house, she wondered why anyone in their right mind would just wake up one day and be curious about Wisconsin. But maybe Sookie wasn’t in her right mind. Maybe poor Sookie had flipped. Oh, Lord. Another Simmons over at Pleasant Hill. Once that gene gets in there, it just hits them like a hammer, and off they go. Bless her heart. One day sane, the next day looking at maps of Wisconsin for no reason. Her poor kids are going to be very upset, and no telling what will happen to Dr. Poole. She never saw a man so devoted to his wife as he was. But it was to be expected, she guessed. With Lenore for a mother, that girl was probably driven to the brink. She liked Lenore, but she was glad she wasn’t related to her.

Sookie sat back down and continued looking for Pulaski and finally found it. “Pulaski: Home of the largest polka celebration in the country.” It was close to Green Bay, she could see that. Oh, dear, that was where those people painted themselves green and sat in the football stands in the freezing cold with wedges of cheese on their heads. Oh, well. Who was she to pass judgment? Carter and the girls had all gone to the University of Alabama, and Carter and his friends wore elephant hats to the games. To each his own, she supposed, but still, it was very strange to think that some of those people sitting in the stands with wedges of cheese on their heads might be her own relatives. Then another thought hit her. She had always liked cheese, especially pimento cheese sandwiches. Could that have come from her genetic background, or did she just love cheese? When Earle came home, she asked, “Earle, have you ever noticed that I eat a lot of cheese, or is it just my imagination?”

“Cheese? No, I haven’t noticed you eating more cheese than anybody else. Why?”

“I was just wondering.”

The next day, when she knew Lenore was busy playing bridge and that there was no danger that she would run into her, Sookie hurried downtown to the bookstore and spoke to the owner.

“Hi, Karin, how are you?”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Poole. You just missed your mother. She was here earlier with her little Mexican nurse, buying some birthday cards.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. “Well, listen, Karin, I was wondering … where should I look for a book on Poland?”

“The country, Poland?”

“Yes. Or Wisconsin.”

“Okay. Well, both of those would be in the travel section, but if you don’t find what you want, let me know. I can always order it. Are you taking a trip now that all the weddings are over?”

“Well, you know, I just might be. I’m just not sure where, yet.”

“Let me know if I can help you.”

As Sookie searched through the books, it dawned on her that her mother always bought her greeting cards there, so she was probably in there earlier buying a birthday card for her, knowing full well that July 31 was not her real birthday.
Honestly!

1939

I
N
1939,
MOST
A
MERICANS
,
ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG
,
WERE BLISSFULLY
unaware of what was happening outside of their own little world. But the citizens of Pulaski, young and old, were painfully aware of the horrible war that was raging across Europe. Every night, families sat glued to the radio, listening to the news of Poland. Most still had relatives and friends there, and each day, the men would gather at the bulletin board at the drugstore, reading the news of the day in disbelief. The Poles were fighting bravely, hoping to hold out for England or France to come and help. Stanislaw had a cousin who worked in the telegraph room at the Grand Hotel Europejski in Warsaw, and he had managed to send news of the bombing of the city by the Germans. He reported that each night, the Nazis sent more bombers, and each morning, whole new sections of the city were destroyed. Men, women, and children were being killed by the hundreds and left in the streets, along with the dead horses. And then, after September 1, the news abruptly stopped, and nothing more came out of Poland.

September the ninth was a cold, gray day, and the entire town of Pulaski was suddenly deadly quiet as the news was announced.
Father Sobieski, whose family was still in Warsaw, walked slowly up to the bell tower of Saint Mary’s and rang the bell over and over with tears streaming down his face. Poland had fallen to the Nazis. Like so many, he had dreamed he would return home one day, but that dream was over. The Poland they loved was gone.

After a while, stunned people slowly began coming out of their homes into the streets, and, not knowing what else to do, they all walked over to the church, where a special mass was said entirely in Polish. When it was over, they all stood and sang the Polish national anthem.

Several weeks later, at the Pulaski movie theater, when they ran the weekly
Eyes and Ears of the World
newsreel, they showed films of the fall of Warsaw, and one woman screamed when she thought she recognized the man with his arms over his head being brutally shoved through the war-torn streets by a Nazi soldier. “That’s my brother!” she screamed over and over, and she had to be taken home.

Poland had fallen, but life in America carried on as usual. Kids still played baseball, and the 1939 World’s Fair in New York was being mobbed by people thrilled about seeing all the marvelous inventions that were in the works. The World of Tomorrow exhibit promised nothing but an exciting future. Elsewhere, across the country, women and girls sat in movie houses, swooning over Clark Gable in
Gone with the Wind,
while men and boys were enthralled watching John Wayne ride shotgun across the West in
Stagecoach.
At night, people were still laughing at their favorite radio shows,
Charlie McCarthy
and
Fibber McGee and Molly.
Teenagers everywhere were jitterbugging to Glenn Miller’s “Little Brown Jug,” and the Andrews Sisters had a big hit with “Beer Barrel Polka,” a song that was especially popular in Pulaski.

B
Y THE SUMMER
, G
ERTRUDE
May and Tula June had graduated from high school. Both were well-liked and were members of the Thursday night Ladies Accordion Band of Pulaski and marched with them
that year in the Polka Days parade. Tula and Gertrude both had steady boyfriends, lived at home, and helped Momma in the kitchen. The youngest girl, Sophie, was in her junior year at high school. The three girls were a joy to Momma. Gertrude was a big-boned, good-natured girl with a big laugh like her father. Tula was just plain silly and loved to giggle. Sophie was very pretty, and the boys liked her a lot, but she was shy and quiet and very much a homebody, which pleased Momma. She had already lost Fritzi, and she wanted to keep her last three little chickens close by, where she could keep an eye on them.

Momma hadn’t said anything, but she had noticed that of all her children, Sophie Marie was the most devout and never missed mass, and she said her rosary every night. Momma would not be surprised if she turned out to have a religious vocation. She hoped so. It would be wonderful to have a nun in the family. She knew that with the way Wink fooled around with all the girls, particularly Angie Broukowski, he was never going to be a priest. Girls were now driving all the way over from Green Bay to the filling station just to flirt with him.

By the end of 1939, those in Washington, including Franklin Roosevelt, fearing that the United States would eventually be drawn into war, became concerned that the country was not prepared. The Army Air Corps was turning out only three hundred pilots annually, and so the government quietly and without much fanfare set up a new program, offered at colleges, called the Civilian Pilot Training Program, which turned out to be good news for the Jurdabralinskis. They already had the little airstrip they had built for Billy, and the local college needed a place to keep small planes and train students. When they asked Stanislaw if they could build a small hangar on the property and rent the land, he saw an opportunity for Wink and the girls and told the college they could use it rent-free. The only stipulation was that the instructor give Wink and his girls flying lessons in his spare time. The girls were thrilled. They idolized Fritzi and wanted to be just like her. But Momma was not happy. Having Fritzi flying all over the place was enough.