CONTENTS      A LONG TIME AGO      THE O'BRIENS HAVE COFFEE
CAMPING WITH HENRY DAVID      THE MAKE-UP ARTIST     AUTHORS

When I reached my mid-eighties there was no denying that I had only a few years to get my life and my possessions in order. I began to daydream. I imagined my four sons and one daughter descending on my apartment, forced to deal with my things, since I am gone.

I suppose the Salvation Army will somewhat reluctantly accept most of my possessions. I have no fine china, my forks and spoons are not sterling silver and the dining room table wobbles. The Oriental rug is so worn it is probably headed straight to the dumpster. But Oh! What will they do with all the books, journals, magazines and old letters?

I decide to tackle the box of old letters. It is very heavy. I am a compulsive letter saver. People wrote letters when I was younger. Lots of them. Stamps cost 3 cents. Even so, I thought throwing them away would be easy. I'd peruse a few and quickly into the trash they'd go.

Not so. As I read one after another — most of them were written between 1933 and 1941 — I became so entranced with the thirties, my old boyfriends and my teenage self that I forgot to eat lunch. Letters, better than history books, transporting me back seventy years. It was the time of the depression, World War II was impending. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. He'd signed the Social Security Act in August, 1935. That same year, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created to provide needed jobs.

I had been a restless teenager. I left home and school at fourteen. At first I lived in the former studio of John Reed (author of Ten Days That Shook the World) in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, and studied high school subjects on my own. Then I went to a small farm in Nelson, New Hampshire, and learned how to milk cows and split maple logs. But I wanted to see the USA, discover my father's grave in Kenosha, Wisconsin and, not so incidentally, visit boyfriends in Berkeley, California and Westfield, New York.

So I set out on my thumb. My father died when I was only twenty-three months old. Money was left to me in a trust which I would get when I was twenty-one. My mother got the income from the trust. When it became apparent that she couldn't keep me at home, she gave me the yearly interest — about $500. This kept me in food and clothing. I traveled by hitch-hiking and camped by the side of the road when I wasn't staying with friends or relatives. I sometimes made a little extra cash picking cherries in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin when visiting a cousin. I posed for art classes in Greenwich Village, New York City when I visited artist friends. And I baby sat wherever there was a baby that needed sitting. The oldest grandchild on both sides of my family, I had lots of experience with siblings and cousins. I could change a diaper quickly and was adept at calming a temper tantrum. Some summers I worked as a camp counselor.

In my travels I managed to swim in the Atlantic and Pacific, also Lakes Michigan and Erie, and an old quarry in New York State.

I felt living close to lakes and trees, fields and streams was necessary. I was disturbed at the amount of material goods my parents and their neighbors possessed. I was ashamed of their well-stocked pantries and linen closets. I'd read Thorstein Weblen's Theory of the Leisure Class and was convinced that "conspicuous consumption" should be avoided and that capitalism was evil. I was determined to live with what I could carry on my back.

The letters that I found so entrancing in my later life were written by six men and one woman. Unfortunately there are no copies of my replies. In my boyfriends' letters there were often remarks about what good letters I wrote, or praise for a poem I had sent. One correspondent wrote, "You make things about an ordinary quite dull and tedious task sound very interesting — things like cleaning barns and cutting ice. It's a wonderful quality."

The mens' letters reveal what they had in common, largely due to the nature of the thirties. They were all determined to get a college degree but were skeptical about many of the courses they were taking. They were all worried about the impending war and that they might be drafted. The first peace time military draft in U.S. history began in October, 1940. They were all struggling financially and they were all in love with me.

Bill M. was my most prolific correspondent. I'd met Bill when I was thirteen and in my last year at a progressive school, Hessian Hills School, in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. He had graduated from another progressive school in Fairhope, Alabama and was staying with friends in Croton. Not only did was have progressive education in common, we both had grown up without fathers. Mine had died while I was a toddler, Bill's had left his mother before he was born.

Here is what Bill wrote about his financial struggles:

"Can't remember whether I told you before but I'm living in a $2.50 a week room down town and by eating bread and cheese, lettuce, avocados, dates and oranges (all of which are cheap here) I manage to keep my expenses well under $8.00 a week."

And later when he had graduated:

"Meg, I hate the world that makes me sad, that makes me sell my guitar so I can eat two meals a day until something happens. I hate that world and hope I can give my puny little life, changing it for the better."

Here is what Bill wrote about college (University of California):

"Went up to school last night — the campus was beautiful in the moonlight. Spent 2 ½ hours reviewing history, 1555-1935. The instructor's voice droned on and on about battles, treaties, men, imperialism, unification of Italy, etc. 380 years in 2 ½ hours. Then I walked out of the stuffy classroom into the clear, cool, bright moonlit night. The present made the past look so silly. One beautiful night is worth more than 6,000 years of history, even if you are alone."

Bill wanted to change the world, as did I. He believed that Communism could do it. He joined the Young Communist League (YCL). Here is what he wrote about his activism:

"We had a very successful strike. Two liberals, a communist and a religious student spoke, as well as Norman Thomas and a member of the Maritime Federation. Over 5,000 students cut classes and participated in the meeting. There were no attempts at disruption."

And later in the same letter:

"We fight wars because we know that wars are not inevitable if we carry on a consistent fight against them. The only thing that makes life meaningful to me is the realization that man's lot can be made better. There will be many defeats and discouragements — but if we keep the end in view we cannot lose. Youth today is cynical because it is suffering and has not yet felt its strength. I have a profound feeling that drives us forward, that makes us forget to eat and even sleep — as during the building strike. Youth is learning that we are not just raving fanatics. We left it up to the audience at the strike whether they wanted to hear a YCLer. They voted unanimously to hear her. She gave a very friendly, calm, logical talk which received a storm of applause at the end. Out of that 5,000, not more than 30 were YCLers. I have found that since the strike that 100s are attending our lectures."

Bill was probably the only one of the boyfriends who was concerned about the Spanish Civil War. He wrote:

"The campus is green and beautiful with great eucalyptus and oak. Strawberry Canyon where we walked is cool and beautiful at night — but you look at them distantly and hate them because you are alone and you want to walk through them with a hand in yours. Beautiful nights are not for loneliness — they must be shared. Here I talk of loneliness and Ramen was alone on that hill in Spain for long hours with a shattered knee hearing only the periodic crack, whine and thud of fascist snipers' rifle bullets —wondering how he would get to safety, if he would. Laughing because the bastards had gotten him in his bum leg. It makes my loneliness seem such a paltry thing. So easily cured by a soft hand or a pretty face. Ramen's desperate loneliness was broken by hearing Dick's voice and knowing that it meant a machine gun was near to cover his retreat from loneliness. Sometimes I feel like Ramen's friend who couldn't stand the pain of a wound in the spine and stood up facing the enemy with his arms outstretched calling "Please shoot me!" And they did. I get so god damned sick of being lonely and having inhibitions. It is all so silly and useless. But life is what you make it. Ramen, Dick, Don and Wade are facing death with a hearty laugh for a cause. And we can't even face life. Cheer up Meg and Bill, you are still young."

When I went to Berkeley I slept in the hills above the campus. Bill joined me at night. During the day he was in classes or on a picket line. I could never stay long. In between my visits we wrote each other often. Here are excerpts from his love letters.

"Won't the wall of miles ever fall between us? I only have half a soul and body without you, Meg."

"Oh, Meg — I've had plans go to hell so often that I don't dare plan to go East next summer. But if there is a God and if he would listen to me, I would say, Please God, dear God, let me go East next Summer and see Meg, and the green summer and cool sweet rains and the lakes and the clean white birches. If I could just sit with you in silence and dream by your side."

"Well, Meg I am sort of at a loss for words. It's funny my last picture of you seems to always by that of a girl going down an early morning road with a pack on her back, and my heart is always wrung out wanting to run after her and follow close behind or arm in arm."

"Give me your hand, Meg, and here is mine and we'll walk together on the Milky Way."

As I read these letters more than 65 years later, the first lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay's famous sonnet kept wandering through my mind:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply.

"A Long Time Ago" Copyright 2005 by Meg Barden
Sonnet XLIII excerpt from Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, published by Harper & Brothers Publishers. Copyright © 1956 by Norma Millay Ellis.

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