The Club

Some time back, Meta Cranky spent a few weeks trying to identify pictures in Hazel's photo album. She had this one pegged as a school get-together, since the back of the image looks to be a country-school stage. Check out Hazel, third from the right in back, and then tell me that you wouldn't photograph better if you wore that hat. That lipstick also shows up well in b&w.

MC started sleuthing after she recognized Minnie, sitting to the left of her young granddaughter in the front row. Minnie's daughter directed MC to Margaret, the little girl's mother, sitting to the little girl's right. This group, Margaret reported, was the Federated Farm Women, a social group for country ladies. Margaret said, "I always just called it `The Club.'" The Club gave these women an excuse to get out of the house and chat with their neighbors, and Margaret said she missed it when she moved to town.

This cold winter, Margaret passed away, and those at her funeral viewed vintage pictures of the person she had been before she arrived at Cranky Home Town. Margaret was a British war bride who arrived with a college degree and a clipped accent. She also arrived pregnant, rather more so than her marriage license would have indicated, and her mother-in-law couldn't forgive her for it. Minnie made it her life's work to make Margaret feel unwelcome, since, by her calculations, her daughter-in-law had set a trap for an American serviceman and his generous benefit package.

MC's father, Major Cranky, once regaled her with a story of a predatory British nurse seeking American citizenship. While in a London hospital, Major Cranky became a particular nurse's object of desire. Since he didn't return her interest, he introduced her to a friend. Major Cranky's friend had a date with the nurse before he returned to North Africa with his battalion. Now comes that clincher for Major Cranky: His friend didn't begin to manifest symptoms of V.D. until after he was back in a war zone. That mean that he immediately was hospitalized and drew combat pay. In summary, MC's father said, "It worked out well for everybody."

But Margaret was not the predator type. She married her G.I. and never looked back; apparently she never returned to Britain, and her relatives never came to her. She and her G.I. remained married until death did them part. Margaret joined her club, and she stuck with it. Thinking of Margaret, an English island in the sea of Cranky Hometown, MC thinks of the Han princess who was stolen away by the Huns in the second century C.E. Living among the Tartars, she wrote

Earth was pitiless.

It brought me to birth in such a time.

War was everywhere. Every road was dangerous.
Soldiers and civilians everywhere
Fleeing death and suffering.
. . . I can never learn the ways of the barbarians.

Because Margaret learned our ways, we never entirely learned hers. But in her graciousness, she never made us feel like barbarians.
--MC

*fact-check update: Margaret's baby was six months old when she arrived in Cranky Hometown. She and baby came through Ellis Island and then made a week-long train trip from New York.