Virginia Barbeau, Dixie Meyer, Gertie Lasch & Germaine Wiegand have their say . . .

June 8, 2011

They spoke of sweethearts off to war, they spoke of a tough economy and of tight housing. While such a discussion could be heard anywhere today, this one occurred recently around a dining table at Laurel Grove Assisted Living Center with Germaine Wiegand, Dixie Meyer, Gertie Lasch and Virginia Barbeau . . . all 89 and 90 years old. What they had to say echoes current discussion topics and yet differs since they had not only been there, they survived. Today’s discussion questions included make-up, dating and work and took some interesting paths.

Make-up & Dating

Make-up has always been a rite of passage into young-womanhood. While their mothers’ generation snitched corn starch from the kitchen to take the glow off their face, these ladies moved smoothly into the Max Factor make-up age. The day you bought your first tube of lipstick was definitely one to remember. In fact, most of us probably even remember the color. All of the ladies remembered when make-up began to color their lives. Virginia was in 8th grade when her older sister – four years older than she – began inviting her to the high school basketball games and made sure she was made up for the occasion. Gert used powder and a little lipstick but no eye make-up. When asked when she began using make-up, Germaine laughed, “When my parents let us” but added that she and her sister were adept at eye-brow pluckers. For Dixie, make up was not really an issue because she was far more carried away with fashion. What about nail polish? If worn it was clear, at least until the 1960s. Before that, color was “too showy” and no one wore toe nail polish.

Virginia raised eyebrows when she told the group she began dating at about 16, a year before the others. Where did you meet boys and where did you go on dates drew a picture of a quieter time. Wedding dances, church-organized dances and events and dart ball games were the major places couples would meet. Germaine and her best friend loved to dance so her Dad would drop her off wherever there was a dance and two young men who had an eye on them – but didn’t dance – would show up wherever the girls were and take them home. Virginia sometimes went to Valders roller skating but it was at a dance she met her husband. For Gert, a friend’s wedding led to a date the following week and her own wedding the following year.

Dixie, who was born in Oconto County, left school after eighth grade. She went to work for two teachers in Marinette because it would allow her to go to high school. When her housework load kept her from studying her dad said she might as well return home. After returning she did housework for a couple who had a cottage in the area and that led to work in the wealthy Chicago suburbs. Here she held several positions including housekeeper and nanny. She said she wore a special white uniform when she took their little girl out but usually wore a pretty blue one and a black and white uniform when serving dinner parties. And this leads us back to dating during war-time.

War changed dating for everyone. For Dixie who lived in the Chicago north shore suburbs, it meant dances at Fort Sheridan where she and her girlfriends would receive passes. After the dances, the girls were whisked away on buses which would drop them at the Chicago El so there would be no “hanky-pank”. “Ha, right, not us,” she laughed. When her brother was stationed in New York City and wrote that he was lonesome, Dixie quit her job and hopped on a train for New York’s Penn Station. Her brother wrote that his girlfriend would meet Dixie at the station. “How will I know her,” she asked her brother. “She’ll be wearing a red carnation,” he explained. “Can you imagine that, in a place that big looking for a girl with a red carnation?! How many girls would be wearing a red carnation at Penn Station”, she quipped? In the city she worked in the fur district, lived in poor, cramped housing. She found a job in a factory that made watch bands for the war effort and when they caught up, they made lampshades. The pay was never enough to make ends meet so she returned to Manitowoc.

Germaine and her fiancé felt safe to marry during the war because his draft rating was 1B. However, shortly after the wedding he was reclassified and had to report for duty. “Oh, that was a long 35 months,” she said. When he telegraphed from Washington state that he thought he was about to be sent over seas, she quit her job and boarded a train for the west where they toured the area with friends who lived there. “I was on the train and a man passed my seat,” she remembered, “I said, ‘that looks like Joe Lewis’ and he came back and introduced himself. I met a very famous person.” She reminisced that it was a great trip, a wonderful opportunity to see the country.

The war had a major impact on Manitowoc which was not only a hive of activity for shipbuilding, it was filled with Rosie-the-Riveters who traded their aprons for overhauls. All of our ladies worked at least before they were married or before they had children. Dixie worked for the White House Milk Company, walking to work every day from Rapids. White House, the private label brand name for A & P, ran three shifts producing evaporated milk. This was especially important during the war where evaporated milk was processed in special cans to be shipped abroad and dropped from planes to U. S. Soldiers below. The filled cans were processed in a hot water bath which would show leakage. Damaged cans were pulled from the line, leaks were soldered if possible or re-processed. “It was hot and steamy and we worked hard. Some days my fiancé would pick me up so I didn’t have to walk home. That was a treat!”, Dixie said. In 1940, President Roosevelt sent everyone in the lab a certificate and a pin for their work in the war effort which Dixie still considers an honor.

Post War Housing

First it was the ship workers, then it was the returning soldiers and their new families – Housing in Manitowoc in the 1940s was hard to come by. Gert, whose parents lived on a farm near Denmark, found room for her young family with her parents, eventually purchasing their own home with the assistance of her husband’s parents. But for the others, a place to call home was harder to come by.

Dixie and her girlfriends first lived in an un-insulated attic before moving to a small trailer behind Charlie Hynek’s Tavern on Rapids Road1. Since there was no plumbing, the girls used the bathroom in the tavern and washed their clothes outside in a basin. In the winter, Dixie said it was so cold that frost would form on the trailer walls. After her brother married and purchased a home, he offered to rent out the upstairs and conditions improved immensely.

If you were to picture World War II “on the home front” Custerdale would be a perfect reflection. On the west edge of Manitowoc, as part of the government’s Public War Housing Program, arose a housing project of 650 units called Custerdale Village. It housed about 2,200 people who worked in the shipyards and war-effort industries. The pre-fabricated units were built close together and came in several configurations. Since the homes were considered temporary, they were constructed on blocks with the plan to disassemble and move them to the south after the war. However, because of the post-war housing shortage, the city purchased the homes to be sold to returning soldiers. It was here that Germaine and her husband found a “double unit”, which consisted of two four-room units for a slim $18 a month rent.

Germaine remembers that there was only one door, the front door and that the closets had curtain rods rather than doors. When the homes went up for sale, her father suggested that it was a deal they couldn’t pass up, even though one of their two units had to be sold off because the city was putting in streets. Over the years, Germaine’s dad really did fix the house up adding a back door, a breeze way and garage and even sliding closet doors. Later they modernized the kitchen and it was her home all her life.

Babies

Today, the average maternity hospital stay is forty-eight hours with an average price tag of $8,802 2 but when our ladies were young mothers life was quite different. Certainly, the cost factor has dramatically changed since their hospital bills were between $18 and $27 but the postpartum care is even more startling. Each of the women spent nine days in the hospital – in bed. “When I got up, my feet felt like they had pins in them but I look like a million” Germaine remembered. Dixie said she could hardly stand up after so much bed rest. Then you had to go home and fend for yourself unless you had a mother or mother-in-law who could come to the rescue. You did what you could, they all remarked. Virginia told of a nurse who would take their candy telling them they were not the first who ever had a baby. Each laughed since they all remembered the nurse. They also noted the nurse never had any children so was really not much of an authority without first-hand experience.

1 www.manitowoctavernhistory.org

2 www.kff.org/womenshealth/upload/whp061207othd.pdf