I've been listening to a lot of old love songs recently. They have simple sweet lyrics and simple, sweet music. I find myself singing them when I'm washing my hair or folding clothes, or, sitting down at the piano, I play the tunes by ear and sing. It makes me feel good, and sends me back to the times before this horrid present. I forget the now and slip back 60...65...70 years into the past.
When civilization has long collapsed, the Warring States era has come and gone leaving strontium-90 and cesium-137-salted ashes where once great cities stood and humanity is not even a memory, only this will remain as a reminder of the glory that was.
In 1937, the median American household income was $723, the average, according to the Social Security Administration, was $890. That's with, usually, only the husband working. The inflation factor to convert that to 2025 dollars is 22.28.
In the first quarter of 2025, the median household income was $80,610, the average $82,373. That's with, almost always, both husband and wife working.
The houses pictured here, from a 1937 issue of Life, cost between $3,000 (upper left) and $6,000 (the two next to the bottom; the bottom house is $4,000), so between $66,840 and $133,680 in inflated dollars. In the first quarter of 2025, the average house price was $503,800.
So in 1937, if we take the average house price to be around $4,500, a house cost something like five or six times a typical family's annual income. And in 2025, a house costs roughly six times a typical family's annual income.
What kind of amenities did houses in 1937 have? Take a look:
Of course, a lot has changed in the country since 1937, much of it, maybe most of it, not for the better. For example, in 1937, the average house price in the Richmond district of San Francisco was around $3,500. Today it is over $1.8 million. So back then an ordinary working stiff could buy a home in a lovely part of the country, ride a trolley bus downtown or to the wharves to a job that paid him enough to own that house and support his family. His wife could shop at the local corner store and volunteer with the PTA and the library. His kids could walk to safe, disciplined schools that actually taught math and science, history and literature. On his days off he could take his family to Golden Gate Park or other safe and enjoyable parts of the city. Without owning a car. Today? He couldn't afford a house within two hours of San Francisco, and that would be with his wife working. The schools he can afford for his kids are pointless, violent child warehouses. He needs a car, and so does his wife, not only to get to work, but also just to get groceries. And crime....
Now you may say that there are still plenty of affordable housing areas in the country, and no doubt there are. But are they in delightful areas by the ocean or a lake with lovely mountain views? Are they crime free with excellent schools? Are they close to cultural amenities like world-class museums, concert halls, theaters? Are there plentiful, well-paying jobs within a short bus-ride (a safe, clean bus ride)? Are there corner stores and shops within walking distance of home the wife can visit daily for fresh foods for her family?
Are they? Are there?
Some claim the origin of song
was a war cry.
Some say it was a rhyme
telling the farmers when to plant and reap.
Don't they know the first song was a lullaby
pulled from a mother's sleep?
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten.
Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer.
We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing.
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now.
―
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| A Ranger SBD dive bomber flying over a Norwegian fjord. |
The USS Ranger spent
almost all its wartime career in the Atlantic and Mediterranean,
blasting targets from French Morocco to Norway. Winston Churchill requested it reinforce the British Indian Ocean fleet after the Japanese obliterated it, but Admiral King refused. It sank the French battleship Jean Bart during Operation Torch. The Germans claimed to
have sunk it four times, but it never suffered a scratch from enemy action, and
its fighters and dive bombers cut a wide swath through the enemy. While hunting off Norway, sinking tens of thousands of tons of German shipping, Churchill personally requested she be 
withdrawn. The Brits were afraid she'd sink the Tirpitz before they did. Notice in the photo to the left how happy and carefree her pilots are. No worries have they!
Why did the Ranger spend its time in the Atlantic? Because it
was considered too slow and vulnerable to risk being deployed in the
Pacific against the Japanese, who were a most formidable foe, fierce,
fanatic and fatalistic. They expected to die in the war and intended to
take you with them.
Now look at the photo to the lower right. It's of pilots in the ready room of the USS Hornet. They don't look so happy. These men faced the Japanese, battling them at Midway and during the Guadalcanal campaign. The Hornet
was sunk in fierce fighting during the Battle of Santa Cruz, less than a
year into the Pacific War. They had reason to be glum.
In the photo directly below, pilots about to set off on a mission against the
Japanese listen to a reading from the Bible and pray together,
recognizing that there is a good chance they won't come back, and if
they are shot down, survive and are captured by the Japanese, they
will need all the strength God can provide them to endure the ordeal
they will face.
What verse were they reading? That's lost in time. But perhaps Romans 5:3~5:
"We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope."
What verse do you think they were reading? It's far enough back in the
book that it might be something from Revelations, perhaps 19:11 --
"I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose
rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war."
Or perhaps it was 21:4 --
"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no
more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for
the former things have passed away."
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| Hornet dying under the blows of the Japanese. |
Why would people tattoo the logo of an auto parts shop on themselves, I asked. They both shrugged. My uncle suggested I should get a tattoo of Betty Boop. While he and el jefe discussed whether Ms Boop should be posing in a cocktail glass or astride a motorcycle, I wondered why so much of popular culture, whether candy bars or cartoons, originated in the 1920s and1930s. I guess it was America's coming of age era, when it by then had developed and matured its own distinct culture and history with unique musical, architectural, culinary and literary styles among other things. You could grab a hamburger and a Coke, then go to the movies and watch a Walt Disney cartoon, see a western shoot-em-up with Tom Mix and his wonder horse Tony while munching on a Baby Ruth. Afterwards, you could take the elevator to the top floor of a skyscraper to someplace called the Madhattan Room to dance the Lindy Hop to the swinging jive of Woody Herman or Kay Kaiser.
would be if I were a 1930s cartoon. Certainly not Clarabelle Cow. They shrugged again. I nixed the swinish suggestion.The men then began discussing camshafts for some reason and I thought about the name Betty. Why was it once so popular? There was Betty Boop, of course, but also Betty Rubble, Betty Crocker, Bettie Page, Bette Davis, Bette Midler, Betty Grable, Betty Hutton, Betty White, Betty Ford, Betty, Betty, Betty. I don't care all that much for the name. No reason, I just don't. I have a good friend named Gwen...Gwendolyn...and I like that name. Always have. I wondered if I like the name because I like my friend or I like her because I like the name. Silly? But what if she had a name I hated, like Bertha, Mildred or Gertrude? Would I even have bothered to have gotten to know her?
My newest, who had been amusing himself on the ground, climbed up into my lap ready for chow so I unbuttoned my blouse and he giggled and latched on with a will. Both men stopped talking and looked away. It's funny how guys will obsess over boobs and pay money to have a girl show them hers, but when they see one being used for its purpose they get embarrassed. Or maybe they are just being polite. I don't know.Of course, as soon as the future emperor of the world was done nursing he pooped. I got a fresh diaper out of my baby bag and began changing him. As I was cleaning him, he got an erection (nothing sexual about it; it's just a boy baby thing). I knew what was coming so I was quick to try to cover him but not quick enough as he began fountaining pee over me, a contented smile on his face. When that happened with my first boy, I didn't know what was coming, leaned over him wondering why he had gotten an erection and he peed in the face.
I heard laughter and looked over to see both guys watching me. I made a face at them.
My mother, who had been working in the rose garden, came around the corner brushing something off her sleeve and saw us. She marched over and stood between me and the two guys, glowering first at them, then at me. "Wanda, you cover yourself right now. What do you think you are doing?" She picked up my baby and rocked him. I heard el jefe mutter "Here we go." I could have explained but I just pointed to the baby bag then held my fingers to my nose. She'd been there in her time so she understood."Well, you could be more modest, you know," she said.
"Oh, it's just el jefe and...."
"Even so." And she glared daggers at both men, who looked like little boys being scolded by their grandma.
Why don't you join us, mom? Have some ice tea."
"Well, I will, but I have to wash up first. You close your blouse, Wanda. You hear?" she said as she handed me my baby, his arms stretched out for me. She went into the house. I stuck my tongue out at her back.
I heard glasses clink and unc say, "You're a lucky man, Jeff. What a set!" I opened my eyes to see both men looking at me as el jefe was saying, "They're especially big when she is nursing; they're full of milk." I was tempted to say, "Are either of you boys hungry?" But I didn't. While thinking what goofs men were to be mesmerized by the sight of boobs, I realized that I enjoyed their gaze, liked letting them see. I smiled at them and el jefe raised his glass to me.
I looked up at the blue sky and racing clouds high up. Saw barn swallows circling and zooming. Heard a dove coo. I felt a slow rush of pleasant happiness sweep over me. Somehow, somewhere, I heard a lute playing, something I somehow knew but had never heard before.
My uncle said, "I should go." and el jefe said, "No, stay. When that boy grows up you can tell him about the time you saw him suck on Wanda's tits, take a shit, get a hard-on and then piss on her."
"I'll wait till he introduces his prom date to me."
I heard a door slam as my mother came back outside. "Wandaaaa!"
I pulled my blouse over my stupid boob and tried to cover the one my boy was using. He unlatched and began possetting.
If I were emperor of the world
And master of all cities
I’d pass a law to keep the girls
From covering their titties.
~ George Yesthal
The Last Things I'll Remember
by Joyce Sutphen
The partly open hay barn door, white frame around the darkness,
the broken board, small enough for a child
to slip through.
Walking in the cornfields in late July, green tassels overhead,
the slap of flat leaves as we pass, silent
and invisible from any road.
Hollyhocks leaning against the stucco house, peonies heavy
as fruit, drooping their deep heads
on the dog house roof.
Lilac bushes between the lawn and the woods,
a tractor shifting from one gear into
the next, the throttle opened,
the smell of cut hay, rain coming across the river,
the drone of the hammer mill,
milk machines at dawn.
Grandma's Grave
by Freya Manfred
Mother and I brush long drifts of snow from the gravestones
of my great grandfather and grandmother, great uncle and aunt,
two of mother's brothers, each less than a year old,
and her last-born brother, George Shorba, dead at sixteen:
1925-1942
A Mastermind. My Beloved Son.
But we can't find the grave of Grandma, who buried all the rest.
Mother stands dark-browed and musing, under the pines,
and I imagine her as a child, wondering why her mother
left home so often to tend the sick, the dying, the dead.
Borrowing a shovel, she digs, until she uncovers:
1889-1962
Mary Shorba
Mother almost never cries, but she does now. She stares
at this stone as if it were the answer to all the hidden things.
Here is a retelling of the story in a "you are there" radio news format as part of the series CBS Is There, aired over CBS radio on February 28, 1947. The lead "reporter" is real newsman John Daly. Daly was the first to report the attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. He was in Italy and reported Gen. George Patton's slapping of soldiers suffering from what today we would call PTSD. In 1959, he was in Moscow and reported on the famous "kitchen debate" between Richard Nixon and Nikita Krushchev.
Every Memorial Day, 3,055 flags are placed at Asan Memorial Beach Park in Guam to commemorate each individual civilian and serviceman who was killed during the Japanese invasion, occupation, and American liberation of the Island where America's day begins. The Third Marine Division landed at Asan on July 21, 1944, ferried ashore by 180 armored landing vehicles, 20 of which were destroyed by enemy artillery fire before they made the beach. The Marines then assaulted the dug-in Japanese troops who occupied the high ground you can see in the video.
The Army 77th Division attacked Agat.
During the ensuing 21 days of fighting, 1,866 American marines and soldiers were killed, mostly during the first week of the invasion, when Japanese resistance was strongest.
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| Same gun (?) many decades later. |
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| A Japanese six-inch battery on Chonito Cliff, Asan beachhead, Guam, after the battle. |
Asan was also where a field hospital was set up, once the area was believed cleared of the enemy and safe. Japanese troops regrouped and attacked it, shooting doctors and nurses, bayoneting patients in their beds before being driven out.
The Japanese had behaved horrifically to Guamanians during their occupation, as they did in most of the lands they conquered, so much so that even today, 81 years later, Liberation Day is celebrated island-wide on Guam. The Japanese forced essentially all the men on Guam to be slave labor, an estimated 15,000 persons, to build airfields and defensive positions. They routinely raped women and children. They massacred dozens of Chamorros, the native Guamanians, in Fena, Merizo, Agat, and Yigo.
The Fena caves where one of the most rotten mass killings took place is on Big Navy and I've visited the site. It's hard to imagine what sick bastards the Japanese were. Here's a recounting of the episode from Guampedia. Please check it out.
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| This is actually a commemoration on Guam of the Battle of Midway that occurs a week or so after Memorial Day. But it shows how important the events of the war against Japan still are in that part of the world. The photo was taken some years ago. Who's that little girl crying because she doesn't want to stand in the hot sun by all those stupid flags? |
The Chamorros don't forget, even though their island, a bit bigger than Santa Catalina Island off the coast of southern California, is inundated with hundreds of thousands of Japanese tourists annually. We shouldn't either.
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| US military bases in Japan. |
I wasn't really from anywhere and had no hometown. But I had lived in lots of places -- Misawa, Yokosuka, Atsugi, Sasebo in Japan, Sigonella, Gaeta and Naples in Italy, Souda Bay, Crete, Rota, Spain, Guam, plus Whidbey Island and North Island.... One year, I went to 11 different schools. "Class, this is our newest member. Go ahead, introduce yourself." "Thank you, Miss Gump. My name is Wanda and...." -- out comes the Shepherd's crook and I'm jerked away to another school maybe in another country, maybe on the other side of the world.
I learned to shut up about all that when I settled stateside to finish high school, the same as I learned not to mention I was fluent in Japanese. The other kids thought I was lying or just weird. "Wait, what? You've climbed Mt. Etna and Mt Fuji? And skied both the Italian and Japanese alps? Oh, sure you have!" (belly punch)
Another grandfather, in the Air Force in the 1950s, lived with his family in Washington Heights, the American housing complex in Tokyo located where the 1964 Olympic Stadium and Yoyogi Park are today. Before we Americans took it over, it was a Japanese Army Air Force facility; in fact, it was where the first airplane ever flew in Japan.
I once saw an old Mainichi Graphic, a sort of clone of the picture magazine Life, that they had saved that had published a picture of them barbecuing in their back yard. The photo was taken through a chain link fence with a telephoto lens. The caption read that American military in Japan were so poor that their houses didn't even have kitchens so they were forced to cook outside.
I've walked around that area of Harajuku and Yoyogi and probably have been in the same spot or near it where the house my grandfather lived in back in the early 1950s once stood.
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| I come from a long line of service members and their brats. |
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| Phi Gamma Delta. Stupid wars. |
"So," you might say, "you were a citizen of the world, at home wherever you found yourself." Uh.... No. What I was was a citizen of nowhere, an alien outsider wherever I went. The perpetual one who did not belong. Ask any brat.
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You might think that I am bragging to mention all these foreign places, but I'm not. Transferring from one duty station to another was just ordinary life, and while outside the gate the world was different, inside it one Navy base was pretty much like any other, with an MWR, NEX, fast-food franchise, commissary, movie theater, base housing, office buildings, hangers or port facilities looking the same, painted the same, in Guam as Japan as Spain as Italy as Greece. But once in a stateside civilian high school, I learned that what was normal to me was seen merely as boasting so I kept quiet.
For a while, I suffered pangs of homesickness and wished I was back aboard a Navy base in a foreign land. Homesick for a stupid Navy base? Are you brain damaged? Get out of here! No, really, I was. Brats will understand, not you slacker landlubbers.
So what's all this blabbering leading up to? Not that much, just the realization that still, and I guess always, I will be alienated from the American mainstream, not quite a foreigner, maybe more like an out-of-phase American.
There are lots of stories of the dumb things I did when I first settled in as a civilian. At the time, they weren't dumb to me. It was just that I didn't know the correct protocol, didn't understand what things to do and not do, how the ... well, it doesn't matter. I almost lost my life twice because I didn't understand there were no-go zones in American cities, or that a female should not be out alone too early in the morning or too late at night even in supposedly safe areas.
You say that doesn't matter? Of course, it did then. I was shocked and terribly frightened. But it's in the past and I learned that in some ways and in some places, America is no country at all. It's a land before civilization. I didn't .... It got too much for me. It really did. So as soon as I could, although I never thought I would, and when fate stepped in, I put on a uniform and escaped. And when fate stepped in again, I took it off.
Bottom line, when I read others' personal accounts of life in these United States I feel like a stranger in a, not strange, but unfamiliar land that I thought was my own, my native land. It is, but the people in it are not quite mine. Or I am not quite theirs.
I remember skateboarding fast down 28th Street in San Pedro one night during a late September Santa 
Ana with views of the harbor, all the lights of the cranes loading and unloading container ships, wearing nothing but cut-offs, a tee shirt scissored off at the midriff and chucks, the wind bouncing off the hill and houses, my hair flying behind me, my arms stretched out at my sides like wings, screeching a right turn at Pacific and coasting with the wind pushing me a dozen blocks to road's end, land's end, at the parking lot where my lime green Mustang GT convertible was, stepping off the board and flipping it up, walking to the edge of the cliff and gazing out across the sea at the lights of Avalon and Two Harbors on Catalina, the wind rushing past me. I felt if I jumped the wind would lift me up and I would soar like a kite.
But I didn't jump. Instead, I hopped in my car, put the top down and sped north in the fast lane on the Harbor freeway, then the Glendale, towards the mountains where the gale was born, listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn, Dick Dale, Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys...musty, moldy, golden oldies from the groove yard of the past, the devil wind curling into the passenger seat beside me and caressing my cheek, kissing my ear, whispering secrets.
In Chandler Country
California night. The Devil's wind,
the Santa Ana, blows in from the east,
raging through the canyons like a drunk
screaming in a bar.
The air tastes like
a stubbed-out cigarette. But why complain?
The weather's fine as long as you don't breathe.
Just lean back on the sweat-stained furniture,
lights turned out, windows shut against the storm,
and count your blessings.
Another sleepless night,
when every wrinkle in the bed sheet scratches
like a dry razor on a sunburned cheek,
when even ten-year whiskey tastes like sand,
and quiet women in the kitchen run
their fingers on the edges of a knife
and eye their husbands' necks. I wish them luck.
Tonight it seems that if I took the coins
out of my pocket and tossed them in the air
they'd stay a moment glistening like a net
slowly falling through dark water.
I remember
the headlights of the cars parked on the beach,
the narrow beams dissolving on the dark
surface of the lake, voices arguing
about the forms, the crackling radio,
the sheeted body lying on the sand,
the trawling net still damp beside it. No,
she wasn't beautiful - but at that age
when youth itself becomes a kind of beauty --
"Taking good care of your clients, Marlowe?"
Relentlessly the wind blows on. Next door
catching a scent, the dogs begin to howl.
Lean, furious, raw-eyed from the storm,
packs of coyotes come down from the hills
where there is nothing left to hunt.
Considering that the new pope hails from Dolton, Ill., I thought I'd repost my blog entry from May 12, 2023. I'd thought about reposting it before when the mayor of Dolton was in the news for what I read somewhere is called being mayor while black.
Re-reading this piece and trying to imagine what it was like for the upright citizens of the suburb, I thought of a civilized people being attacked by encroaching barbarians. Their own brave warriors were able to fend off the initial, probing attacks for a while, but eventually they were overwhelmed and forced to flee, leaving all behind, all which the barbarians, being barbarians, could not maintain and ruined.
Anyway, here it is:
**************************************************************************************************************************************
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| Happy days in Dolton |
Anyway, one of the stories he told me about his early days working the cop news on the south side of Chicago and the suburbs in that area was how blacks would prey on the businesses and homes of such bedroom towns as Riverdale, Dolton, South Holland, Harvey and others in that area. These towns when he reported on them in the early 1970s were pleasant white communities enjoying a solid middle-class life thanks to all the nearby factories and steel mills that provided employment at good wages.
Each town
had its own police force, which diligently kept the peace and enforced
the law. Of course, the homeowners were peaceable and law-abiding. It
was the outsiders who raided to loot and rob who had to be guarded
against. My relative told me of how when you called the cops they
responded immediately to a break-in, burglary, armed robbery, whatever
it was, and they would pursue the felon no matter what until they got
him. Since each town's cops only had jurisdiction in their community,
they would hand off a hot pursuit of a perp to the next town's cops as
the bad guy fled through them. The Cook County Sheriff's Dept. would
also join in the pursuit, as would the Illinois State Police. He told
me of several such chases in which multiple police cars were wrecked,
one, in which, if memory serves, 14 police cars crashed chasing a bad
guy, and another where the bad guy crashed into a gas station fuel pump,
which exploded in a huge fireball. But they did get the bad guy. And
usually alive, without gunplay. And, he said, regarding fleeing felons,
never mind what the judge would hand them, the cops would tune them up
on the spot. Only then would they face a judge.
Anyway the
second, here are some photos of his that I thought were interesting
illustrations of those days. Most of the photos in his archive, if I
may call it that, are just negatives, only a few prints. So I only had a
handful to select from.
This one on the left looks like a press conference with cops...I don't know. But what interests me is the uniforms and the hair styles, and that guy in the background who looks like a Weegee-type news photog. He's even wearing a trench coat! Note the photo of President Nixon, which fixes it in time.
The
photo on the right is of a cop dusting for fingerprints after a
burglary. Thieves climbed up on the roof of the building and cut a hole
in it and climbed down into the business to rob it but the alarms went
off and the cops were on the bad guys like that. Note the
policeman is armed with a revolver. Probably an old reliable Smith
& Wesson .38. And I bet should he have ever had to use it, he would
have administered a pistol whipping, not emptied the cylinder. Those
times were far less shooty than today. Maybe that's because the police
were more respected in those days, even by criminals, and cops had the
authority and backing for what they needed to do on the spot, and were
certain that any bad guys they nabbed would do hard time.
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This
photo on the left shows the end of one of those epic car chases, ending
as they usually did with the perp crashing his stolen car, and the cops
swarming him and hauling his sorry ass off to the calaboose. It looks
like a Cook County Sheriff's Department deputy and an Illinois state
trooper were in on this bust. I think the car is a Lincoln, but I'm not
sure. Usually the bad guys stole Cadillacs or Lincolns.
To
the right is a photo of the Cook County Sheriff Department deputy
pictured above left counting the recovered loot the robber got. It
would be cataloged and then returned to the store keeper, sometimes the
very same day. They didn't dawdle back then and the red tape was
minimal. Crook robs, cops catch, your money returned, crook goes to the
slammer. Now this photo below is different. It shows a neighborhood get-together in suburban Dolton in 1973. The back of the photo says "pet parade." I suppose it was a kind of street party where neighbors would gather with their pets and enjoy a nice time together. I've colorized it to bring out just how pleasant and enjoyable it must have been, with lots of families, lots of children, lots of dogs -- and, you will notice, everybody is white. It was Leave It to Beaver land for real, prosperous, safe, peaceful and pleasant.
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Today, the factories and steel mills have long since closed and Dolton is more than 92 percent black and just barely 5 percent white, mostly elderly who can't afford to move. It's plagued by crime, drugs, gangs and street violence. Here's a photo I found from a Sun-Times article about Dolton in 2022:
The photo, taken by Anthony Vazquez, shows Martin Luther King Blvd in Dolton. The story says the suburb is like a ghost town with abandoned stores and buildings infested with druggies and the homeless. A crime stats website describes Dolton today thusly:
"Dolton has an overall crime rate of 7,484 per 100,000 residents. This is one of the most dangerous regions in the United States. This means that your chances of becoming a victim of any type of crime in Dolton is 1 in 13 if you reside there for a year."
A couple of more end of police chase photos. The bad guys never got away and never got far. Too bad about those stolen Cadillacs:
