top of page
Search
Writer's pictureKristin Lindstrom

 Episode 25: The War Years with Ruth



Shirley and Guy are married in 1943. They make a handsome couple, he with his brown hair, blue eyes, and Navy uniform, Shirley, with dark hair and wearing a tailored suit with a white ruffled shirt and large corsage. First, the Navy sends them to Boston, then the next year, Guy ships out to the South Pacific. He is an ensign assigned to a mine sweeper. Shirley is sent to live with his mother, Ruth, in Chambersburg, not a happy prospect. While Ruth can be fun, she is mercurial, narcissistic, and not very bright, a bad combination. After a few days, not surprisingly, Shirley packs up her belongings and goes back to Washington, expecting to live with her father. She arrives at his apartment with her things only to have him turn her around and drive her straight back to Ruth’s house, where he dumps her without ceremony.

It is in these early days that Shirley discovers Ruth has harangued Guy into signing her name as beneficiary of the Navy’s life insurance policy, instead of Shirley’s.


Dan and Shirley were married in 1943. My Great

Aunt Nettie can be seen at far left.

It’s going to be a long war for Shirley.


Some months after arriving in Chambersburg, Shirley is enrolled at Wilson College when a rare letter from Hjalmar arrives. In a postscript he mentions, almost in passing, that he has married Mary Hipkins. Shirley has never heard of the woman, but this marriage is the culmination of the alienation of affection case, the last stab in the back for Thelma Birdsong.

By the time she meets John, Shirley has suffered badly from the slings and arrows of youth with her father and mother. All along the way, she’s had to suck up the rage that must have been building for years. Perhaps the last straw is being forced to live with Ruth. Ruth constantly whines and cries about not hearing from Guy – or Jim, as she insists on calling him despite the fact that IT’S NOT HIS NAME. It infuriates him.

It’s hard for Shirley to sympathize since she hasn’t heard from Guy either. There is, in fact, a war on. And Ruth is nagging her constantly to contribute to the bills and work around the house. Shirley receives a bill from Ruth for 13½ cents for toothpaste every month. It doesn’t matter that Shirley has paid for expensive house projects like adding screens to the windows. She still is victim to the ongoing nittering, yammering and crying of her mother-in-law. As long as she is married to Guy, this will always be so.

One light note is that one of Ruth’s brothers is in the slammer for indecent exposure. In jail, he has met the Lord and the Lord has shown him how to be saved. He starts sending postcards to Ruth, railing about the sins of fornication, and begging her to stop engaging in it. Once a week they see the postman coming up the walk, reading a postcard. By tomorrow, it’ll be all over town.


“Why can’t he just put it in an envelope!?” Ruth complains.


And then Shirley walks into a new class at Wilson College, a women’s school, and lays eyes on John Y., the teacher. To hear her tell it, it’s love at first sight and maybe it is. He’s not tall, maybe five foot seven inches. He’s got a permanent round bald spot like a tonsure on the back of his head. He is handsome and shy and funny and dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit. She’s beautiful and needy, needy for the love and support she’s never received in her life. She knows she doesn’t love Guy but feels grateful he would marry her. He knows about her secret marriage, after all. Not to mention the societal pressure for couples to get married during the war so the men have someone on the home front knitting socks, writing to them, and waiting for them.

John is 16 years older than Shirley, but she doesn’t care. That comes later. Her assignations with him must feel like balm upon a wound, refreshing and revitalizing. And for him as well. He’s married to a woman who is wealthy in dollars and in mental illness alike.

Maybe the war won’t be so long for Shirley after all.








20 views0 comments

Comments


bottom of page