Sense of the century   (2000)

Sense of the Century (Dec 26, 1999 to Jan. 1, 2000)

When the Millennium came around, I decided it would be the perfect time to find some centenarians reflect on the past 100 years. I had was pleased to find several  nonagenarians who could reflect on and share memories and observations, and delighted to write a series that dealt thematically with what it felt like to witness the incredible changes they saw and experienced.

Eleven-year-old Doris Askew liked to stand on the chair of the house in Scriba, N.Y., where she lived with her uncle and aunt and listen to the wooden box on the wall that was their telephone.

With seven families on the party line, everybody could listen in on everybody else. When Doris heard a telephone conversation saying that World War 1 had ended, she ran to tell her aunt, who was washing dishes at the time.

”Aunt Florence, come and hear! The war is over!” re-enacted Askew, now a 91-year-old Greenfield woman. ”She had the dishcloth in her hand. So I got down off the chair and we ran up and down the country road telling everyone that the war was over! Some of them didn’t have a telephone, but we had the one in the neighborhood, so we broadcast that the war was over.

”That was her first impulse: to go and tell the neighbors.”

Doris Askew, whose earliest memory is of her mother taking her to the armory in nearby Oswego for a memorial service for Teddy Roosevelt, moved to live with her aunt and uncle when her mother became ill during the 1918 influenza epidemic, during which nearly 700,000 people died in this country.

”I don’t know if my mother died of TB or the flu or both of them,” she said. ”All the schools were closed, and theaters were closed. Everything was shut down, and we were supposed to stay home or go to a place that was remote if we could. I was sent to the country. And I was there when the phone call came to say that mother had died.

”Everything was scarce during the war,” remembered Askew. ”We had a cousin who served in the war, who lost sight in one eye.”

Other than that, the main wartime recollections she has are those of a child: ”We used to have sayings about ‘Kaiser Bill went up the hill’ … I can’t remember the rest, all about the German kaiser. We were very glib about all of these things.”

***

In Turners Falls, Alice Cote couldn’t afford the penny it cost for a newspaper, but she learned about the war and Armistice from neighbors.

”My son was born March 4, the day that President Wilson took the chair. I wanted to name him either Wilson or Woodrow,” said Cote, who now lives in Orange at age 105.

When the influenza epidemic broke out, she said, ”They were all dying around me like flies. There weren’t caskets enough; they were taking ’em out in boxes and burying ’em.” ***

In Ashfield, Robert Crafts would remember, ”They used to bury them at night ’cause it was so contagious. We had to wear little camphor bags. It was supposed to ward off the sickness.” ***

Adrian Savage, at 92, recalled a French munitions train that came through Millers Falls during what was called the Great War: ”It stopped at the freight yard so the people could see what armament was used in World War I, the cannons and guns. All the armament was on flat cars.”

For Savage and the other French Canadian families in Millers Falls at the time, there was a compelling cultural connection as well:

”With the train was a French soldier. All he could speak was French. All the kids went up to talk with him.”

Savage’s memory of the war included a man he knew in town who came home wounded with a cleft ear because he’d been struck by a bullet.

***

Carl Schuhle of Greenfield, who turned 100 in June, was living in Turners Falls at the time, and was summoned to report to Springfield by train for the draft. The day came, and it was Nov. 11, 1918, the same day that Armistice was signed.

”We got the call not to come down,” remembered Schuhle matter-of-factly.

In fact, Schuhle remembered hearing that Armistice came down on Nov. 7, four days before it was officially declared.

”Somebody knew it was over, but it was kept quiet. I remember we were hollering and cheering, but the war wasn’t really over. Some were gone in the service, and I lost some friends.” ***

Robert Crafts also remembered anticipation of Armistice, as a boy growing up in Ashfield: ”We had one or two false armistices. I remember the superintendent of schools came over to the school and told us in person the war was over. Everyone started going out and shooting shotgun shells into the air. There was a lot of commotion. Then it grew to be not quite there, so we had to go back to school. Then we heard again the next day.”

The real armistice came very quickly.

Crafts remembered growing potatoes and squash, Swiss chard and other vegetables in the family’s victory garden, and that local ballplayer Douglas Urkuhart lost his leg while fighting in the war. A member of one of the first regiments to sail for France, he died in a French hospital at Chateau Perreuse and was buried there. ***

When news of armistice came to Millers Falls, everyone in the Millers Falls Co. tool shop turned out, recalled Adrian Savage, who later would go to work there. ”They had the kaiser in effigy in a big wagon. They took him to the freight yard to burn him on the top of a big pile of (railroad) ties. Right in the freight yards in Millers! I remember going to watch him burn.”

***

”When World War I ended,” recalled Florence Giffin, ”all the mills stopped work and allowed all their workers to go and celebrate. My brother worked for the woolen mill as a truck driver, so he had the big truck and we all piled into it. Some of them were on the hood and some of them were up on top of the cab, and some were all over the place. They rode down the main street honking the horn having a wonderful time celebrating Armistice Day. Now they call it Veterans Day and none of the kids in school know what that means. I was coming home from school, and was there to celebrate with the rest of them.”

Like Schule, she said, ”My brother would have been drafted if it hadn’t ended when it did. He was tying his tie when they called and told him he needn’t get up and report because it was over. He was going to report that very same day, even though he was on a farm and they needed all the stuff they could get from the farmers.” ***

Fort Ontario, at the mouth of the Oswego River in western New York, was activated during the war, Doris Askew recalled. That brought soldiers to her central New York community from time to time.

”We used to play in that little fort, in the tunnels,” she said. ”The parades were very simple, and not very long. For Armistice, everybody was very excited about that. Armistice Day was a big day. All of the holidays were celebrated on the correct day. Even today it bothers me that they don’t celebrate the Armistice. That was the big thing during my early years, during much of my life, until they began to fiddle with the calendar and move things around. I never liked that. I like to keep the tradition correct.”

– RICHIE DAVIS