“Oh, no! Not nude modeling again!”

When she came to consciousness again this time, Elise was wrapped in a sheet again.

But it was not loose as before; it was tied around her at the waist with a brown and red over garment. She looked around and saw that she was among several other women dressed in white sheets.

And there were men with red coverings over white and sometimes red covered gowns in what appeared to her to be a classical open market filled with stone steps, stone walls, and marble statues.

“Oh, my god. Are these togas?” she cried.

A woman in the line next to her shushed her and said, “What else would Roman women and men wear?”

“Rome!” Elise cried out. “Have I gone back two thousand years?”

The woman and three others next to her laughed at that.

“Look at her. She’s getting into the part,” the woman next in line chuckled. “Is this the new ‘Method’ technique?”

“Who is she?” mimicked the second.

“What is she doing here?” aped the third.

“When does she get paid?” completed the fourth who brought them all down into laughter.

Elise did not care for what they were doing by making fun of her.

“Now, listen,” she began to say. Then she stopped. “Romans who speak English? Where am I?”

The first woman in line just rose her finger into the air to indicate to look upwards.

Elise did look up and she saw dozens of klieg lights, catwalks, and bare concrete walls that looked like the inside of an airplane hangar.

The women stepped aside to enable her to see Cinerama motion picture cameras all around the set, with crewman holding boom microphones, and other attendants who made room for a director to take his chair.

Elise realized finally that she was on a movie set but still did not know where or even when its location might have been. She wanted to ask the women huddled around her but did not want to get laughed at again. She just stepped into line with the other women in togas, but they kept pushing her out front of them every time she tried.

No matter how hard she tried, she was not able to stand in line with them. She was left in front alone.

Then she heard the voice of command.

“Lucia …”

She tried to shrink away but the women in line pushed her forward. She landed on her knees.

“Lucia!”

Elise crawled on her knees across the ground toward men in togas who were milling about. She crawled between their legs and stayed down behind them.

“Where is Lucia!” the voice bellowed.

“Lucia! Lucia!” the assistant director repeated. “On set now, Lucia!”

The costumed men on the set who were near Elise bent over and lifted her up, still on her knees, and carried her forward to the central position she was supposed to be at. They set her down, helped her up, and walked back to their previous positions.

She looked and felt frightened.

She turned to the women in togas.

“All right. Who am I?” she said with a wavering voice.

“Lucia!” the women answered in unison with laughter that was joined in by the men in togas and nearby crew.

Oh, that’s my character name, Elise finally realized.

“Do I have lines?” she whispered to the nearest woman. Elise was afraid she was caught in a real-life actor’s nightmare.

“No,” laughed the woman. “No more than any of us do. You’re the stand-in for Debra Paget.”

“Ah.” Elise was relieved. But she had no idea who Debra Paget was.

“Lights are set!” yelled a crewman.

“Lights are set,” repeated the assistant director.

“Bring in Messalina,” the director shouted.

“Bring in Messalina,” the assistant director repeated.

Elise looked to the far left as she saw a dark redheaded woman in a lilac toga covered by a blue sash run over to a light but ornate sedan chair. She playfully snapped her fingers in the air and sat carefully upon the upholstered seat.

A couple of strong crewmen raced over and lifted the Roman sella chair and its occupant. They brought it onto the set and left it at a location pointed out by a set manager. The woman thanked the men with a flourish of her seductive robe and turned to face the camera.

This was obviously the lead woman in the cast, thought Elise.

While lighting was reset for her, the woman turned toward Elise. She rose to her feet suddenly.

“Elise!”

“Alana! Is it you?”

They both broke character and Elise ran to Alana. They hugged each other.

Elise noticed that Alana’s dark hair was dyed dark red.

“Why did you change your hair?”

“Technicolor, babe. This is wide screen CinemaScope.”

“Lucia, you are not near Messalina in any shot,” yelled the assistant director. “Go to your spot! Messalina, sit down, please.”

They resumed positions. As a crew member took Elise to her distant spot, she spoke back to Alana. “Are you the star of this movie?”

“No, Susan Hayward is. I’m her stand-in,” reported Alana from the chair.

“I’m apparently the stand-in for someone named Debra,” said Elise.

“Paget,” said Alana. “She’s a co-star who plays Lucia.”

“Uh huh.”

“She gets her back broken and then she’s catatonic,” said Alana.

“Oh?” Elise looked frightened. “Do I have to stand in for that?”

“She sees Jesus.”

“Is he in this?”

“No, but the apostle Peter is and he carries in the robe from the last picture.”

“The Robe? That movie they run every Easter on television?”

Overhearing extras and dancing women booed together.

“Don’t mention TV around here,” said Alana. “It’s as bad as saying you’re a communist these days.”

“Are you a communist?” said a young muscular man dressed as a gladiator as he stepped into place next to Elise. “Have you ever been?”

Elise was scared if this man was serious.

“What year is this?” she asked with trepidation.

“1953,” the man said. “You didn’t care for my Joseph McCarthy imitation?”

He laughed at his own joke and took her hands into his.

Elise pulled her hand away. “Excuse me,” she said gruffly.

“I’m supposed to do this,” he said. “Haven’t you read the script? I’m Demetrius. Really, my name is George, by the way. Standing in for Victor Mature.”

“No, I haven’t seen the script. Is Victor Mature in The Robe?” Elise said to him.

“No. They shot The Robe right here on these same sets the last two months. This one is called Demetrius and the Gladiators, the Robe’s sequel. That’s why you get to wear Jesus’s robe when you’re paralyzed.”

“Oh,” said Elise with a gulp. “I’ll be paralyzed?”

George turned his head away from her while still holding her hands.

“Will someone get a script to this stand in?” he yelled to the crew people around the director.

He turned back to her. “We’re supposed to do whatever the lead actors do. At this distance we can just mouth them while they set the camera and lights.”

Elise tried to withdraw her hands from him, but he held them firmly.

“Don’t let go of my hands until they say we can, okay? You’re new at this, I take it.”

“Yeah,” said Elise. “I just sort of dropped into this.”

“From the casting couch?”

“No, it was a bed actually.” George looked like he was actually concerned.

“Just stick with me, kid. I’ll help you get through all this.”

Elise looked over at Alana, whose character was supposed to see her and the gladiator at a distance and be angered by it.

“Hang in there, Lucia,” she yelled across to Elise. “I got here a week ago and know my way around the studio.”

“Which studio is this?” Elise wondered.

“Twentieth Century Fox in Hollywood. Who knew we’d get here so soon, eh?”

“Ah, you know her?” asked George.

“Since we were kids,” said Elise. She relaxed her hold on George’s hands. “I’m Elise, by the way.”

Alana’s words were cut off by an assistant director.

“Quiet on the set!”

The rest of the women in togas lined up near the sedan chair and raised their hands as the dancing women they were.

“Lighting levels set,” said the director of photography.

“Got it,” yelled a gaffer holding a major light.

“Focus!” yelled the assistant.

“Got it,” yelled the focus puller on camera one.

“Set,” said the one on camera two.

“All right. Bring in the stars.”

Doors opened at the far edges of the set. Victor Mature, Debra Paget, and Susan Hayward walked in to replace the stand ins.

And every one of them were kind, said Elise and Alana as they ran together off the set to view the scene from behind the crew.

“This is just one scene,” whispered George who snuck in behind them. “There are a hundred of them.” He flexed his muscles. “So, where are you two dolls from?”

He's did not expect the gales of laughter the two women gave him to that question.

Nor did the actors, crew, and director.

“Quiet on the set!” yelled the assistant director.

“Take two!”

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes posts on Substack)

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Carousel was their 1945 musical adaptation of a non-musical play written by Hungarian playwright, Ferenc Molnar in 1909, called Lilliom.

The original play failed to get audiences and attention in Budapest, but translations were highly successful on Broadway in the 1920s, where it went through several stage and film productions into the 1930s.

It was an unusually dark play to turn into a musical, but the American musical giants of Rodgers and Hammerstein gave it memorable and hopeful songs that resonated then and later.

However, as Elise pointed out to Alana, the central issue of spousal abuse by the main character was problematic. Billy Bigelow was played here by John Raitt in his first Broadway role. Both Alana and Elise had heard and seen him perform many times on television as they grew up.

His character was a barker at a county recreation area in Maine, and he fell in love with a woman, Julie, who was one of the local millworkers.

The wordless opening Carousel Waltz dance scene brought easy, happy tears to the eyes of both Alana and Elise because they had grown up being able to ride for free on each of the six carousels left in Endicott, Johnson City, and Binghamton by George F. Johnson of the EJ Shoe Company who demanded the Broome County carousels be “free forever.”

But as the play developed the character, Billy, later slapped Julie out of his misplaced frustration, and that brought both tears and anger to the two spectators. While in 1945 such behavior was seen as almost ordinary, as the previously discussed singer Virginia O’Brien showed in her number about still loving the brute who nearly “murdered” her, that behavior did not sit well by any means with two 1970s feminists.

Though Alana and Elise had known about Molnar’s play from a European Theater class they had taken at Syracuse, they probably did not remember that it told of a long history of beatings by Lilliom, (his chosen stage name,) and his wife, though only one slap occurred onstage.

But there were strong socioeconomic issues of an underclass that motivated that character to become a thief and murderer in Molnar’s version. Most of that between the lines awareness was not in Carousel.

Carousel’s Billy Bigelow becomes a thief and later dies but is allowed back after his death to see his daughter at sixteen for one day. (The depiction of afterlife, is, as part of the era, again bureaucratic.) The final scene shows him as a ghost whispering into her ear as she faces discrimination as a criminal’s child. He says that he loved her and her face brightens up then fills with tears.

Throughout this operatic musical there were moments that drew tears from nearly all the audience members. The song, If I Loved You, spoke deeply to all. And then the words and music to You’ll Never Walk Alone reached so deeply into everyone’s heart that it probably stuck there forever.

At the end of the play Alana and Elise stood to share in the long applause. They were both solidly in tears, as Jonah had suggested. They leaned into each other’s arms and hugged with words of praise for the show and mutual support for the understanding that each did walk alone for a while when they had gone through the same kind of passionate purple swirl that led them here to 1945.

They looked deeply into each other’s eyes for a long moment of silence and then, surprisingly, Elise kissed Alana.

On the lips.

Then she pulled away, embarrassed and ashamed.

But Alana pulled her back toward herself.

And she kissed Elise on the lips as well, meaningfully.

“Oh, my god,” said Elise.

“All those years together,” said Alana. “We didn’t know.”

“Maybe we knew, but we didn’t allow it,” said Elise.

“Oh, Elise,” cooed Alana. “

“Alana,” swooned Elise.

They hugged more closely and kissed again.

“Get a room,” said one of the last audience members on the way out, just ahead of them. She turned to them and whispered, “Don’t let John Law catch you here in public.”

She smiled at them as if she understood and left the auditorium.

As ushers approached them from both sides, Alana and Elise stepped far apart from each other, gathered their jackets and programs and ran out of the theater to the lobby.

They ran out to Times Square where they held each other’s hands and danced in circles around the crowds. They began singing the words of If I Loved You to each other in their own version of a carousel waltz. They moved up and down like carousel horses in between surprised strollers on the square.

They finished their amazing performance by heading down the stairs into the IRT subway and danced onto the train just before the doors closed.

They joked, laughed, and cried again as they held hands on the subway seat they fell into. At the Christopher Street – Sheridan Square stop, they disembarked and came up to the street where they saw other couples of women and men also holding hands, but discreetly.

They decided to walk toward Allison’s home which was near Washington Square Park. They saw police patrols on the way and avoided stepping too near each other when they approached one. But their exuberant joy in being together made the walk magical for them.

They arrived at Allison and Ken’s apartment, and both kissed Ken on the top of the head as he was deep into his studies. He asked how the show was.

“Wonderous,” said Alana.

“Magical,” said Elise.

“Terrific,” said Ken. “As theatre should be.”

“Good night, Ken,” said Elise. “Tell Allison we’ll see her in the morning. We’re going to our room now.”

“Tired. Oh, so tired,” lied Alana with over dramatic expression.

She and Elise giggled silently toward each other.

“Good night, you two,” Ken said without looking up. “I’ll tell her when she gets back from her class.”

“Night,” said Elise.

“Night,” said Alana.

The two went into the spare bedroom and closed the door behind them.

It was not more than forty minutes later when Allison flew onto the balcony with Jonah on her arm.

She placed him on his feet and the two entered the apartment through the kitchen – balcony door.

Ken looked up and saw them.

“Do you have to fly in the middle of the week,” he mused. “Oh, who’s this?”

Allison came to Ken and kissed him.

“This, my studious, all-to-serious partner, is the very important person which caused our guests to time travel here from 1976.”

“Hi, I’m Jonah,” Jonah said as he reached his hand to shake with Ken. “Yep, you’re Ken Turnbull all right,” as he realized the similarity to the much older man he knew.

Ken stood and shook his hand with a quizzical look on his face.

“He knows both of us later, sweetheart. Apparently, I sent him here to find the other two and get them back.”

“You don’t say?” asked Ken.

“Are they still at the show, I hope,” Allison said.

“Nope. They came in a while ago. They’ve gone to bed already.” Ken explained.

“Gone to?” Allison cried. She turned and ran to the hallway to get to the bedroom door which was closed.

She heard sounds of extreme passion coming from inside.

“Oh, no!”

She pushed the door open and yelled inside.

“I’ve got Jonah. He is here. You can go home now together.” She stopped in midstride. “Oh, for the love of …”

Jonah followed Allison to stand at the door.

“The love of what?” Jonah asked offhandedly.

A loud, combined sound of consummate pleasure filled the room.

“Love!” reported Allison.

A cloud of purple passion filled the room from the bed. Inside its center the twirled legs of Alana and Elise flung around its central vortex.

Allison and Jonah both jumped toward the bed, he on one side, she on the other. Each reached out at once to grab at the two lovers, but Alana and Elise disappeared into nothingness. Allison and Jonah’s arms met over the middle of the bed.

Ken walked to the door and saw them as their hands had caught only each other’s.

He was unsure what he just saw. Jonah and Allison let their hands drop.

(Click here for Chapter Twenty-three)

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes posts on Substack)

Professor Partridge was on a roll, as usually he was, more than halfway through his extemporaneous lecture, when histrionics overtook history. He spoke of word etymology and heredity as parallel elements of human and societal development.

“What gets carried on to the next generation?” he asked from the center of the lecture hall. “Is it the new usage or adaptation of words within a newly formed body of being a convenient and likely way to express feelings, beliefs, meanings?”

With that he swung both arms to the right and skipped a few feet in that direction.

Then he swung both his arms and followed with his feet over to the opposite direction.

“Or do followers adhere so closely to the prior formulation of body and mind expectation that any variant of expression is labelled incorrect or worse, a bastardization of language or thought?”

His articulation of ‘bastardization’ was particularly theatrical.

He ran back and forth from side to side before declaiming, “Who shall determine usage?”

He waved his arms at the first side of the class that he had earlier indicated.

“Shall the users decide flexible definitions for each and every newly formed word or phrase by nothing more than common usage?”

He then leapt to the other side of the class and waved his arms at them.

“Or shall some higher authority, some holier-than-thou panel of experts make determined restrictions for usage, which are then never to be questioned again?”

Students on that side, already primed to do so, caught onto the frequently joking professor’s theatrical style, stood up to taunt those on the other side.

The ones on the other side stood and taunted back in a lively round of humorous pretense.

The professor threw up his hands and turned toward the blackboard, away from them all, to let the taunts continue for a short bit.

Then, just at the right moment, he seemed to somersault to the front to face them all. He pointed to the middle rows who had not stood or taunted. His longtime students knew this was coming.

“Or,” shouted Professor Partridge, “are there those in the middle who say, Goodness Sake!, we need to understand each other at least to have successful, ongoing conversation. But in order for our social development to grow and prosper we need to allow space for common usage words and new meanings of old words to co-exist without turmoil.”

The middle rows of students stood up and, without taunting, looked appropriately as betters to be in charge of the others at either side.

“Can’t we all just get along with inevitable change?” the professor asked rhetorically.

Those on the left and right stopped taunting and sat down. Then the middle sat down. Everyone laughed.

During these moments, Allison noticed that one tall, reddish-haired fellow did not rise within any group. Though he did not stand, he stood out to her. She had not seen him as a student in this course before.

He looked like he was the the type that Elise and Alana had described, she thought. She was several rows behind him, so she could not see his face.

During the applause following the professor’s last point, she moved from the left side of class to the right side to get into the row just ahead of him, She found she could get a better look at him by leaning back.

Jonah noticed her stare and stared back. She looked somehow familiar to him but he could not place her.

“Aha!” the professor noted Allison’s movement and sashayed over toward her.

“Do you find yourself more of an authoritarian follower then? Is that why you moved over here to this side?” he asked her.

Allison replied with an embarrassed laugh. “No, I just wanted a better view.”

“Of me?” the professor joked.

“Of the words you wrote on the blackboard,” Allison lied. “No offense.”

The professor laughed and turned to the class. “And there,” he said to them, “is the very distinction that makes semantics, semiotics so pertinent to our understanding of others. Context!”

He ran to the blackboard and picked up chalk to write CONTEXT in large letters. Then he swung around and uttered the rest from side to side at the front of the lecture hall.

From the left of the lectern:

“What do you really mean, when what you say is what you think you mean? Are there any underlying indications that are even unknown to you in the meanings your words carry?

From the right of the lectern:

“And how is one to whom you are addressing to take it? Do they have underlying assumptions that they, too, aren’t even aware of that makes them not take you at your word?”

From the center of the lectern:

“Or take you at your word and nothing else without understanding any of your assumptions or their own at all?”

Professor Partridge threw his hands up the air with palms upward.

“Why in heavens name should we talk to each other about anything these days?”

He leaned on the lectern and gave his students the long-practiced look of a sage advice giver.

“Because, my friends, we are not all the same and never will be, even if we are here at the same time and place and look much the same and even have come through this war together. Yes, we are one people in America because of the values of our freedom loving constitution, but we are not of one mind even if you are disposed to think everyone else is supposed to be. We must all seek to understand as much of where, when, and how others come from before we can judge them well or ill. Every word spoken or written is not enough to either dismiss others or assume they are the best. Context is always key, and to see it as full as one can takes experience, knowledge of the world, and agility of understanding for what makes humans worth knowing. Do not just label yourself or label others. You may miss the humanity that lies underneath all of us.”

Students began to applaud him again.

Professor Partridge stepped back from the lectern.

“Where was I?”

Allison used the applause to sneak a look at Jonah again and noted that he had no notebook. He just watched and listened, unlike the rest of the class who wrote notes or at least scribbled or doodled.

The professor walked up to the blackboard and pointed to two words he had written earlier.

“WORDS. FAMILIES,” he announced. “What do these two have in common?” he asked rhetorically.

Several students made random suggestions: “connections,” “similarities,” “structures.”

“ROOTS!” Professor Partridge bellowed. “Every word has roots. Every family has roots. Etymologists study word roots, but what would you call someone who studies family roots?”

A student guessed, “Historians?”

Professor Partridge laughed. “Do historians just study famous or significant people? Who studies everyday people?”

“Sociologists,” answered Allison.

“Yes, and?” said the professor.

“Genealogists,” offered Jonah.

“Right!”

Both Allison and the professor stared at Jonah.

“Oh, my, it’s Jonah,” said Professor Partridge. “You made it. And you have new shoes. Wonderful.”

He smiled happily at Jonah and then went on with his lively lecture. Allison, on the other hand, just stared at Jonah.

She decided to scribble a message on her notebook, She ripped it out as silent as she could, folded it, and wrote “Jonah” on the top. She sent it to him through two students between them.

Jonah received the message and read it. “Are you from Endwell?” it said.

Jonah looked at Allison and nodded his head toward her.

Allison quickly wrote another note, folded it, and sent it.

It read, “My name is Allison Beatty. My partner is Ken Turnbull. Do you know us later in life?”

Jonah could hardly believe his luck that such a connection was possible. He nodded so vigorously that others took notice. He silently asked others between them if he could switch toward Allison and the two students complied.

When close enough to whisper to her Jonah asked if she was ever called ‘Allie?’

“Only by those who love me,” she whispered in return.

“You’ll be known as Allie by everybody in your later life because the whole world will love you,” Jonah replied.

Allison blushed. “Really? You exaggerate.”

“Well, those who know you. You may not know it now, but I’m here in 1945 to find two soulmates I accidentally sent here.”

“You mean Elise and Alana?” Allison replied.

“You know of them?” Jonah cried almost aloud and stamped his feet when he said that. He quickly contained himself as he noticed all the stares.

“Not only that,” Allison said. “I know where they are. They are both at my house. Or will be after they come back from the Broadway show they are at.”

They both had the same thought at that moment, and each expressed it.

“Was it by chance that we both arrived here at this time?” Allison said.

“Is there something magical about all of this?” Jonah said.

Whatever the beloved professor was to say or do in the remainder of his lecture was unheard by the two who just left their seats and walked toward the hallway.

Professor Partridge saw them go out of the corner of his eye. He started to wave his hand to say goodbye but withdrew it and continued his discursive discussion.

Out in the New School for Social Research lobby, after explaining that she was tasked with finding him for Elise and Alana, Allison and Jonah shared thoughts on the time leaps they had taken.

Allison explained that she and Ken had done it three times already and it seemed to follow their most passionate sexual moments together, so that they had learned to control their spooning together to keep it from happening.

Jonah was able to explain to Allison something she did not yet know.

“You told me in 1976 that it happens to those of us who are descended from Rebecca Nurse who was killed as a witch at Salem even though she was not a real witch.”

“She wasn’t? Look here, I’m a witch because I descended from Salem. My mother was a witch and she taught me. I can fly, create certain spells, some magic is accessible to me. If there was a card to carry I could show you that I am a member of coven union New York Three. I was told that we came from a long line of witches. But not that one from Salem? I didn’t even know her name. Rebecca?”

“Apparently Rebecca Nurse could have been a full witch,” Jonah explained. “She had inherited traits but refused to develop them because of her devotion to the church at the time. So, I guess you and any of your ancestors certainly would have the same traits.”

“You said I, as a much older person, told you about this leaping being something that happens to witches from that particular strain. How did I know any of that?”

“I guess you studied your genealogy by then.”

“I will, obviously now. You leapt here to 1945 and caused those other two to leap. Are you a witch or warlock, then?”

“Not that I know of. But then I had no idea of this time leaping either until it happened to me. Maybe these traits arrive in different levels.” Jonah said. “You said you and Ken take these leaps. Is he a witch?”

“Definitely not. But then again, you raise a good point. What causes him to travel as well as I do? And in the same direction and time as I do? Is he a catalyst or am I?”

“I think you are, as I was for Alana and Elise.”

“You were? For both? How did they both get swirled here?”

“First I had sex with Alana. Then over a week later with Elise. They both disappeared in a purple swirl. At least Alana had most of her clothes still on. Elise didn’t have any at the time.”

"I know about that,” said Allison. Then she turned from a smile to a fiery face.

“With both of them? You had sex with both of them?”

“Uhm. Yeah. But it was not planned with either of them,” Jonah replied.

“I’m not going to ask what was going on there,” said Allison.

“We three grew up together. It was bound to happen. Although none of us knew we were children of Salem.”

“How did you get here? Did you get swirled with Elise, then?”

“No, that was later. I was sent here to bring them back to 1976.”

“By whom?”

“By you. Your fifty-some-year-old you,” revealed Jonah.

Allison gulped and held her mouth open for a moment.

“I had sex with you?” she exclaimed.

Jonah laughed. “No, just an intended kiss so passionate in front of your husband that it sent me back to 1945. You did it on purpose but at least you gave me time to get my clothes on first, but not my shoes.”

Allison felt better but realized that much more knowledge gathering was ahead of her.

Jonah sensed it and told her that she must have numerous time leaps ahead of her between 1945 and 1976 because the two of them seemed to know everything as if they were there by then.

“You two are actors, just like we are,” said Jonah.

“Really? I thought we become professors,” she said.

“You are that, too. Haven’t Alana and Elise told you?”

“I’ve told them not to. And I will ask the same of you. Although it is good to know I need to study my full genealogy. That could take years. But, for now, I think we need to get to my apartment by the time those two women get home from the show.”

“You don’t know how happy this makes me,” said Jonah as they stepped outside.

“I do know,” said Allison. “It’s just the other side of Greenwich Village. Shall we ride the buses or fly?”

Jonah laughed. “A bus is fine,” he said.

“It takes two,” Allison explained. “We’ll catch the first one over here.”

As they walked Jonah casually asked which show Alana and Elise went to.

“Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. It just opened last week,” Allison said.

“Oh, I know that musical,” said Jonah. “It’s beautiful but it is so sad, the two of them will spend half of it crying into each other’s arms. They always do that with any kind of tragedy, even if it’s hopeful as this show tries to be by its ending.”

Allison stopped, looked shocked, and then turned to Jonah. “Check that. We’re going to fly.”

She offered her arm to Jonah as soon as they reached the oak tree and she flew up above the branches with him.

On the way they both saw other witches gliding past in the smoky, misty air. Allison pointed to Jonah and mouthed “I’ve got him. This is the guy.”

(Click here to see Chapter Twenty-two)

(Click here to see the rest of Wordwrangler Writes posts on Substack)

The Monday after Alison and Ken listened to Take It or Leave It on the radio, she called the CBS switchboard to ask if she could get in touch with the contestant named Jonah from the previous night. But the operator said she was unable to provide that information. She suggested that the caller write a letter to the program production company.

“No, thank you,” said Allison who had potential quicker ways to find someone.

She next tried spells that she figured might bring Jonah within her circle of influence. None, however, seemed to work. At least by the first three days, none of the lost wandering men that came by her apartment knew anything about EJ Endwell shoes or the town. One might have been the right age but Elise, who was home at the time, indicated that he was not the one.

Allison still had classes and research studies in literature and word usage to attend to, so she could not follow through completely on this task for Elis. She told Elise she would write a personal ad and put it in a few newspapers that allowed it.

Jonah from Endwell,

Elise is here. Find me –

PO Box 87344, GV, NY.

By the time that Elise had discovered Alana at the Automat the next week there had been no response.

But when Elise came home to bring Alana to Allison and Ken everything changed. That thrilled Allison who was just about to open a letter from the post office box. The three read it together.

It was a note from a CBS producer saying he was looking for Jonah, too. He wanted him for a speaking role in a radio show. The letter asked the writer of the ad to contact him as soon as Jonah was found.

Elise and Alana rejoiced and danced around.

For only a few seconds, though, as Elise let go of Alana’s two arms around her suddenly.

“Elise, what’s wrong?” Alana said.

Elise did not answer but stepped away toward the window.

“I wonder where he is,” she said as she stepped out to the balcony to chastise herself for her feelings away from the other two.

From the kitchen window Ken caught sight of her light self-flagellation and gave her a look of concern. She turned away from him.

Inside, Alana looked upset, but Allison came to console her.

“I think I know,” she said to Alana, ‘but let’s let time move on its mysterious pace.” Alana looked confused. “Whatever is inside your friend will come out in due course.”

“What? Is she sick?” Alana asked with concern.

Allison laughed. “No, no, my dear. I think it something quite the opposite. Come on, let’s join her.”

Allison led Alana to the balcony.

Alana told Allison, “You know, we know you later as Allie. Are you really a witch? I always thought you might be. Can I be one, too?”

Allison just smiled as they stepped onto the balcony. The three of them stood at the railing and looked out over the horizon.

Ken Turnbull came out of the kitchen and stood with them wondering what the heck they were looking for.

Meanwhile, dirty and destitute, Jonah still wandered the streets of New York City trying to scrounge food and places to sleep.

He knew he should find a job or a room one of these days before his clothes began to fall off. He tried to see if the Traveler’s Aid desk at Grand Central Terminal would give him any clues. They referred him to the Salvation Arny at 120 West 14^th Street at the northwestern edge of Greenwich Village.

There he found what he needed. Kind people who fed him, helped him clean himself, and who provided useful second-hand and donated clothing of the era to enable him to go into job interviews. He was able to stay in clean lodging until he was ready to leave.

That he had to listen to light sermons on the three days he was there was not an inconvenience for someone who had been forced to take fifteen units in Religion classes as a non-Catholic at a Jesuit college. He knew how to listen without being taken in, but he was liberal enough to see the good-hearted intention under it all.

Because of his love of old movies, he had seen the film version of Guys and Dolls several times. He expected to see gangster types like the Damon Runyon characters in the musical play and movie, but he found none. Instead, there were many ex-Gi soldiers, home from the war, but still ravaged by it and not quite able to cope with the after-effects and were homeless.

He was surprised to see that there were psychiatrists on staff to help with the yet unnamed issues of post-traumatic stress disorder, but it was something he had known well about in 1976 because of what the Vietnam War did to so many young men drafted into that both willingly and unwillingly.

He wanted to tell the people around him who hated war for its inhumanity that he and his two greatest friends stood up against that draft, with a great, heroic news photo to prove it, but he could not. For one thing, the draft this time was indeed necessary to fight off fascism as a real threat to democracy and freedom. It was not fought for financial gains, though many profited from it.

War, though, for whatever reason was still hell and these lost and disabled souls proved it in every halting, disturbed, and unhoused step, that is, if they could even still use their legs.

On the third day, after meeting with job counsellors who accepted that he had no military connection, Jonah felt he was ready to go out again to the world of 1945 to accomplish his three intended tasks: (1) find a job to sustain himself during (2) his search for Alana and Elise so that (3) he could find a way to get them all back home, at least to Cape Cod in 1976.

He looked out of a thirteenth-floor tower window of the Salvation Army Centennial Memorial Temple to view what he could see of Greenwich Village and wondered just where to begin the next day,

Allison was by no means a leader of the Greenwich Village witches coven and wasn’t sure if she wanted to be one considering her desires to keep up and even extend her education in all things expressive.

But by the time Allison contacted others in the coven to help her search for the third soulmate of the two women now boarded at her apartment, she learned that her fellow witches had nothing to go by but his name and his hometown connection to his shoes.

Two witches flew to Allison’s balcony one night to ask for a picture of the fellow they were supposed to spot as they soared in shadows above the streets.

Allison realized the dilemma. She had heard, of course, very full verbal discussions of Jonah’s character and even looks from Elise and Alana but none of it was specific enough. Neither had been able to bring any photographs with them when they came to town. She thanked those two friendly coven mates and said she would get right on it.

She went back in to ask Alana and Elise, but remembered that those two had been out for the evening as Alana’s friend, Sarah, had arranged balcony tickets for them to a Broadway musical that had just opened a few days ago.

Allison decided she would ask Elise and Alana to see if either one of them could draw a picture of Jonah that might be close enough so her flying friends might recognize him. She left them a note to that regard in the bedroom they shared.

As it was just six o’clock, Allison was due to attend an evening class for adults that she had signed on for at seven o’clock, so she kissed Ken good evening and left. He was so involved in his history book he barely noticed.

Because of her interest in the way people expressed themselves the idea of the new field of Semiotics attracted her. She had attended four of Professor Partridge’s often wildly digressive but fascinating lectures already, and she was excited to delve further into the word music and expression ballet he always presented with gestures and movement that flowed from one side of the lecture hall to the other.

There was nothing so gleeful as knowledge presented with grace and artful delight from someone who is in rapture with his subject, she said gleefully to herself.

She was late as she left the living room, so she stepped off the balcony into the air and flew, as real witches do, to the New York School for Social Research at 66 West 12^th Street in Greenwich Village. She dropped down from the limbs of a nearby oak tree into the middle of a group of students about to enter the building.

She had to charm only two of them who had seen her land casually amidst their easy-going stride.

At the same evening event, the day before he would renew his job search, Jonah came from the Salvation Army building just two short blocks away, to enjoy his first Professor Partridge discursion into the wonderful, wacky world of word usage.

At exactly the same time, over at Liggett’s Drugstore at Times Square, Elise and Alana said a heartfelt goodbye to Roscoe and Alana’s replacement at the soda fountain, and began their two-block walk to the Majestic Theatre on 44^th Street to see the original Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s outstanding production of Carousel.

Everything, it seems, was starting to come together.

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As soon as they recognized each other in the Automat, Elise and Alana held onto each other for dear life. They would not be soon parted.

Their eyes held each other in rapt longing. They were two spirits from another time and place in a world unlike any of those around them would know unless they were young enough.

Alana’s friend, Sarah, moved them to her table as if shoving dual mannequins across a stage. She sat them down at two close edges while they still held their hands together.

The Automat manager waved to indicate that it was time to get back to work for the cashier and all the other employees who came out to see what the ruckus was.

The table and floor cleaner of the day picked up the fallen pie plate from the floor and figured some fast hander had gotten to the pie from it already. Customers who a moment ago stood and applauded went back to their meals and to selections of other items from the windows.

Alana finally spoke to Sarah while still gazing at Elise, “Sarah, this is my lifelong friend from our hometown, Elise.”

“We grew up together,” said Elise.

“I’m pleased to see you two have found each other,” said Sarah.

“Actually, there are three of us from us from that time,” said Alana. She pressed Elise’s hands and spoke to her at the same time Elise spoke.

They both said, “He’s here!”

They amazed each other with that shared statement. Alana described her hopes first. “I know he’s here. I just feel it.”

“I know,” said Elise.

“You know?” asked Alana quickly. “Did you see him?”

“No, but Allison … that is, Allie and Ken heard him on the radio last Sunday night.”

“Allie and Ken are here?” Alana asked joyously.

“Yeah. But they’re young, in their twenties. They’re doing classes at NYU and they live in Greenwich Village. I’m not sure they’re even married yet. I live with them now.”

“Wow,” Alana mused quietly. Then she turned to Sarah. “Those are the couple we stay with in Cape Cod when we do summer stock. Only they’re in their fifties or sixties.”

Sarah raised her hand. “So, all you’ve been telling me isn’t something you made up?”

The other two just chuckled at first but it grew into full laughter that they could barely stop until Sarah joined them. Then Elise focused her gaze on Alana and leaned toward her.

“I’ve been looking for you every hour since I got here. I can’t get over that you found me first when you looked in that silly pie window.”

Alana kissed Elise’s hands which were folded over hers and brought them to her breast. The hands lingered there just a brief moment because Elise’s eyes closed softly with a deep sigh. She quickly withdrew her hands and felt visibly embarrassed. She tried to hide her hands under the table.

Even Sarah was aware of the seriousness of the moment.

Alana picked up that sense of embarrassment.

“Are you okay, honey?” she said gently to Elise.

Elise just looked at her and could not answer at first. Finally, she revealed just part of her feelings.

“I’m not the same woman you knew back home, Alana. This time tripping has unearthed something in me. Maybe it was already there. I don’t know.”

“What?” Alana grew very concerned.

Elise tried to avoid any further discussion of her feelings. She displayed a fake smile and spoke as if nothing had occurred but the start of their conversation.

“So, you had a feeling that Jonah was here? How was that?”

Alana knew this was avoidance, but she was not about to unsettle Elise any further. Whatever it was would come up again, she figured.

“It happened at my job, just before I came to work one day. I’m a soda jerk here in 1945, by the way. At the big Liggett’s soda fountain in Times Square.”

Sarah cut in, “Just down the street. It’s a wonder you and Lana haven’t run into each other before this.”

“Lana? No, Alana,” Elise corrected.

“No, I’m Lana here,” explained Alana. “Lana Turnbull, who someday just might get discovered by a Broadway producer at a drug store soda fountain like, you know, Lana Turner was.” She shrugged.

“You made up that name, too?” Sarah grimaced at Alana.

“I had to make a split-second decision,” Alana defended. She turned back to Elise. “There was this Lana Turner movie poster and I just put that and the name Turnbull together ...”

“Wait, isn’t that Allie’s last name?” Elise interjected. “Turnbull? You took her name.”

“Yes,” Alana admitted.

“Here in 1945, she’s known as Allison Beatty,” Elise said. “Same woman, though. I’m sure of that.” She leaned in and whispered to Alana. “They’ve time traveled like we have,” she said. “In the same kind of passionate swirl that happened to us.”

“You don’t say?” asked Alana.

Sarah tried to listen in, but Alana and Elise turned away from her, and each cupped their hands on her side of their mouths.

“It happened to them the same way it happened to us, with passionate sex,” Elise whispered.

“That is what happened to you, too?” wondered Alana. “So, tell me. Who did you have sex with?”

Elise suddenly realized what her answer might do to her friend and soulmate, but she prepared her whisper to Alana.

“You may not like it,” she said, “but it was the same as what happened to you. It was with Jonah ...”

“WHAT?!” Alana yelled at the top of her voice as she let her hand fall.

Not only Sarah, but Automat diners nearby all turned to see what was going on.

Elise leaned back and grew defensive.

“It was after you disappeared and we were just mourning your loss and suddenly our long-term feelings for each other just took over and ... well, here we are. Here I am anyway.”

“What long term feelings? Jonah and I were the ones that were going to be together. We’ve known that since the fifth grade,” Alana demanded with a tone of superiority that upset Elise.

“What? How did you even know that? Did he know about it?”

Alana’s eyes indicated that maybe that was just her impression. But she wasn’t going to let it rest there.

“He solidified it later. I knew he felt the same way.”

“When?” asked Elise, her voice raised.

“When he kissed me at summer camp. Okay, it was between fifth and sixth grade. You were still swimming.”

Elise laughed at that and threw her own charge of dynamite.

“He kissed me during the seventh grade!”

“No!!” Alana stood up ready to fight.

Elise stood up to confront her.

The two stared at each other, as everyone else in the place did, and then they realized they were a spectacle. They both settled down and returned quietly to their chairs where they both stole guilty looks at each other.

Sarah left them and went to get a tray. She took it to the Automat windows and bought three bowls of ice cream, one vanilla, one chocolate, and one strawberry. She brought them back to the table and set them down at the table’s middle.

Alana reached for the vanilla, Elise for the strawberry, and Sarah took the chocolate happily.

“I knew it would work out that way,” she said to smooth everything over.

“Why, do you like chocolate?” asked Elise.

“I like all three,” she said. “Any way it works out suits me just fine.”

She smiled. And the other two chuckled and realized the significance of that. They enjoyed their ice cream and came back to their senses.

“So, you work at a soda fountain,” asked Elise in a forgiving moment. “Did the swirl put you in that position?”

“No,” said Alana. “I suddenly appeared onstage at a drama class. Sarah, here, helped me get started with a monologue from Glass Menagerie which, by the way just opened here on Broadway and nobody could figure how I knew it. She started me out doing your lines as Laura, but I soon got to do one of Amanda’s rants. Afterwards, Sarah then helped me to her theatrical boarding hotel and she’s my roommate and friend now. We still go to that drama class on Monday.”

“And one of these days, some Broadway producer or director will indeed discover the great talent this one brings to the stage and cast her in something that start a wonderful career,” Sarah gushed. “But not likely at the soda fountain, just through auditions which she should start taking.”

“Wow, that’s just what we hoped for both of us,” said Elise.

“So, did the swirl bring you to the Automat here?” Alana asked as she signaled Sarah to stop the praising.

“Not exactly, but eventually. When I left Cape Cod in that swirl that took me from the beach I landed here in New York. But I was nude and I ended up as a model for a figure drawing class but then got out of there and into a pin-up studio. I’m on a calendar now,” she laughed.

“Naked?” asked Alana with a sneaky grin.

“No, no.” Elise responded. “Just enough clothes on to suggest that to anybody who sees it. I do that once a week on my day off from the Automat. That artist just randomly got me to Allie and Ken’s apartment for a party where I met …” She paused realizing what she was about to say. She quickly put that idea out of her head and continued, “But I didn’t know it was her until the next morning. She knew I must have time traveled and she told me how she and Ken did it, too. Allison got me the job here so I could look for you.”

The two women looked strongly toward each other’s eyes. Alana tried to figure out what was behind Elise’s reticence to tell all. Elise tried to keep from staring into Alana’s eyes but could not stop,

“Well, obviously it worked,” said Sarah to break up the new silence. “Good for Allison or Allie or whatever her name is.”

“Yeah,” said Elise. “We love her. We always have. And will.”

“Yes, we do,” said Alana. “You said she and Ken heard Jonah on the radio. How did that happen?”

“It was a quiz show. He was a contestant. He said he was from Endwell and he gave his real name. Allison’s trying to find out where he is, but she hasn’t heard back on anything yet.”

“Wow, that sounds like him for sure.”

“What was that feeling you had about him? At your work?”

“Yeah. Let me ask Sarah something.”

“All ears,” offered Sarah.

“Do you know a movie where a cashier rings a bell and someone says ‘every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.’”

“I don’t go to movies much at all. Every night and weekend at the show and Monday nights at the acting class. I just see the marquees on the way.”

Alana told Elise that Sarah was a dresser on a Broadway show.

“It’s a Wonderful Life, right?” Elise said.

“Sarah, have you heard of that movie at all?”

“No. Sullivan’s Travels and The Bells of Saint Mary’s. But not that one.”

“I think,” said Alana. That movie has not been made yet here in 1945. But just before I came into work some guy in odd clothes said that angel line and expected everyone to know what he was talking about. You know how much Jonah loves old movies. Couldn’t you just imagine it could be him?”

Elise did not have to consider for more than a second.

“He throws those movie lines wherever he goes. Of course, it was him. That radio show confirmed it. He’s out here looking for us. We need to get Allie to use all her magical witch skills to get him to us.”

“Her what?” Sarah exclaimed.

Alana and Elise stood up and began to walk rapidly to the door. Sarah followed as well as she could but by the time she opened the door to the sidewalk the two women had gone out of sight.

“But you have to get to work in half an hour,” she yelled to the wind. She turned this way and that, still calling after but realized they had gone. She turned back to the Automat and was met by the manager who gave her a check.

“Please see that the gets her last pay,” he said.

“Oh, no! You’re firing her for that?” Sarah said angrily.

“No, no. This is only one stop on her quest. The good witch will see to them both now.”

Sarah just stared with the check in her hand and the manager whistled on his way back into the Automat.

(Click here for Chapter Twenty)

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The day after Jonah had a good night’s sleep at the Young Men’s Christian Association and spent his last full dollar, he realized he had only eighty-five cents left. When he returned his key to the desk, he was asked if he would like to extend his stay another night or more.

“Thank you,” he said, “I would like to, but I haven’t the funds. If I am successful today, I will be back in hopes of finding a room.”

“Don’t worry,” said the desk clerk. “There are fifteen hundred rooms here. Not all the soldiers are back yet. We hope they will be soon. Good luck.”

“Thanks, I need it,” Jonah replied as he turned toward the door to the street.

He still had the ticket to be in the audience for the radio game show, Take It or Leave It, which was to be broadcast that evening. Though he already had been to the CBS studio on East 52^nd Street, this CBS studio was listed at 485 Madison Avenue. He knew from yesterday’s library map that the numbered streets had named streets crossing them and he thought that maybe Madison Avenue, home to advertisers, was next to Fifth Avenue. So, he set off in that direction on 34^th Street and intended to go up Madison until he came to that number.

Along the way on 34^th Street, after he stopped at a luncheonette and paid 45 cents for eggs, sausage and milk. He passed the Empire State Building at 20 West 34^th Street and considered going in to ride the elevator to the top until he learned the ticket to the elevator was one dollar plus tax. He considered that with his new shoes he might go up the steps, but his meager amount of food in the past three days argued any ability of athleticism against that. He went back to the street and turned up Madison when he came to that Avenue.

When he came to the address, there was already a crowd of free ticket holders lined up. At that point he realized the address was the same CBS building he had arrived at when he was swirled here just two days ago. This was an entrance on another side, where the crowd was milling to get chosen by staff members who went through asking them questions.

Jonah knew that some television game shows audiences dressed in funny clothes hoping to get noticed, but he didn’t see anyone here dressed any other than usual for 1945. He wondered what he could do to make himself stand out in hopes of getting to be a contestant.

When the show assistants came to him, they asked him where he was from. He said, “Endwell, New York, the town named after a shoe.”

And then he bent over and lifted his foot high in the air to show the heel on which the word “Endwell” was written beneath the EJ logo.

The staffers laughed.

“These are Endicott Johnson shoes, the company that makes nearly all the boots for our GI soldiers overseas and here in this war and the last,” Jonah said.

“Hmm. Are they one of our sponsors?” asked one show assistant to the other.

“I don’t think so,” answered the other. “But it would be a good bit with the GI reference. Let’s take him in.”

And so, they told Jonah with whispers to leave the audience line and to go around the corner to the other entrance and wait to meet them on the second floor where he and other contestants would be taken into the studio for the show.

Jonah was thrilled. He stepped out of the line and went to the proper door, the one he had come out of before, to enter the CBS building.

Inside, he called for the elevator, and it arrived with the same woman operator who recognized him. She looked at his new shoes.

“You got them. Looking good,” she said. “EJ Endwells?”

“Yep. Magic shoes,” exclaimed Jonah. “Got me into ‘Take It or Leave It‘ as a contestant.”

“No kidding?”

“Yep.” Jonah stepped in and bent over to begin showing the shoe upright again.

Before the door closed on Jonah and the operator, it was held open as the two show assistants came in.

“Got you,” yelled the male as he grabbed hold of Jonah presumably to keep him from falling, but made him wobble a bit.

The female show staffer held him up.

“What? No show then for me?” asked Jonah as he fully stood up.

“No, no. I mean yes,” said the female staffer. “Just not this way. It’s best that you take the shoe off earlier and carry it to the microphone when you’re called up to it.”

“The emcee will not be able to describe your bending over actions as well as you just bringing it to him so he can read it aloud,” said the other.

“He’ll ask you where you’re from and you just say it the same way you told us. Then add what you said about the boots and the GIs, then you can put it back on while you answer any of the questions,” said the female.

“Second floor! Dreams and schemes,” joked the elevator operator in her dry voice. “Good luck, kid.” She winked at Jonah as she closed the door behind him and his handlers.

They led him to a holding area for other contestants they had chosen and showed him the light snack and beverage table just outside the studio which he welcomed warmly. He poured a glass of water and drank it down quickly while the staffers urged the contestants not to answer questions too soon but seem to struggle a bit to come to an answer because that plays well for the audience in the studio and at home.

Most of the eight persons preselected fidgeted and wished each other success while they watched radio technicians coming and going to set up the show. Eventually the audience was filtered into the many rows of chairs and a warm-up comedian welcomed them. He gave them instructions on how to yell ‘You’ll be sorrrrry!” if a contestant chooses to leave a higher amount of money in play for a harder question, and to cheer extra loudly when they win or take the money they’ve won so far.

Jonah knew how this show worked. The first two or three questions would be easy. He was in hopes that he could at least get as far as $32 which would ensure more nights at the Y and foods to cover for days at the absurdly low rates in 1945 while he searched for Alana and Elise. He knew his college education, extracurricular reading and general knowledge of anything after 1945 would be useless for any question, but he felt he knew enough prior history to that era, he’d be okay.

Especially if it was movies, music, cartoons, general literature, and comics, he would be fine, he reasoned.

Then the female staffer came by and said, “Get your shoe in your hand. You’re first.”

He was thrilled. He was going to get on. He reached down and untied one of his shoes. He began to walk around with it off which made most of the other contestants uneasy. The staffers explained to them that it was just a bit. He’ll put it on before he leaves the studio, they said.

Then the emcee, whose name was Phil Baker, was announced and the show began. The emcee told the audience that there was “a special guest tonight, and before the questioning begins, he would like to come out here and share something with you.”

Jonah did not think that would be him. But he wondered briefly about it until a door opened nearby and in walked Jack Benny himself carrying a trumpet.

Benny walked by Jonah on the way into the studio and commented in his unmistakable style, “Haven’t I seen that foot before? But it was not so well dressed then.”

Jonah was amazed that the famous comedian had remembered him from that awkward encounter a couple of days ago.

“Mr. Benny,” he half spoke - half mumbled.

The emcee was given the signal.

“And here he is now, ladies and gentlemen. All the way from Hollywood, Mr. Jack Benny.”

Jack Benny strode into the studio to thunderous applause.

“Jack, it is so good to see you.”

“Well, thank you. Are you going to ask me some questions? I could use the cash to pay for my parking. My Maxwell is so big it takes two spots. The way Rochester parks it.”

“Hah, hah. Jack, you know you can’t be a contestant. You work for the same radio network as I do. You know the rules.”

“But I do it in a different world.”

“What world is that?”

“Hollywood.”

After continued laughter, the emcee continued. “So, Jack, I see you are carrying a trumpet instead of your famous violin. I didn’t know you played that horn.”

“Neither did the director of the movie I just made. But they cast me anyway. As a trumpet player and an angel. Who would have thought?”

“What movie is that? I dare ask.”

“You win that dare. The movie is called The Horn Blows at Midnight, and it just opened here in New York at the Strand Theatre on Broadway on Friday. It also stars Alexis Smith.”

“Is she your love interest?”

“Well,” Pause. “The movie is a fantasy.” Pause. “The film plays everywhere else in America now as well. But here in New York it is not a double feature. Between showings audiences will appreciate some of the finest swing bands in America live on stage. I play a musician, you see. An angel musician who blows a horn.”

“What is it like the play an angel?”

“Well, it's very bureaucratic these days.”

From the wings, Jonah laughed more than the tepid audience response because he knew how many of 1940s films with heavenly settings were set up like governmental or corporate bureaucracies.

“That’s wonderful, Jack. Do you want to say anything else?”

“Buy War Bonds, please, everyone.”

“Yes, indeed. One last thing, Jack. Would you play a tune for us with that trumpet before you go?”

“I would love to but now is not the time.”

“Why not?”

“Because The Horn Blows at Midnight. Good night, everyone. And good luck.”

Jack Benny bowed and left the studio to great applause. On the way out he passed Jonah and gave him a pass to the movie house to see the movie.

“Good luck, kid. I hear you got your EJ shoes.” He walked out toward the elevator.

Jonah wanted to tell Jack Benny that he would use the lack of success for that movie that received only half of its budget in return as a joke for the rest of his career on radio and into television. But that, too, he realized was not the time as he wished the star well on the way out.

The emcee introduced the announcer who read out a commercial for the Eversharp Pen that would not leak at high altitude.

The two staffers came by and led Jonah to the microphone. The audience laughed as he stepped in wearing only one shoe and holding the other. He was asked his name and then asked why he was holding the shoe.

“To show it to you,” Jonah said.

The emcee told the listeners he was looking over the shoe.

“It is a new shoe. As I turn it over, I see that it is a product of EJ. The famous Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“And it has the word ‘Endwell’ on it?”

“Yes. That is where I came from,” said Jonah wryly.

“From the shoe?” The emcee was getting the joke. “Are you saying you lived in a shoe? Was the Old Woman who lived there your mother?”

The audience laughed.

“No,” said Jonah. “I’m from the town that was named after this shoe, Endwell, New York. From the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company that made nearly all of the boots worn by American Gis in this war and the last one.”

“Aha!”

There was great applause from the audience.

“What a fine story,” said the emcee, “And what a fine service that EJ company has provided the nation. Now, why don’t you put on that shoe and stand up tall for your chance to Take It or Leave It!”

Jonah reached down and put his shoe on. He was excited and ready to win big at this radio quiz show.

“Now, for one dollar, here is your first question.”

“I’m ready, Go ahead.”

“Question One. What day of the week is this?”

“Ulp.”

Jonah did not have to pretend to struggle with this one. He had no idea. Though he had read through several newspapers he had not bothered to look at the day printed on any of them. Only the year stuck in his mind.

“Uhm,” he began. “Well, Mr. Benny said he opened his movie on a Friday, so it is past Friday. Could be two Fridays ago. Uh ..”

The emcee looked at him as if he was struggling too much on this first one.

Jonah looked around the small auditorium, but nothing came to him except the idea that he was going to leave the studio with nothing.

Just because the ticking clock was about to cut him off, he uttered, “Tuesday?”

The audience gasped.

“No, I’m sorry, Jonah. You may have been living in that shoe and missed the world going by. Today is Sunday, of course. Thank you for playing Take It or Leave It, goodbye.”

Dazed, Jonah walked off the studio set and someone gave him a small box with two Eversharp pens in it. He gave that box to the elevator operator who hugged him in consolation as he departed the CBS building.

At the same time, Alison and Ken listened in for their usual Sunday evening radio program they had long enjoyed. Alison knew both the name Jonah and the town of Endwell because Elise had told her. She determined to call the studio the next morning to see if she could get in touch with him.

That night, though, all Jonah had to his name after he hit the street was forty cents and the pass to the movie. He made his way over the Strand Theatre and entered with the pass. He took a seat in the balcony and stayed through the entire night while sneaking around from lone sleepy ushers after midnight and sniffing out partially full boxes of concessions.

The live bands had finished before midnight, so a second feature was added until noon the next morning, a clunker from a couple of years prior with Lucille Ball and Dick Powell called Meet the People. It meant well as Lucy played a glamourous actress pretending to be a Rosie the Riveter at a shipyard to impress Powell who wanted his play to show “real” people not upper-class twits. The songs were dull, but Jonah enjoyed watching the Spike Jones band do a version of their famed Schicklgruber number with a remarkably talented monkey playing “Der Fuhrer.” And the usually stern-faced Virginia O'Brien getting to smile a lot with songs this time. However, one number of her boyfriend or husband causing her grievous bodily injury would be no joke at all even in the 1970s

He hated seeing her singing that with no emotion because he always had a thing for her. Perhaps that was because something about her reminded him of Alana and also in some odd way of Elise.

Over the next few nights Jonah's clothes got more ragged, but he found ways to scrounge food and enough coins here and there to get into more movie houses to sleep at night. That led him finally to the afternoon when he got to the Automat and found the slice of pie that had fallen to the floor after he had spent his last nickel for some cottage cheese.

He slipped away unseen to the street while that hullabaloo was going on over where that pie had fallen behind. Come what may, he said, he would do his best to get a job to have the wherewithal to find Alana and Elise.

(Click here for Chapter Nineteen)

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes on Substack)

The Republicans call us “communist,”

But I wish to be called the proper name,

Social Democratic Capitalist ...

( Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes doggerels and other posts on Substack)

Who do we fight for this intendency?

For Democracy or incumbency?

[ ]

Moderates still think the other side listens -

Rockers know that’s just a dream that glistens.

Moderates think all will be compromised -

The Rockers know that’s just a bromide.

The Mods take cash from the corporate horde -

The Rockers know that they cannot afford.

[ ]

Mods say the Rockers have just declared war

On the ones the people used to vote for –

The Rockers know why the people have changed.

They are sick of a ruler that’s deranged.

[ ]

All of us know what we are up against

With traitorous criminals recompensed,

White Christian Nationalists in control,

Corporations fund fascist rigmarole.

[ ]

We cannot have a war between the Mods

And the social democratic Rockers.

We need change, a full reinstitution

Of the values of our Constitution.

Join the wave, you Mods, or please step aside

To let the will of the people decide.

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes on Substack)

On a bench in Bryant Park, Jonah did not have a pen or pencil to circle ads, so, as much as he hated ripping pages, he ripped out a few ads from each newspaper, some of which were duplicated, and stuffed them into his pants pockets.

But during that process he grew sleepy and napped on the park bench until a cop nudged him with a billy club. He awoke and apologized but the patrolman just moved on, saying, “Up. No sleeping in the parks, even it’s daytime.”

Jonah gathered up the three newspapers, all of which had prominent ads on the front page saying, “Buy War Bonds” with different drawings.

He folded the remainder of the disparate news pages as much as he could. He sought a container to dump them, found it near the far entrance to the park, and pushed them into the bin.

As soon as he walked away and checked that he had the ads in his pocket, another much more ragged man pulled the newspapers out of the bin and hid them safely behind a bush.

Probably his night covers, Jonah said to himself. Should have thought of that, he mumbled.

He also checked that he had one dollar and ninety-five cents in his other pocket. Ninety-five cents for food and a dollar for a room, he figured, as he had seen ads for low-cost hotels along with higher priced ones in the papers.

Maybe good for a day, he reasoned. Now to find out where these jobs are, he planned.

He walked in his brand-new shoes to the entrance of the New York Public Library and was stunned by the width and height of the main Reading Room when he got into it. It actually filled much of the city block that the library was on. There were chandeliers hanging over the dozens of tables, each with their own lamps, where people were sitting to read or study from books, serials, and other papers.

Around the edges of the room were what seemed to be walls filled with reference books. And in the middle was a square of counters behind which were several Reference Librarians serving a countless line of patrons.

Jonah stood in line and when his turn came, he asked where to find a map of New York City.

“Yes, sir. Which kind of map do you want, current or historical?” replied the librarian.

“Current, please,” Jonah said. “Just something I can check out.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Nothing gets checked out here at the New York Public Library. It is public, but this is a research library. You can check out books, but not reference books or magazines, at any of our other neighborhood libraries. Which neighborhood are you close to?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know. I’m new here.”

“Did you just move here?”

“No, I am a visitor.”

“I see. Might I suggest the Traveler’s Aid desk then. There is one up at Grand Central Station and another at Penn Station. They may have maps you can take. Would you like me to show you how to get to either? They are both relatively close.”

“Thank you,” said Jonah. “Please do.”

From beneath the counter to his right, the reference librarian pulled out a large fold out map of New York City for wartime visitors published by the New York State Department of Commerce. Jonah was somewhat astonished that such a map was not immediately produced before.

“You are here. There is Grand Central,” pointed out the reference librarian, “just two blocks down at 42^nd Street and Park Ave. Penn Station is a bit further in the other direction. Here it is at 31^st Street.”

Jonah peered closely at the map and pulled out the mass of ad clippings from his pocket.

“May I?” he asked as he moved the map on the counter to the side of the librarian. “Do you have a pencil?” he added when he realized he had no way to circle addresses on ads as he began to organize them into locality clusters.

“Here you go,” said the next person in line who stepped to the desk.

“Thank you,” said Jonah as the reference librarian welcomed that he did not have to answer that question negatively.

That man had several pencils in his breast pocket and was happy to share one. He also had a couple sticking out of the visor on his nearly bald head. He had papers sticking out of several pockets of his vest, shirt, and pants. Looking like a Mad Hatter sort of person of insatiable curiosity and inability to keep from prying, the fellow leaned over closely to watch Jonah as he poured through the map of Manhattan.

“The map is not the territory,” he gleefully quoted to Jonah.

Jonah lifted his head. “What? Is this fake?”

“No, it’s not,” interjected the Reference Librarian. “He’s quoting a line from a famous philosopher. Aren’t you, Edgar?”

Edgar, who apparently was well known at the Reference Desk, smiled. “Do you know how the statement continues?” said Edgar in a pedantic way. “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. That was Alfred Korzybski, founder of General Semantics.”

“Semantics! Yes, that’s what I was supposed to look up. No, wait! I think it was semiotics,” Jonah exclaimed.

“Ah, well,” said Edgar, “Semantics is part of Semiotics. Semantics let us know that things have different meanings depending on who is giving and receiving information. Semiotics is the study of signs, or signifiers, that go beyond just what we see or hear, but also the context and suppositions that lie beneath and within all forms of communication. You are here now, in this library, in this city, at this time, but who and where you were before and what intention you have carried in has brought you to an understanding that may differ from everyone else is this room. Do you comprehend?”

“Uhm, no.”

“Well, let me show you. Come along.”

Edgar directed Jonah away from the Reference Desk once Jonah put all the torn ads into his pocket with a rushed mass. The reference librarian leaned forward toward Edgar.

“Edgar, did you have a question?”

Gleefully leading away his captured new pupil, Edgar just waved the librarian away.

“Questions can wait,” he said. “I have a questor to serve!”

The librarian looked toward Jonah, “Careful. He’s an autodidact.”

“Isn’t everybody if they’re free?” Edgar chided, now three steps away.

Edgar led Jonah into the next room, the New York Public Library’s main Catalog Room.

Never had Jonah seen as many catalog drawers as were sitting in a square around half of the room with tall tables on the other half for people to bring the drawers to. He thought there must be hundreds of the index card size dr.awers.

For the rest of the afternoon, ‘Mad Hatter’ Edgar toured through the drawers to show Jonah all he could about semantics and semiotics, which led him also to a myriad of drawers which had anything to do with signs, symbols, word usage and etymology.

Jonah was, frankly, the perfect ‘student’ in this wild and wonderful quest as he enjoyed every minute of it. At two times they had gone over to the request desk to ask for books by Korzybski and later Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure, who wrote two seminal works on semiotics. Jonah was thrilled to learn that books at NYPL were stored on stacks that extended seven floors below and were retrieved by library aides on roller skates to be delivered to the pick-up desk.

Jonah told Edgar that he was now sure he would attend that Semiotics class taught by Professor Partridge and Edgar suggested he might go as well now that he has gotten back to study these things.

“What exactly do you want to know?” asked Jonah innocently.

*Everything,” the autodidact answered. “One thing leads to another.”

Jonah felt the same itch. The two went from books to periodical directories and back at gain for delightful, disregarded hours.

Fortunately, there were water fountains to keep them hydrated, and a restroom but neither thought of food on their wild journey until night fell.

As the library was closing for the night, Jonah wondered if he could sneak a place to sleep behind the catalog stands, but Edgar told him there is no way to be unseen by the guards that close the place.

“Do you have a dollar?” he asked Jonah.

“Yes. One.”

“That's all it takes. Come with me to the YMCA William Sloane House. It costs a dollar a night.”

So, they went to West 34th Street where Edgar bid Jonah goodnight and ambled toward his own home near Greenwich Village.

Jonah was happy to have a clean bed though the room was as small as a cell. But there was a shower which he welcomed. After cleaning himself up he went back to the lobby and dropped a nickel in a vending machine to get a candy bar which was his dinner for the day. He dropped another nickel for another one which would serve for breakfast in the morning.

Before he left the lobby he saw a sign above part of the counter which read “Free Radio Program Tickets.” He looked them over and thought he might go to the $64 Question show called “Take It or Leave It” and maybe win a few dollars to stay more nights.

While he was considering other shows, he started wondering if his main job in being here was to find Elise and Alana and get them home instead of just entertainment and fun research, he absently ate both candy bars.

(Click here for Chapter Eighteen)

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes on Substack)

When Jonah walked out of the Endicott Johnson shoe on West 42^nd Street with his new Endwell shoes he was happy that they and a pair of socks cost with tax only two dollars and ninety-seven cents.

That left him two dollars from the fiver that was given to him by the radio producer, plus the thirty-five cents given to him by Professor Partridge.

He tried to remember just what the professor was the expert on. Some word to do with words.

What was that word thought Jonah?

Semi-something. Ah, semantics?

Sort of, but more specific. Ah, semiotics. Yeah, that’s it, he reasoned.

At that moment he looked down the street to the left as he approached Sixth Avenue. Across the way there was a park and beyond that sat the two grand lions guarding astride the steps to the main entrance to the New York Public Library.

Yes, I’ll go find out more about semiotics in there, he said to himself.

But, after only a few steps his stomach told him a better choice would be to find something to eat first. He checked the money he had and looked around. To his right he saw a large Liggett’s Drug Store with a sign for a soda fountain just a block away and across the street on Broadway.

[Liggett soda fountain with several shifts of employees, 1940s]

Already at this time of the morning the long marble counter with a mirror behind it was full of soldiers and customers. He had to wait his turn to find a stool, during which he looked over the pharmacy goods and was amazed at how cheap everything was and how less attractive the boxes were. Some of the things, like cosmetics and tobacco products were packaged the same as they were in the era he had come from.

Along with magazines of the era there were daily newspapers. He saw the headline on one and reached down to read it.

“War Correspondent Ernie Pyle Killed in Iwo Jima.”

That saddened him. Also, there were more headlines following the death of FDR and the swearing in of his Vice-President Harry S. Truman.

When the customer at the end of the counter left the stool, he raced over to take it. The woman behind the counter asked rather bluntly what he would have.

“Can I have a glass of water, please,” he asked somewhat sheepishly. But when the fountain server scoffed at him, he added, “Just while I check out the menu for what I will order for breakfast.”

The woman poured water into a glass and plopped it in front of him hastily. He drank it with shaky, thirsty fingers and spilled part of it over his shirt. She was taken aback and poured another glass of water into which he dipped his hands and poured bits of water over his face and hands to clean them.

Two other servers and a couple of customers viewed him with alarm.

“Breakfast menu?” he asked again.

The server pointed to the signs behind her and said, “There’s your menu. This is a soda fountain. There’s no breakfast here. You want lunch?”

Before he could answer, she went to serve another customer.

Jonah read the offerings and saw the ice cream and soda offerings. He noticed that were pies and sandwiches. When the server came back, he asked for a chicken salad sandwich and a root beer.

“No chicken this week. Rations,” she said.

“Of course,” Jonah responded. “How about tuna fish?”

“Not this week. How about a liverwurst sandwich? We got that.”

“BLT?”

“We have the tomato and lettuce but no bacon right now.”

“Okay, then, I guess I’ll take the liverwurst.”

“Good choice. You want a slice of pie with that?”

“After liverwurst? No, thank you.”

“Fine. You got the money for it?” She smiled meanly. “Sorry, have to ask since your clothes are scruffy.”

Jonah was surprised. He looked at his clothing and then stood up and looked at himself in the mirror that was behind the counter. His pants and shirt were indeed ragged and dirty from the wrestling through bushes and flower beds in Central Park that morning.

He grabbed a couple of napkins from the counter dispenser and used them to brush off brambles quickly. He looked down toward his shoes. He lifted one up so the counter server could see.

“Look! Brand new shoes!” he exclaimed. “Brand new EJ shoes!”

Two nearby customers at the counter quickly left money for their purchase and scrambled out, giving him wide berth.

The server he was dealing with and the one next to her chuckled at his demeanor.

He looked at them and came back to the stool in front of the counter. “I have the money,” he said emphatically.

He sat back down, somewhat dejected. But he pulled out money from his pants pocket and displayed it on the counter.

“How much do I need?” he asked.

“Thirty-five cents. Fifteen for the root beer, and twenty for the sandwich.”

“Really?”

“It’s New York,” the woman said drily and went off to get his order.

Jonah laughed and said to himself, no, it’s 1945.

He gathered the change from his pocket, thirty-five cents in nickels and dimes, and three pennies left from the shoe store. He placed the thirty-five cents on the counter. The server happily took them to the cash register and rang them up.

Jonah laughed and uttered a quote he knew from the movies. “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”

The server and her mate turned to look at him in the same way the bartender did in It’s a Wonderful Life.

That made Jonah question himself about whether the movie had come out yet. And it was not popular at the time, he recalled from reading about it. They probably don’t know it like everyone who couldn’t avoid in 1976.

“Sorry,” he said to the servers. “Just thinking of a poem that I once knew.”

He smiled and tried to look as innocent as he could.

Within no more than two minutes the root beer and liverwurst sandwich with mustard was brought to him. He found the liverwurst not much different than bologna, nowhere near as inedible as he had suspected. I might try it again, he said to himself.

He finished, stood up, and then remembered he should leave a tip for the server, but the only change he had remaining were the three pennies. He gathered them from his pocket and nearly set them down but a stare from the customer next to him made him realize that three cents would be insulting to the server.

He picked them up before she could and he motioned to her that he’d be right back. “Just need to get some change.”

He went quickly over to the nearby clerk handling newspapers and magazines and asked, “Which newspaper has the want ads for jobs?”

“They all do,” said the clerk referring to the displayed daily copies of the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York Journal-American, New York Sun, and New York World-Telegram.

“Okay, I’ll take this one,” he said as he grabbed the Herald-Tribune. “How much?” he asked.

“Three cents,” responded the clerk. “Just what I see in your hand.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Jonah exclaimed as he handed them over to the clerk. “Can I get change for a dollar?” He held out one of his dollar bills.

“This isn’t the Automat, sir.” The fastidious clerk reminded him of those he had seen in old movies, like Franklin Pangborn.

Jonah turned and saw the soda fountain server looking straight at him. He showed her a grin and then grabbed up a New York Times and a New York Sun.

“I’ll take these then. Okay?”

“Yes, sir. Five cents, please.”

He handed the clerk the dollar, the clerk rang up three cents and then two cents and then gathered ninety-five cents in change to hand over to Jonah.

Jonah took the change without a word, and he swiveled back to the counter to place a nickel for his tip to the server. The customer on the next stool nodded that that was proper, and the server mouthed ‘thank you.”

Jonah turned to leave the drug store with his newspapers in hand but the clerk at the news counter leaned over to yell to him. Jonah stopped with the door half open to hear him.

“The Automat is just up the street, on Broadway, other side of Times Square. You can get a roll of nickels there.”

Jonah nodded absently toward the clerk and finished going through the open door to the street. At the same time, a woman in a Liggett’s soda fountain uniform came into the drugstore to begin her shift a few minutes later.

Her daytime cohorts greeted “Lana” with cheer.

“Did you see that nut who just here?” asked the server to her. “He’s just …” She peered toward the front window. “Ah, never mind. He’s gone.”

“Back to the nuthouse,” chuckled the other server who then made the circular finger around an ear symbol as if words were not enough. “The clothes he was in -- His pants didn’t even come up to his belly button. And the shirt was just hanging out. I bet that was the uniform they make them wear at Happy Dale.”

“Happy Dale?” said Alana, known as Lana. “Isn’t that a made-up place from Arsenic and Old Lace?”

“Actually, they mean Bellevue Hospital,” said the pedantic newspaper clerk who joined them. “I wouldn’t say that that customer was in any way ..”

The first server cut him off and turned away from him to address Alana. “He had brand new shoes and he said the cash register gave wings to angels.”

The two servers laughed heartily.

Alana froze. “Wait! How exactly did he say that?”

“Something about the cash register giving angels new wings when the bell sounds.”

“Oh, my god!” Alana immediately turned from them and ran to the door, shouting to her co-workers, “Which way did he go?”

The newspaper clerk came to hold the door after she let it go. “He has a pile of newspapers!” he yelled after her.

Alana ran up and down the street but found no one.

By that time, Jonah was sitting prone on a bench in Bryant Park next to the New York Public Library. He had covered himself in newspapers and was scanning want ads to figure out where to get a quick job so he could afford a place to stay at night.

Bells began to ring, and Alana turned to see an ice cream vendor rolling his cart along the street. It came up to her and so, she handed him two cents and bought an ice cream cone which she absently ate on the way back to the soda fountain.

The other servers looked at her with wonder that she was not eating their own brand of ice cream.

As she entered through the open door she mused to herself, “He’s here. It has to be him.”

(Click here for Chapter Seventeen)

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes on Substack posts)

Elise kept her eyes on every customer who walked in and on every piece of silverware within her charge while she was on duty every day except Wednesday at the Times Square Automat.

But during the first two weeks, at least, there was no Alana to be seen among the diners. She hoped against every likely negative possibility that her friend would be that one in a million who visited that Automat while she was there to spot her.

So much did Elise take to heart Allison’s suggestion that Alana would likely be in this city around the same time as she was and that she could happen to come in because of the popular convenience of the place, that Elise even came in as a customer on her first days off to scan every face.

She would spend the day sitting alone in the corner with coffee or juice refills, actual lunch at 1:30, and, except for her used 1945 clothing, she looked very much like Edward Hopper’s lonely woman in his 1927 painting.

[Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa]

But, except for her devotion to her lost soulmate friend, Alana, Elise was not entirely lonely. The life she found at Allison and Ken’s large Greenwich Village apartment began to intrigue her more each evening that she spent there, and she became a fixture in that wartime Bohemian and progressive lifestyle as days went by.

She began to get her salary at the end of the second week and offered to pay Alliison and Ken for the spare room at the apartment. They refused, saying they knew her residency was only temporary until her friend who had been swirled away to their time as she did would show up.

At that lively apartment with artists, musicians, students, and poets that came and went constantly in between the couple’s university coursework, there was another party each weekend. And Bruno, the pin-up painter, returned to find her so he could ask her again to pose for him.

Also, to Elise’s delight, the woman with whom Elise realized she had feelings for returned as well. Her name, she revealed, was Lilith which gave Elise a bit of a start when she said it to her. But this non-legendary Lilith was in the arms of another woman she sought to seduce throughout the party and gave Elise short shrift throughout.

That blatant disregard angered Elise just enough to cozy up to Bruno to his, and her own surprise. They dallied and flirted a bit, and in the process, Elise promised to show up at his studio on her day off. But she would not sleep with him, she protested. He prosaically said that having the opportunity to draw the gorgeous lines and curves of her fetching appearance was enough for him.

“Do you have any idea what beauty like yours does to an artist?” he claimed with the inartful pose of a Parisian painter, “What joyous feeling my hand will experience as my brush traces the outlines of your come hither lips, your enticing brows, and when it fulfills depths of the hues in the luscious shadow of your succulent visage.”

He pronounced the last word with a low, syrupy sound of an elongated ‘ahge.’

But Elise was just experienced enough to know he meant his mouth or other organ to stand in for his brush.

“Kinda kitschy and a bit salacious, like your pictures,” she charged with a laugh that made him drop any attempt at trying to be a highbrow, which he decidedly was not.

“Okay, just work. You pose. I draw. Nothing else,” he confided.

“Fine,” she said. “That I can do. PG rated.”

As soon as she said it, she realized that movie ratings of the 1970s were probably not yet used that far back. She started to explain herself, but Bruno cut in.

“Oh, you mean ‘PC” like the Production Code? Sure, sure, no problem,” Bruno smiled as he donned his beret and left the party with a slightly down hearted expression on his face that changed into happy rethinking as he skipped away.

Elise later asked Allison what ‘production code’ meant while they were cleaning up on Saturday after the post-party breakfast. Allison told her it was the name for the Hays Office to censor film content since 1934.

“No US film is to show criminals getting away with it, no suicides, no drugs, and no sexual content of any kind. Of course, studios still have them kiss and look longingly toward each other. They can suggest near eroticism with a look that gets by censors.”

“Oh, thanks,” Elise responded as she emptied ashtrays which was not anything she liked to do.

“That’s why even married couples on screen sleep in disconnected twin beds,” continued Allison, “and if together in a hug or just talking at a bedside, one foot has to be on the floor. Really, we know they are married. Some even had kid characters so how did that happen?”

Elise laughed but remembered her own parents had twin beds, too. Many of her friends’ parents did and so did married couples on television still in the Sixties. Yet, she knew she was part of the biggest post war population, the Baby Boomers, so more people than usual must have gotten over that no man’s land between the beds.

She thought of telling Allison how sexual movies will be in thirty years, but she restrained.

“They’re all in color then, even television shows,” Elise said instead. But then she had to explain what television was to Allison who had heard of it but hadn’t experienced it yet.

That kept them busy until it was time for Elise to get cleaned up to catch the bus to work. Every movement outside of the apartment building was an opportunity to scan faces looking for Alana.

It was not just the styles and designs of wartime New York City that caught Elise’s attention each bus trip, but so did the discussions she overheard there and at work. War news was, of course, on everybody’s minds. Soldiers and sailors, both men and women, who were on leave were always among passengers and Automat customers.

Some of them were also there because they were injured and no longer able to fight. But many a time Elise noted the forlorn expression of a man or woman who had lost a son or woman to the horrible war in Europe or the South Pacific and she felt guilty for being healthy, alive, and not involved.

She also felt guilty for being away from her parents without them knowing what had happened to her. Allison and Ken had explained that her loss wouldn’t be felt as she and Alana would get back to their regular lifetime as if they had never left. But they had not gone through that yet, Elise could not quite bring herself to believe it might really happen.

“Back in time? How the hell will we get back at all?” she uttered aloud as she got off the bus at Times Square. No experienced New Yorkers, however, paid any attention at all to whatever a woman yelling to herself said.

Every time going to work there or back to Greenwich Village, Elise just peered at every female face that passed by, or anyone boarding or disembarking from the bus in her constant lookout for anyone who might have looked like Alana.

On her Wednesdays day off from the Automat, she took the subway to instead of the bus to Bruno’s uptown studio to model, during which she was costumed in one after another skimpy and suggestive bit of clothing just short of a negligee. And for several weeks Bruno kept the sessions professional.

When she chanced by a long newsstand and saw her sexualized image hanging over a calendar behind the owner’s counter, she was at first embarrassed but then also felt a growing sense of pride about it.

“Hey, that’s her!” cried a browser to his companion.

Elise felt the pang of celebrity that every actor longs for in the beginning of their career. She turned toward the fellow and was about to admit that that picture was indeed her, until the companion, a woman, spoke ahead of her.

“Yeah, the woman who stares at every other woman on the bus!” the companion said. “I’ve even seen her come up from behind to a dame with black hair and turn her around.”

Elise was crushed at that and stayed silent as the couple backed away from her and picked up their pace to a run toward the bus stop.

Elise wished she could hide herself behind the flowing pages of the Look, Life, Time, Good Housekeeping, and Saturday Evening Posts issues that hung across the newsstand.

The newsstand owner gave her a quizzical look. Elise pointed toward the calendar behind him and said, “That’s me there, all right.”

The newsstand owner checked out the calendar picture and then turned to look at her. He did that twice and then gave her a pleasing smile, lifted his thumb upward, and winked with encouragement.

Emotionally restored, Elise thanked him and went on her way as an actor having learned how to get past bad reviews.

When through with each Wednesday modeling, usually by late morning, she took the subway back to Times Square and spent the rest of the day into the night in the corner of the Automat to scan every female face for the black hair and iridescent eyes of her missing friend.

She enjoyed the fact that on Wednesdays she did not have to clean out tables but she still felt guilty about being there and not doing it.

But that was her nature, guilt about just everything. Jonah had once said to her that should have gone to the Catholic college in Syracuse instead of him.

That first Wednesday, when she was not there working, she picked up not only her own plate and tray but those from the table next to hers. She was given the death stare by the cashier. She got the intended warning and set them all back down to let her counterpart worker do the clean-up for that day.

The next day, Thursday, she was back at the task as she was supposed to. Her eyes constantly moved around to perceive dark headed female faces.

Finally, after a couple more weeks, she was given her first crack at the job behind the dessert slots.

The unseen parts of the Automat cafeteria with its offerings in slots on the wall were that in rooms behind what the public saw were the many hidden people involved in the baking, cooking, and delivery of the foods they purchased with their nickels.

Furthest back were storage areas where food supplies were kept and deliveries were made throughout the day. Then bakers, dessert makers, sandwich makers stood behind the food slot team who took those items, placed them on plates, and loaded them into the numbered open slots for customers to receive when they put in the appropriate nickel or nickels.

In the other areas behind were the tray and dish washing stations, and offices of the manager and accounting assistants.

Elise was stationed at the slot filler line, one person for each two rows of slots. Her job with the others was to place plates with desserts into the slots over and over all day long as they were given to her from the bakers. She had two break times and a half-hour lunch.

But to stand in one place with repetitive motions became tedious very soon for someone of Elise’s intellect and expressive talents and Elise wondered how long could these stand-ins for fantasy automatons last at such work. Many of them, though, kept up long, ongoing conversations with each other which seemed to Elise to be what kept them going.

Along with their paychecks, she reminded herself. Not being able to join in popular culture opining and not willing to answer personal questions about where she came from, Elise stayed mostly silent except when she needed to respond to others who delivered desserts and plates to her.

She still tried to view customer faces, but she could only see when someone’s eyes came directly in front of the few slots in front of her. She felt extremely constrained.

Fortunately, on a Sunday after President Roosevelt had died, the eyes she had been waiting for finally showed up right where Allison said they would someday be.

Alana had put in two nickels and her hand reached in for an apple pie for her new friend when she saw the clear blue eyes of her lifetime friend staring at hers through the open Automat slot.

The plate with the pie fell to the floor as Elise let go of it to run to the door to get out of the back room out to the cafeteria. The two friends just stared at each other again and then they hugged with a depth of feeling that caused applause throughout the tables of the full Automat front.

The cashier called the manager who quickly ran out from his office to see it. Sarah, Alana's New York roommate, got up from her table to stand near them. They turned toward the manager and cashier away from the slots.

A man with very nice new shoes but slightly ragged clothes had just used his last nickel to buy a plate of cottage cheese. He spotted the apple pie on the floor and scooped it up.

He turned away without seeing who the fuss was about to hide and eat his two items in a far corner.

(Click here to see the rest of Wordwrangler Writes posts on Substack)

It didn’t take long. After helping Elise find some reasonably useful used clothing on Bleeker Street, she was taken uptown by Allison Beatty — she had not taken Ken’s name yet — to the main Automat restaurant near Times Square at 1557 Broadway,

The Horn & Hardart Baking Company was begun in Philadelphia in 1888 as a very tiny coffee shop with baked goods and sandwiches. It later became a slightly larger luncheonette by its owners, Joseph Horn, an American, and Frank Hardart, a German immigrant from Bavaria. The initial coffee, New Orleans style, called a “gilt-edge chicory coffee blend,” was new and popular in Philly. Because of that success they soon opened several new successful stores.

Seven years later, in 1895 in Berlin, Germany, a coffee bar opened called Quisisana, which is Italian for “here one heals” or “one here finds health.” They sold wine, mixed drinks, milk, and sandwiches through early versions of vending machines on the walls without the need of waiters or counterpersons in front, other than a change giver who would trade tokens for cash. There were people, however, behind the walls of machines making the sandwiches and filling beverages, as well as others who cleaned up saucers, cups, and glasses, cleared and cleaned tables and chairs, and filled the accessory slots for stirrers and napkins and condiments.

The company named their style of early fast-food access an “Automat,” which was taken as a turn of phrase to suggest the “automatons,” known as mechanical puppets and automatically moving devices that Europeans had long enjoyed.

After the mechanical delivery systems were given demonstrations at the Worlds Fair in Brussels in 1897, the Quisisana Automat opened several more branches across Europe and Russia and developed a company to sell their food delivery machines.

In 1900 or 1901, — there are conflicting reports as to dates and which partner came first — Frank Hardart visited his native Bavaria and saw Quisisana processes firsthand. Later at his request, Joseph Horn visited, and the two agreed to have the machines brought to Philadelphia. (Or vice versa.)

However, the first shipment of coffee and drink machines was lost at sea when the steamship carrying them sank off the coast of England. Their insurance company paid, though, and they ordered again. The second batch arrived but many were damaged by an explosion in the warehouse where they were stored. Despite those struggles, Horn and Hardart had their engineer make repairs and readjustment for American trade, and they opened their first two American Horn & Hardart Automats in Philadelphia in 1902 and shortly after, in New York the same year.

That first New York City Automat did not maintain enough business and closed in 1907, perhaps due to its location near Broadway and 14^th Street, (since 1957 the site of the famous Strand bookshop.) That address was also at the far end of Book Row, a long line of forty bookstores running from Washington Square park along Fourth Avenue. Maybe, the book buyers spent their last nickels on books, or preferred reading to eating.

But five years later, in 1912, the Times Square Automat at 1557 Broadway was opened and the H & H Automat became a New York institution, used and loved by millions.

By the 1940s there were fifty different Horn & Hardart Automats in New York and nearly a hundred and a half other locations in other cities and states. There was even a long-lasting radio show called the Horn & Hardart Children’s Hour in which some famous adults stars began as kids.

This Times Square branch was long storied in newspapers, Broadway plays, variety reviews, and movies. O. O. McIntyre, in a 1924 entry of his syndicated “New York Day by Day” column wrote, “The Automat is almost as much of an institution along Broadway as Times Square. No revue or variety show is complete without its quip about this famous nickel-in-the-slot eating place… It swirls with the froth of Broadway life—the peripatetic ads of the one-flight tailors, the rah, rah boys, the chorus girls, scrapping newsboys, leading men, visiting school teachers, gamblers, ladies of the evening and hard-boiled gents… It is one of the melting pots of Broadway where all castes rub elbows and carry their food to marble-topped tables.”

For many years in the first half of the Twentieth Century the Automat sold hot foods at a cafeteria style steam table on one side that was staffed by attendants who kept replacing the ones chosen. One deposited the correct number of nickels, exchanged from bills by a cashier near the entrance to get a tray. Along the far wall, there were offerings of side dishes, desserts, and beverages in glasses, through warmed, cooled, or room temperature slots that could be opened by inserting the required number of nickels.

One of the most sought-after beverages was coffee delivered through a finely designed gargoyle shaped opening that dropped coffee perfectly into a ceramic cup. If anyone wanted cream in the coffee there was a button that dropped the exact amount of cream through the same mouth. It was still, in 1945, a nickel as it had been since the beginning.

Above all, the Automat was clean, the food hygienic, and during the hours of opening, from Eight AM to Eleven PM, anyone was welcome, from lively groups to lonely sippers. The nickels and knobs were easy to operate, and children could easily get their chosen food and beverage to make them feel as adult as their parents or guardians.

When Allison brought Elise into the doors of the Automat, she joked that this kind of ready-made eating establishment must be further developed technologically and expanded all over the country by Elise’s time of thirty years hence.

But Elise had never seen such a place as this. She had heard the name “Automat” through her art class experience seeing Edward Hopper’s 1927 painting of that name with a woman sitting alone at a corner table, but she didn’t know what the restaurant was like other than that.

She did not know whether any Automats existed or not in 1976 and tried to explain how drive-through fast-food places like McDonalds and Burger King filled every American highway-focused suburb.

The idea of suburban life and highways did not register for Allison because many of those entities, based on automobile use, hadn’t been created yet, as they would be after the war they were currently living through. But she did know about small carry-out places that only served hamburgers and drinks since the White Castle chain and corner burger and hotdog places had been around since the 1920s.

“I’ve heard about those White Castle places,” said Elise, “but I don’t know if there are many left by my years. They have real tiny burgers, right? My cousin who delivered newspapers used to get his bundle at a White Castle when the newspaper truck dropped them off for him. While waiting with his bike, he said he’d eat half a dozen of them at a time. And there was a place in Endwell called “Henry’s Hamburgers” that sold them for fifteen cents when I was a kid. I saw my friend, Jonah, eat five of them, fries, and a shake for a dollar, but Alana and I would just have one each.”

“Ah, Alana,” interjected Allison, “That’s who you will find, I bet, sometime here in the Automat. Let’s see if we can get you a job here.”

She approached the cashier who had rubber tipped fingers for scraping nickels together from the counter drawer and asked to see the manager.

“If you have a complaint, you can leave it with me and you will receive a reply in due course,” said the cashier rather offhandedly.

“No, no. We would like to see about employment.” Allison touched her fingers.

The cashier’s mood changed.

“Ah, in that case, let me call him for you.”

The cashier undid rubber caps from two of her fingers and called the manager over. When she hung up, she nodded and then replaced the rubber caps to exchange nickels for two quarters and a half-dollar laid down on the counter by customers behind Allison and Elise.

Within only a minute, the manager came out to greet them.

“I understand you are looking for work. The two of you?”

“No, just me,” said Elise.

“I am her ... relative. She’s staying with me while she seeks employment,” said Allison.

“I see,” mused the kindly seeming manager. He turned to Elise. “Do you have any experience?”

“As what?” Elise dared to ask. “As a waitress?”

The manager winced.

“Sorry, we don’t have those sorts of positions here. Have you worked at an Automat before?’

“Um, no.”

“Are you a short order cook?”

“No,”

Allison tried to signal Elise to stop saying no but the concept was not getting through.

“Well, what do you offer to help us out here in this cafeteria-like establishment?” said the manager with growing frustration. But he winked at Allison behind Elise’s back.

“I could do what that woman is doing,” Elise said as she pointed to the cashier.

The cashier heard that and gave her a death stare.

“No, no. We have three of the finest purveyors of nickel switching art to cover all the shifts we need.” He gave the cashier a look of assurance that pleased her. Behind his back she stuck her tongue out at Elise.

Allison drew Elise toward her and took her to the nearest empty table which had two trays with used dishes, cups, glasses, silverware, and napkins left there a moment ago by two diners who ran out. She had Elise gather the full trays and present them to the manager.

“Where do these go to be cleaned?” Elise asked.

“Ah, that you can do!” beamed the manager. “Take them through that door on the wall and leave them for the dishwashers. Then ask them how to find my office and fill out forms with the woman there. She’ll tell you how to get a uniform.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Elise to him as Allison winked at her. She headed toward the door but one of the knives fell on the floor.

The manager looked at that with horror as Allison reached down to pick it up and place it on the trays Elise carried.

“Oh, the silverware!” cried the manager. “Do you know that our New York units lost $17,000 worth of silverware in a month last year from people stealing those things. It was worse than the Great Depression. You keep your eye on those things, will you?”

“Yes, sir. Through there?”

The manager nodded. When Elise had gone through the door to the hidden part of the restaurant, the manager turned to Allison.

“You vouch for her, do you?”

“Of course, Arnold. And don’t tell her I called you in advance. Her address, by the way, is mine. She’s staying with me until she finds her friend from another world.”

The manager did not even question that. He walked Allison to the front door as he explained his conditions.

“I will let her keep working out among the customers so she can look for whoever that is you said she needs to find, But if I need her to fill in behind the slots when someone is ill or has to go the doctor or somewhere, I’ll put her in there loading and pushing plates. She won’t see so much from there, but it will be only just from time to time.”

“Thanks. Time to time works for me in more ways then one,” Allison joked.

“Okeydokey,” he said. “Anything for a fellow covener.”

The witch Allison skipped out to the street and the warlock manager closed the door behind her.

(Click here for Chapter Fifteen)

(Click here the rest of WordWrangler Writes on Substack)

It was only one night, the most surprising and, Elise had to admit, the most amazing night she had ever spent.

She had given in to the woman who had awakened a sleeping urge within her, and though women she met afterwards at the party indicated they, too, were attracted to her, Elise demurred only because she was not sure yet whether her sexuality has blossomed into new being or whether it had been a mere temporary adaptation to the Bohemian life she had fallen into in Greenwich Village.

She was glad that though it was a kind of thrilling passion that generated between the two of them, it was not the explosive swirling passion that would send her to yet some other time and place.

When she got up and saw the wall calendar from the couch on which she had been sleeping, she realized she was still in 1945. The woman who had changed her life was nowhere to be found as Elise straightened herself into her dress and shoes. After a quick trip to the bathroom, she wandered around the large apartment to see other partygoers waking up but she could not name the woman whose name she never ascertained.

Somewhere also in the haze of that night, Bruno also had disappeared. She was told that he left in the arms of another woman as the party was still going on after midnight.

Elise knew that she could find him at the studio in which they had met but she wasn’t sure she still wanted to be his model or anyone else’s.

Where to go from here, though, was a thought that seemed too difficult to figure out when she still didn’t know why she had been thrown into this earlier time and place.

She stepped out onto an overhanging balcony and discovered that she was on the second floor of what appeared to be large apartment building. She looked around and began to smell the aroma of breakfast cooking coming from a window at the other end of the balcony. She stepped over some partygoer clothes on the floor of the balcony and walked through the open door to the kitchen.

There she found a robe-clad woman, not much older than she, who was cooking up a large order of eggs and spam for two similarly aged men, one her age, and one looking a bit older, who sat a table with plates and bread in front of them.

“No bacon?” Elise asked as she entered fully into the kitchen.

The other three looked at her as if she was daft.

“There is no bacon, sweetheart,” said the cooker. “Spam! That’s our wartime bacon.”

“At dinner we can have Argentine beef from a can,” said one of the guys at the table. “Chipped beef. Put it on toast, if you’re lucky to find bread.”

“Shit on a shingle,” quipped the other man.

All three laughed.

Elise did not.

“Sit down,” said the cook. “I could put on two more eggs. Do you have a ration stamp to allow me to buy more eggs?”

“That’s the cost of a meal here when we party,” said the older of the two men.

Elise shook her head.

“That’s all right,” said the younger man. “I’ve got it.”

He stood up and got a ration stamp out of his jacket pocket and handed it to the woman who was cooking.

“Here, this will help you buy more eggs,” he said.

“If I can find them,” said the woman.

“Thank you,” said Elise who allowed the younger man to hold out a seat for her at the table.

The man sat down again as the cooker emptied cooked eggs to the table plates in front of the two men. They began to eat as Elise also watched that each one took only one slice of bread and spread jam very slightly from a nearly empty jar. Water was poured out of a large jug and passed around.

“How do you want your eggs,” said the woman kindly to Elise.

“Sunny side up and loose, please,”

“Ah, just as I like them, too,” said the woman. “My name is Allison Beatty. Yours?”

“I’m Sa ... I’m Elise.”

“Welcome, Elise.”

Elise did feel welcome though she knew none of these people. They seemed kind.

Allison finished cooking Elise’s eggs and served them to her. Then she stood at the kitchen door to greet other partygoers who were there with ration stamps in hand. There were two more seats available at the table, so she allowed only two of them in at that time.

This seemed to be a routine that everybody around recognized. An orderly line of newly awakened partygoers began to join the hallway line.

The first two men, however, weren’t in any hurry to make room just yet.

“So, who’d you come in with?” asked the older of the two men to Elise.

“Uhm, Bruno,” she said.

“Who?” asked the younger male.

Allison at the range shrugged. The name meant nothing to her.

Elise tried to describe him. “An artist. He does drawings for calendars. Of women. Sort of those made to look like the woman is sexy.”

“Oh, that guy,” recalled Allison over her shoulder. “He wanted my number. Said I had classical lines.”

“So does a Buick,” quipped the older guy. “But he can't drive it without a real license like the one I have.”

He reached out to her with his arm, but the breakfast cook smiled and slapped his hand lightly. She brought the pan over to slip eggs and spam onto the plates of the newest breakfast diners. Then she ambled close to him and let him hug her. She kissed the top of his head before returning to the door to apprise how many were waiting.

It became clear to Elise that they were a couple, probably the tenants of this remarkable place.

“You’re sexy,” said the younger male to Elise. “Are you one of his models?”

Elise was only slightly taken aback. The two other diners who had just started eating looked her over with interest.

“Yes, I am. Or was,” she replied. “Once. Just yesterday. I just ... came into town and landed in front of his easel.”

The cook, Allison, suddenly turned her head and looked at Elise with concern.

“Just appeared in front of his easel?” she asked with a frown.

“Actually, it was in front of a whole room of artists doing figure studies.”

The men in the room perked up their ears.

The younger man started to ask what that meant but Elise raised her hand to stop him.

“Yes, I was the figure,” said Elise.

“How did you get there?” interjected the cooker, Allison.

Elise looked around the room and did not know whether to continue talking or let all her frustrations spill out but the turmoil inside her made that choice.

“I don’t know!” she cried as she stood up.

Allison came to her and let her fall into her arms. She led Elise out to the balcony away from the others and the slightly older man took over cooking for others waiting to enter.

When they were alone outside Elise began to reveal all that she knew.

“One day I’m in Cape Cod making love to a man I’ve known all my life and the next day I’m in Greenwich Village making love to a woman I just met.”

“You may not believe it, Elise. But I’ve been there.”

“Cape Cod?”

“No, I haven’t been there. But I have found myself in places at other times I did not expect to be.”

“With your clothes off?” asked Elise.

“No. Not exactly,” Allison laughed. Then she brought Elise to a small chair on the balcony. “What year did this start for you?”

Elise was stunned.

“You know?”

Allison nodded.

“1976,” Elise replied. “I was about to act in several Summer stock shows with my friends.”

“You still will,” said Allison.

“You know that for sure?”

“You’ll return, when you return, to near the same time you left. That’s how it has happened for me and the man who makes it happen for us,” explained Allison.

“That man in there?”

“Yes, Kenneth, my husband. It happened to both of us the first time we let complete passion take us into a swirl of time travel. I ended up in a big Suffragist procession in Washington, DC, in 1913, and he ended up in a conversation with Teddy Roosevelt himself about his Bull Moose progressive party platform to respect women’s vote just a few months earlier. He’s using that for his Master’s history thesis at NYU. I’m working on my BA in English now and I hope to go further.”

“So, is this your real time?” asked Elise. “It sounds funny to ask it this way.”

“For those to whom it doesn’t happen, yes. But this, 1945, is our real time. It was 1943 when it first happened to us.”

“Why does it happen?”

“I don’t know. We don’t know. But I hope we can find out. You are the first other person I’ve met who also has had this happen,” said Allison.

“Is it magic?” asked Elise.

“Maybe, but why and how we haven’t figured out yet. I’m working on it in my studies.”

Elise took a deep breath and allowed her imagination to take over.

“You know what? I think I know you in the future, in my real time. Does anybody ever call you ‘Allie’?”

“Kenneth does. But he doesn't let me call him Kenny. Why?”

“Because the Allie and Kenny we know teach in Syracuse and have a house in Cape Cod that we stay in during the summer.”

Allison was delighted to hear this but wondered whether she should know about that. She stepped to the railing and envisioned that future. Then she turned to Elise and asked, “How old are this Allie and Kenny in your time?”

“In 1976? Uh, fifty something?”

“Aha! In 1976 I will be fifty-three. Kenneth will be fifty-six! Tell me, do they teach high school or college?”

“He's tenured at Syracuse University and she teaches both there and at a small Jesuit college on the East side of town called LeMoyne.”

Allison clinched her fists in joy.

“Are they you?” Elise continued. “You're both actors like we are. Or like we’re trying to be.”

“We? Who are the ‘we' you've referred to?”

“Three of us who grew up together. Me, Alana, and Jonah. Jonah made love to Alana and she disappeared. Then later he made love to me and I ended up here.”

“He pitched woo to you both?” Allison innocently asked.

“Pitched woo?” Elise stared at Allison with distaste. “We had intercourse with him. Both of us. Really passionate sex!”

“Is that what ‘make love' means in your time?”

“Doesn't it in yours?”

Allison laughed. “Afraid not. It just means someone is hoping to get the other one to fall in love. But it's interesting to see how terms change. I'm studying linguistics and semantics along with my literature coursework. Amazing that phrase change will occur during my lifetime.”

“A lot of things will change and occur during that time, not just words. But I’m not sure I should tell you any of them or it might mess up time itself,” said Elise.

“I'm not sure you should either” pointed out Allison.

“All I know is that I have lost the two people I most loved and I don't know if I will ever see either of them again.” Elise began to get shaky again.

Allison thought for a minute and then knelt next to her.

“Listen, Elise, when Kenneth and I ‘made love,’ as you say, for the first time, we both swirled away just as you did. But both of us were sent to the same city, Washington, DC, at nearly the same time. We were lucky to have just found each other accidentally when we both went to the Library of Congress to find research on what just happened to us.”

“Did you find out anything?”

“We found each other and stopped searching. Afterwards, whenever we end up time travelling again, we try to leave clues for each other to find ourselves again to make our way back home to real time.”

“Why do you keep doing it?”

“Because we love each other deeply. We keep touching each other. We don’t want to keep from reaching that ecstasy together, so we still risk it. We’re working on how to control it but we don’t know how yet.”

“What a curse this is. If I ever find Jonah again, I won’t let him touch me like he did.”

Allison’s skin blanched. “Did he force himself on you?”

“No, no. It was my fault. Both of us. We just fell into it. We were both so disturbed that Alana who we both loved dearly all our lives had disappeared a few days earlier when a passion swirl with him took her away.”

“But not him?”

“No,” Elise began to worry.

“Do you know if he stayed in his time when you got swept away?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there anymore.”

“Of course not,” said Allison. “He could be here and so could your friend Alana.”

“In New York?”

“Just like me and Kenneth whenever we swirl away in passion.”

Elise began to tear up. “Why am I here?” she asked the universe. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Now, now.” Allison patted her hand. “Don’t get carried away,”

“I have been carried away!” gushed Elise.

Allison realized she shouldn’t have said that.

Elise let it all out.

”Without clothes, without money, with nothing! I don’t know if I can get another job just standing there and thinking of nothing at a pin-up studio. I don’t have a place to live or know where I can find food. I have no idea how I even ended up here in this time and this place. And how did I end up doing something I never thought in a million years I would ever do with another woman?”

“The woman from last night?”

“Yes.”

“I think Kenneth knows who she is. Do you me to ask him to find her?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“But I liked it.” Elise said. “I loved it. It absorbed me. It changed me.”

She tried to stop sniffling and breathing hard, but it was not easy.

Allison took a moment to reach inside the kitchen door from the balcony to grab a napkin. She also looked in to see if all was okay inside at the kitchen table. Kenneth signaled he had in hand. Allison went back to Elise and handed her the napkin.

“Oh, don’t you worry, darling,” said Allison. “Kenneth and I will let you stay here as long as it takes to find either or both of your friends in New York.”

“In New York? With how many people. Seven million?”

“Closer to eight during wartime. But yeah. If your swirl was anything like ours, chances are good. We just need to get you a job where you see lots of people.”

“Grand Central, the Port Authority?”

“No. Those people are coming and going. You want to be where people who are stuck in New York need to be. Somewhere in the center of town where everyone goes once in a while.” She pondered. “Aha! I’ve got it!”

She danced a bit from delight at the idea.

Elise rose up from the chair. “Where does everyone go?” she asked.

“The Automat near Times Square. Everyone goes to the Automat.”

The sun shadows of morning eased away into the brightness of noon as the two new friends hugged each other and began to clean up after the Friday night party at the young Allie and Ken Turnbull’s place in Greenwich Village in 1945.

(Click here for Chapter Fourteen)

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes on Substack)

He awoke on the Central Park bench to the touch of a pickpocket’s hand rustling inside his rear pocket. He swiftly grabbed the hand and turned the intruder’s surprised face toward the ground and with his other hand lifted the thief’s fedora hat from the man’s balding scalp.

Jonah never kept his money in his back pocket, even when he had a wallet to keep it in. He was supersensitive to touch even when fully asleep.

And he was quick. His mind worked faster than most people, he had realized that when his favorite professor of Shakespeare at LeMoyne asked how it was that he, Jonah, could so often start a sentence and then end it, still grammatically, with an entirely different subject and expectation then when it began.

“I don’t know,” Jonah had told him, “I suppose I had new thoughts in the middle of talking and perhaps could have reacted to your facial expression as you were forming your question to me but I didn’t feel the need to waste the structure of a sentence when who knows where ideas come from.”

His professor, editor of a journal called Oral English, just smiled and went away to write a note as he frequently did after talking with Jonah.

This quickness of mental speed was constantly both a boon and a danger to Jonah. While it was useful while acting, especially at the times he had to improvise as had done just hours before in the radio studio, it could cause problems if he moved too quickly before others, such as driving.

At traffic lights he would drive forward as soon as the light changed. He’d look around and discover he was fifty yards ahead already before most cars in a side lane had started up. But anytime someone who drove their car across the intersection from left or right at the last second might still be in the “box.” Many a time he had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the crossing vehicle. He also irked his friends when they drove, and he would announce the light is green before they had reacted to it.

Should have been a drag racer he once thought, but he was never into cars so much and the drag racing atmosphere did not appeal to him at all.

The quickness between vision and brain recognition was most useful to him when he was at bat in baseball from high school through college. He could see a pitch curve or fall away with enough time to adjust his swing to hit more times than not. He rarely struck out, but many of the balls he hit found defenders’ gloves. He didn’t have quite enough power to hit the ball out of the park all that often, so, his college years on a baseball team were his last. His adolescent dream of becoming a tap dancing, singing, acting first baseman like a player in Gene Kelly’s baseball movie died as well.

But he could still act. And sing if he had to. Tap dancing, at the moment, however, was out without shoes to tap.

That was something the thief, with his head held down toward the ground, noticed when Jonah sat up to confront him. The carefully arranged discarded newspapers that Jonah had scrounged from trash barrels fell off to the ground.

“Hey, you got no shoes!” exclaimed the pickpocket. “You covered your feet with newspapers. Sorry, bud. If I had known I wouldn’t have tried. Let me up, will you? I got a crick in my neck.”

Jonah was torn by this response, but any thoughts of empathy passed quickly. He held the man in the position.

“You have shoes. What size are they?” Jonah demanded.

“Nine, nine!” the man cried desperately and coughed to show perhaps that he was under severe distress.

“Damn! I need eleven-and-a-half, or twelve. I can fit into a twelve just as well if I have thick socks.”

Jonah sighed and straightened the man up but held the fedora hat high in his other hand.

As the thief caught his breath while standing, Jonah placed the fedora over his own head.

“Ah, it fits,” he said. “What size is it?” He took it off again to turn it over and check for the size on the inside brim.

The thief frantically reached to get at the hat before Jonah could read what was concealed under the sweatband inside. To try to reach it he ended up tackling Jonah.

The two rolled over each other as they fell off the bench and the hat flew away in gusts of morning wind.

Each pushed against each other off the walkway and onto the grass to get to the hat that was rolling away from them.

From the tussle on the ground they got near enough for Jonah to grab the hat just before it fell into a pool of water, but he still held the man in a wrestling hold.

“Let me go,” the pickpocket cried. “Let me just get my hat and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Not yet. I saw what was in the hat and I want some,” commanded Jonah as he put the hat on his own head.

“You did?”

“I will have your payment for intruding on me,” said Jonah as he raised his body up to keep his head away from the thief. “Since I cannot use your shoes, I will have your hat.”

The thief suddenly got up to his knees and stood directly in front of Jonah as if he was a friend because a couple of policemen walked casually along the walkway near them.

Jonah stepped closer toward the pickpocket and put his arm around him to wave hello to the officers.

The officers regarded that gesture as something suspicious, however.

“Problem, gentleman?” one of the officers intoned.

“No, sir,” said the thief who then lifted the hat from Jonah’s head as he watched the officer turn away, apparently satisfied. He put it on his head.

Jonah quickly snatched the hat back and placed it on his head just a split second before the other officer turned toward them with a questioning look.

“Not a problem, officer,” said Jonah.

The two combatants pretended with friendly gestures that they were just enjoying the joys of a spring morning in Central Park until the officers decided they were not worth their bother.

“Clean up them newspapers before you leave,” one said before strolling on.

Once the police were long gone, the pickpocket and Jonah resumed their wrestling to get at the hat.

Jonah reached it and scrambled up with it. The pickpocket, tired of tussling, just sat down again on the bench among the newspaper scatterings. He picked up a page and aimlessly stared at a cartoon.

“Them guys. Willie and Joe at the front. Gets me every time,” he said. He showed the picture of Willie and Joe, famous, heartfelt portraits of World War Two draftees by Bill Maudlin.

“Yeah, I know,” said Jonah as he approached. “My folks had Maudlin’s book of his war cartoons on their shelf. I must have gone through them two dozen times when I was a kid.”

“When you were a kid? This war’s been going on only four years. How old are you?”

Jonah realized how much more careful he should be about anything to do with dates.

“Old enough to know better than to confuse you or me,” he said to the thief. “Say, look at those boots they’re wearing. Those are Endicott Johnson boots, you know.”

“These boots aren’t real. This is a cartoon, simpleton.”

“I know. I was just imagining.”

“You imagining boots because you don’t have shoes?! So, why don’t you have any shoes,” he asked calmly. “Someone steal them off you before I became around?”

Jonah realized that this interchange might be rational after all and he sat on the other end of the bench with the hat back on his head.

“I don’t have shoes because I came to town without them, and now I can’t even buy any without Ration stamps,” he admitted.

The pickpocket laughed with abandon.

“Is that all? Look here, Rube. I’ve got just what you need.”

“I know. I saw them in the sweat band.”

“You did?”

Jonah nodded.

“All right, how many do you need?”

“I think three, maybe four. I don’t know for sure what the going rate is today.”

“For shoes you just need three. Tell you what, I sell them for two bucks apiece, three for five dollars.”

“But I have the hat with them now. What would you pay to get all but three back?” Jonah offered.

“But they're mine. That’s my whole business stake in that hat. You stole them from me,” yelled the pickpocket.

Jonah just smiled. “I will charge you only three tokens for trying to rob me first — No, make that four. Interest, just in case.”

“You'd give me back the rest?”

“Certainly. Scout's honor.”

“Oh, you’re one of them, huh?”

“Actually, no. I never was. I thought that was what anyone might say in such a circumstance. I see a lot of movies.”

The pickpocket found that strange and got up to step away from what he feared was a madman.

As he stood up, Jonah quickly and secretly removed four ration stamps from the sweat band and placed them in his pocket. He put the hat back on top of his head.

Having missed that fast action, the pickpocket turned toward him again.

“Okay. But just three for the penalty for being caught. All right?”

“I accept,” said Jonah whose faced showed no deceit.

He took the hat from his head and handed it to the thief who rummaged along the sweat band and pulled out three Ration stamps. He gave them to Jonah as if he was parting from someone or something he dearly loved.

Jonah now had seven stamps. He swiftly placed them in his shirt pocket in complete innocence.

“Thank you so much,” he said. “We’re even enough.”

“Good,” said the pickpocket. “Shake?”

He offered his right hand and Jonah took hold of it to shake.

At which point the pickpocket slipped his left hand into Jonah’s shirt pocket.

But Jonah caught him again and stood up to throw the thief to the ground where he landed with a thud. Jonah took those Ration stamps out of the man’s flailing hand and stood over him.

“I understand the black market must be clandestine, but stealing from inside the clothing of your clients makes no sense at all.”

“You don’t know nothing about modern capitalism, do you, pal? What do think we’re fighting this war for?”

“I thought it was to fight off Nazism and dictatorship who want to take freedom and life away from civilized society.”

“Idealist. What are you a socialist? A commonist?”

“Oh, you’re one of those,” remarked Jonah with irony knowing the post-war McCarthy Era was coming.

The man urged his hand forward. Jonah helped the vanquished man to his feet, but carefully kept the man’s other hand away from either of them.

“Did you fight in this war?” Jonah asked and stood far apart from the other.

“A man has to diversify these days during a war they won’t let a guy fight in just because he has flat feet. I could have stolen the Nazis personal power right from under their tiny noses. Anytime, anywhere. I coulda been a damn master quartermaster contender, I could have.”

Jonah laughed. “That’s funny.”

“What is?” demanded the pickpocket.

“That line about being a contenda,” Jonah spoke with Marlon Brando's characterization.

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you. You’ll hear about it in a few years.”

“You’re weird. Where did you say you come from?”

“A galaxy far, far away,” replied Jonah with another laugh that the pickpocket obviously did not understand. “Sorry, I’m having a moment with movie lines dancing in my head.”

The pickpocket moved away from Jonah to the far end of the bench.

“So, you owe me for those three Ration stamps. Five bucks if you've got ‘em.”

“If I pay you I wouldn’t have money left to buy shoes. No deal. Where did you get them, anyway?”

“Just because I ain’t in the service doesn’t mean I don’t have my ins with the purveyors of goods and services within the ranks. War's just about winding down. Going to have set up new providers. Maybe go into some kind of new business with those guys.”

“I said, clean up those newspapers and put them in the trash,” said the police officer who just returned without the other.

Jonah and the pickpocket rushed into each other as they scrambled to gather up the disparate newspapers that were scattered on and near the bench.

Under the watchful eye of the cop they brought the pieces of paper together and shoved them into the nearby trash barrel. Jonah caught a byline he recognized.

“Ernie Pyle. I know that name. One of the war’s great correspondents,” he said as he read the date on the newspaper. “April 18, 1945.”

“You ain’t got time to read it,” charged the officer. “Get it in the trash and get out of here, you two.”

“Yes, sir,” Jonah smushed the newspaper into the top of trash. It wouldn’t go all the way in, so the pickpocket rushed over and helped him push it all the way in. He signaled to Jonah to take off.

“Maybe I’ll catch you again,” the thief whispered to Jonah.

“I’ll look for you,” Jonah nodded.

The officer gave them a loud harrumph.

“Yes, sir,” Jonah repeated and he started to run.

“Hey! You can’t run across these lawns without shoes!” yelled the policeman. “Where are your shoes?”

As he ran rapidly away, Jonah turned his head over his shoulder and shouted back, “I left them in the other world.”

The cop was in no condition to chase after him. He looked at the pickpocket who was still there.

The pickpocket made the gesture of circles around his ear lobe.

“Nuts, hmm,” the officer mused. “Somebody will catch up to him.”

“Damn!” cried the pickpocket as he counted Ration stamps inside the fedora. “He took even more!”

The officer just waved his baton a little to usher the fellow away as he and the pickpocket wandered off in different directions.

Meanwhile, several dozen citizens witnessed a shoeless man running at full speed past Central Park’s carriage ride horses and onto the length of upper Seventh Avenue down to West Forty-Second Street where he entered the big Endicott Johnson shoe store.

Jonah waved three Ration stamps at the saleswoman and sat to catch his breath on a seat for customers.

“Do they still have any Endwell style shoes,” he asked.

“Indeed, we do, sir."

(Click here for Chapter Thirteen)

(Click here for the rest of WordWrangler Writes on Substack)

Greenwich Village, bounded from the Hudson River West to East by 14^th Street, North to South by Broadway, and East to West by Houston and Clarkson Street to the river, was named after the British took over New York from the Dutch. Its Anglicized name merely meant “green district.”

When the pin-up drawer, Bruno, led the artist model he knew as Sandy up the stairs from the IRT subway at the Christopher Street – Sheridan Square stop he spread his arms outward to offer her the first view of the edge of Greenwich Village. She saw green in trees and tiny gardens along the angled street.

Though there were buildings on the streets there, they were decidedly smaller than the skyscrapers she had seen in the higher numbered streets around the Artists League of .New York

As they walked briefly along Christopher Street, she noticed that smaller blocks of angled streets had names rather than numbers. And she noticed that instead of people wearing suits and fedoras as she had seen uptown, there was a more casual appearance of the mostly youngish passersby who wore loose jackets and sweaters without headgear.

“I’ve heard about Greenwich Village a lot,” said Sandy/Elise, “but this is the first I’ve seen it.”

“There’s much more than this corner,” said Bruno. “Did you notice the nightclub as soon as we came out of the subway?”

“No,” answered Sandy/Elise.

“It’s called Café Society. Jazz and bebop. Huge crowds. They even let black singers and musicians perform there,” he whispered to Elise’s surprise. “And black people in the audience are welcome, too.”

“Good heavens, I forgot it was still like this in 1945,” Elise thought to herself.

She looked at Bruno with wonder, but realized that, unlike herself, he was only part of the era he was stuck in.

He made her feel better instantly. “We might go there and listen to some great bebop or jazz after I take you on a lovely walk through Washington Square Park,” he suggested.

“Ooh, I’ve been wanting to go there since I read that book by Henry James.”

“Haven’t we all? You’ll find there are more kinds of fascinating characters at Washington Square Park than those stuffed up Henry James’ folk hanging out there. The park is often called the heart of Greenwich Village even though it’s at the very East end. NYU is just on the other side.”

Elise was thrilled to have the chance to see Greenwich Village in its 1945 bohemian glory, before the Hippies, before the famous Stonewall riots she remembered. She thought that night what occurred right here on this street in 1969, painful as it was, helped gay people find their long path to freedom.

She began to muse on the likelihood that gay people must have flocked to the Village during the earliest bohemian days after World War One but were still secretly conscious of their status until then.

Then Bruno stopped abruptly.

“How do you feel about spaghetti? This place has been the best in the village for years.”

“Okay?”

Elise looked up at the sign above the door.

It read “Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn.”

“The guy’s name was actually Bonavia. Come on in,” Bruno said as he held the door open for her.

“A restaurant?” Elise/Sandy questioned. “Not just a bar?”

“They have wine and beer, too. But a really good restaurant.”

Elise/Sandy stepped in with eyes scanning for gays. She realized immediately they probably didn’t use that term yet. She allowed a waiter to show them to a table.

They had a fine Italian meal with wine, but throughout the time they were there Elise looked around and tried to interpret the status of every table that had only two men or just two women. There were a few but others had mixed couples and two had larger groups.

As Bruno and Elise/Sandy ate they began to have a fuller conversation than just guide and tourist. However, Elise’s thoughts were deeper than Bruno’s as he talked mostly of himself and his relation to art.

He didn’t just want to be a pin-up artist, he contended, but it paid the bills, he said. He really wanted to get enough of his private work into galleries and maybe get to where he could afford to set up his own studio.

While this was interesting enough for Elise to respond with encouraging nods and ‘uh hums,’ Elise’s mind was still trying to come to terms about how she ended up here out of her own time as a result of some sort of passion that had overtaken her from the arms of someone she cared deeply about. Someone she couldn’t at the moment name or envision.

This impromptu dinner date reminded her of the many, mostly useless attempts she went through with classmates at the university in Syracuse that her roommate Alana had set up for her. A couple of them almost went beyond those encounters but she did not find any of them worth pursuing. And there was that party with the ball team from the other college where both she and her roommate had spent the full night while someone’s parents were out of town. Why had they gone there?

Someone from that LeMoyne baseball team had invited them and drove them and two other Syracuse University coeds he had them scrape up for him for the event. He pulled up in the driveway at his friend’s home on Westcott Street and dropped off the car full of girls like they were a busload of floozies. Then he drove off and left them there to pair up with any members of the whole team. Why didn’t he stay?

He was their friend, she remembered. Why did he suddenly do that to us?

“Having a good time here?” asked Bruno to break her mood.

“Yes,” said Elise/Sandy not fully out of her reverie. “Actually, we enjoyed that adventure quite a lot.”

“Adventure?” queried Bruno.

Elise came to as Sandy. “Yes, Bruno. This is an adventure to me.” She then leaned over and touched his hand to turn his head. “What do you think about those two women over there? The way their eyes meet. Do they look like they are in love with each other but can’t show it anywhere?”

Bruno sighed. “It’s Greenwich Village. They can show it, just not to the uptight brigade.”

Elise/Sandy turned to watch another table with two men nearly kissing each other.

Bruno caught on. “Yes, them, too,”

He waved his hand to get the check which came quickly. He paid it. and rose to help Elise/Sandy to her feet.

“We can do dessert, elsewhere. Maybe get an ice cream treat. How about we walk off the meal and trek our way to Washington Square Park?”

“Is it far?”

“Naw. Five minutes maybe.”

“I doubt we can walk off a huge plate of spaghetti in five minutes.”

“Oh, we will. More walking once we get there. Do you have to be anywhere tomorrow morning?”

It just dawned on Elise that Bruno would likely be expecting to have her spend the night with him.

On the other hand, she realized she had nowhere to stay since she had suddenly just appeared out of her time to this time.

“No,” she said uneasily as she wondered how much she would allow to happen to her this night. At least she had reasoned already that Bruno was a nice enough guy who might be talked out of anything untoward.

She took his hand and allowed him to escort her escort her along Waverly Place.

The two had an easy stroll to the edge of Washington Square Park which abutted New York University.

The lawn, the trees, the bushes, were fully bright green under the setting April sun. There were young people, New York University students, on the lawn in various poses that reminded Elise of Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon painting. But they were all in 1940s casual clothing.

Elise/Sandy picked up bits of conversation as they passed each grouping. There were poets declaiming, and folk singers performing. There were men and women debating politics, art, sociology, the war, the weather, and literature.

She had never been to Europe yet, but Alana had, and she had told Elise how Europeans spent evenings in daily promenades which Americans did not tend to do because they mostly lived in unwalkable suburbs.

She recalled Alana particularly had missed her evening strolls in Italy where people would often get a gelato as part of their walk.

Bruno at that moment stopped at the Washington Square Arch in front of a pushcart vendor, one of several around the park, and bought an ice cream treat he called “the hokey pokey.”

It was delicious, but not truly ice cream, Elise thought.

“Let’s go on,” Bruno said as he moved them toward a side street.

She looked around and compared this scene in front of the University to the lively commercial street at Syracuse University called “M Street,” or Marshall Street, that housed the bars, college retail, and gathering places.

This was longer and filled with more shops and bars. It was called University Place, and Bruno brought them to a bar called Cedar Tavern.

Inside the small, gritty, and almost grubby place there was a long-curved mahogany bar with stools and a few chairs. It did not look at all pleasing to Elise. There were booths and tables along the other end.

Bruno, on the other hand, was excited to see two men arguing, almost coming to fisticuffs over art.

“Look! That’s Mark Rothko and another abstract expressionist. I think that’s Franz Kline. The place is full of artists. Don’t you feel the vibe as soon as you step in?”

Elise/Sandy nodded but the milieu of the place seemed just old and grubby.

They had a couple of beers among more arguments going on around them there and then they were suddenly invited to a later party “around the block” by a slightly slinky woman who had been keeping a sly eye on Elise for some time and had made her nervous by the attention.

She was mostly nervous because the woman's exotic movements around them somehow attracted an erotic urge inside Elise.

She must be a dancer, a jazz dancer, thought Elise guiltily.

Bruno seemed anxious to extend his evening there and so Elise followed him and the seductive woman out to the street and around the block.

When they heard the sounds of boogie swing coming out of a corner house with various collections of mixed and un-mixed couples along parts of the steps into it, the woman took a cigarette from one of the men. She inhaled it and offered it to Bruno who took a puff on it.

He, in turn, offered it to Elise/Sandy. “Ever had one of these? A reefer?”

Elise and many of her 1970s classmates had indeed experienced just an opportunity or two of pot. Sandy said to Bruno and the ever more alluring woman, “Sure, I'll take a toke.”

“A what?” asked both Bruno and the woman at the same time.

Elise, wondering whether this hit would be stronger or weaker in this era than those in her rare college puffs, decided this was no time to be coy. She laughed more loudly than usual for her style and took in a large inhalation and before she let it come out, she put her arms around both Bruno and the sexy woman to lead them into the house.

“Let's find out,” she exhaled as they joined the raucous party.

They spent the rest of the evening dancing to swing, jazz, and boogie-woogie with dedicated bohemians which included openly homosexual men and women among them. Several women danced together and then cut into straight couples, one with the male and one taking the female.

The woman who brought them to the party reeled with Elise until she grew tired enough to accept a twirl onto a lounging couch together.

Bruno seemed to be happy to continue to dance as he and his new partner engaged in a lively discussion of art as they moved around.

On the couch with her obvious lesbian partner running her hand along Elise's bare arm, Elise recalled she and her college roommate, Alana, had discussed, intellectually, about same sex experimentation. But it was only words and both were embarrassed to feel that any emotions could be involved. So, unlike that suggestion by Jonah, nothing ever came of it.

“Jonah!” she cried aloud as he and the moment of passion came clear.

“Who?” asked the woman nearly at her lips. “Someone you left behind, Sandy?”

“Way behind,” answered Elise. “And my name is Elise,” she said as she looked directly into the deep purple eyes of the woman she found stunning.

The only thing on Elise’s mind was the question of whether she would spend the rest of this April night in 1945 in the arms of Bruno or in these now seemingly delicious arms of this fascinating woman.

“What the Hell is your name, you devil?” she coyly asked her would-be first encounter.

(Click here for Chapter Twelve)

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes on Substack)

The Endicott Johnson Shoe Company was one of the most productive companies in the country during the early years of the Twentieth Century with its “Square Deal” version of industrial capitalism that employed upwards of thirty thousand employees who were given profit sharing home purchase programs and company provided recreational, cultural, and health facilities.

All this was done to promote employee loyalty to avoid strikes and tension between workers and employers in what some called paternalist capitalism. The effusive praise of the company’s founders that was found on statuary and schools in Endicott and Johnson City attest to that, particularly the poignant words for the Endicott clan who eventually bought out the Johnsons. Both towns, Endicott and Johnson City, which became part of the “Triple Cities” with their older neighbor, Binghamton, were founded by the company leaders.

That sort of nearly full employee benefit program success was what caused their newly created factory neighbor, the International Business Machines, to set up their employees with similar benefits when they began, though home purchase was not part of it. In 1931 the IBM Country Club in Endwell was established for employees and their families with a restaurant, two golf courses, two swimming pools, a gym for gymnastics and basketball, baseball fields, tennis courts, a bowling alley, and programs for children which included theatre performance in a ballroom which was also used for dinners and meetings. It was not a wealth-based country club, but membership was sold to each employee and family member for a dollar or less per year.

Jonah and Alana, as members throughout their childhood, enjoyed the IBM Country Club facilities, but Elise had to be invited by them to share any of it. It was closer to her Endwell home than the EJ Shoe Company’s EnJoie swimming pool and recreational park several miles to the west in Endicott. But that one, shaped, naturally, like the sole of a shoe, was always free and open to the public.

Those two companies at the edge of downtown Endicott benefited from both war and national social programs. When Social Security was introduced in the Great Depression there was a sudden need for millions of calculating machines. Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, had kept his employees working during those years and gave them stock instead of wages which were just above subsistence. During those bleak years the company just warehoused millions of calculating machines that just happened to be available to the government when needed as Social Security began in 1935. When many of those employees passed away much later, their descendants found shoeboxes full of early IBM stock that loyal employees had never cashed in.

The Endicott Johnson Shoe company made nearly all the shoes worn by soldiers and sailors in World War One and World War Two. By 1945, the company had specialized in boots for the war, many of which had rubber soles reconditioned from rubber tires. People who had more than five tires for their cars saw any extra tires confiscated for use to make those rubber soles.

Before the elevator in the CBS Radio Studio facility opened to let Jonah out, he asked the friendly elevator operator where he might find an EJ Shoe store in the area so that he might cover his bare feet.

“You gotta get socks to put on first,” the woman joked. “I know they have them there, too. Okay, the big EJ shoe store is down near the library with the two lions in front.”

Then she waved goodbye as she started to close the elevator doors.

Jonah ran back to hold the doors open.

“Uhm,” asked Jonah, somewhat sheepishly, “And in relation to here, where might I find that library?”

The woman seemed never to take her hand off the lever, but this time she did.

“Don’t you have any idea where you are?” she complained with hands in the air.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Hmpf! No socks, no shoes, no brains,” the woman spoke with a grimace. “How did you get here?”

Jonah held his body against the half open door but did not answer.

“I surely would have seen you when you came without shoes. How did you get to the studio floor?”

“Just dropped in, I suppose,” Jonah attempted to say nonchalantly.

His jest only caused the elevator operator to sigh with anguish.

“All right, magic fairy bumpkin. This building here is 49 East 52nd Street. You know how the streets are numbered here in the Big Apple?”

“Yeah. I know that much. Streets are numbered and avenues cross.”

“Except for down at start of the island. So,” she went on, “The New York Public Library is down on the first block of West 42nd street. Ten short blocks away. The EJ shoe store is on the next block west. Got it?”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

He turned to go through the lobby.

The elevator operator leaned out with final instructions.

“Outside turn right. Go to the corner. That’s Madison Avenue. Then turn left. Walk ten blocks. If you make a mistake and turn left outside the building and then right you’ll go down Fifth Avenue to the same 42nd Street. But if you do it with no shoes, they'll probably put you in the brig. Use Madison.”

Jonah heard that and waved behind his back as he neared the revolving door. But just then he bumped into two men entering the building. He nearly knocked down the white man, but that fellow was steadied by the other man who was with him, a man who was black and had a scratchy voice when he assured his companion of maintaining his balance.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” apologized Jonah. “Wait a minute. Do I know you? Both of you?”

“Well, I hope so,” said the white man. “That's what all this work is for.”

The two men entered the elevator and the operator greeted them warmly.

“Mr. Benny. Mr. Anderson.”

“Tilly, my dear, how are the shoes of yesteryear?” asked Jack Benny referring to her ancient looking Endwell shoes.

“They’re thirty-nine years old today,” she said to get both men laughing.

Jonah struck his head in recognition. “Rochester!”

He stepped back to the elevator hoping to shake their hands, but Tilly just leaned out briefly and said, “You will need a ration book to buy the shoes.”

And then the door closed in front of Jonah’s face.

“Oh my god, rationing!” he uttered to no one around. “It’s still World War Two.” He realized he had to find a place to get a ration book before he could go the shoe. “Phone book. Got to be one around here.”

He looked around and saw two phone boxes embedded in the wall with a chained phone book shelf between them with more than half a dozen thick books upon it. He rushed over to turn the Manhattan Yellow Pages one upwards on the shelf it hung from and leafed through the pages.

Is it going to be under ‘r’ for ration, or ‘g” for government, he wondered?

He ruffled through the pages, first for ‘ration’ and then for ‘government.’

Nothing found. He slammed that one down and lifted up the Manhattan White Pages.

The pages for government listings were ripped out.

Jonah had seen movie after movie in which characters did that and, though he always had enjoyed those desperate characters finding what they needed, he suddenly began a lifelong hatred of that selfish practice.

Another person, a woman, came into the CBS building so he asked her.

“Excuse me, do you know where I can get a ration book?”

She looked at his bare feet and ran out the door.

Jonah chased after her out to the sidewalk, and tried to apologize for his appearance, but it only caused several passersby to step away from him as he ran with his bare feet.

One of which hit a stone pebble and caused him to scream in pain.

The observers began to run from him, not just walk away,

He leaned against the outside of the building to hold his foot and check for damage. While doing so, new passersby came by unaware of him, except for one bearded fellow who handed him some coins and tipped his hat before he walked away.

Jonah put his foot down and hopped toward the man to explain that he was not a beggar.

As the man walked, Jonah explained, “Thank you. But I am not destitute. I just need to find the address of the place to get a ration book so I can buy some shoes.”

“Oh, you mean the Ration Board?”

“Board? Yes, indeed the Ration Board,” Jonah gratefully said. “I couldn’t find it in the phone book because some idi … some person ripped out the pages.”

The man laughed. “You wouldn’t find it in the phone book anyway. I went through that myself. You know what that listing is under?”

Jonah shook his head and handed back the man the coins.

“It’s under the Government section and you have to look for the Office of Price Administration and then War Ration Board beneath that.”

“Really?”

“Government efficiency. You know how that works.”

“In any era,” Jonah agreed. “I’ll find another phone book and see if the address is there.”

The man, who was rather enjoying this interchange, put his hand on Jonah’s shoulder.

“You don’t need a phone book. I’ll show you. Come this way.”

Jonah agreed and the two men walked West on 52nd Street, across Madison and Fifth Avenue, beyond two more avenues until they came to Broadway which cut across the grid pattern of New York’s numbered streets.

Along the way they talked of shoes, hometowns, and politics during wartime, but Jonah was careful not to bring up anything he knew about the years between World War Two and 1976. The man, whose hometown was Columbus, Ohio, was a professor of English who said he recently published a work on semantics, or ‘semiotics’ as he called it.

All of this unleashed a fascinating conversation for Jonah who loved words. By the time they reached Broadway, he had even forgotten that he was missing shoes.

“You should come to my evening class at the City College of New York. My name is Henry Partridge,” said the cheery and talkative academic.

“I’m Jonah Hooper. I am an actor. I will get to that class if I can find the time.”

“If you can find shoes,” laughed Professor Partridge. “Turn up Broadway here. You’ll find the Ration Board at the very end just before Columbus Circle. About six short blocks. In the Chrysler Building. There will probably be a line. Ta ta, my friend. I’m off the other way.”

Jonah wished him well and thought he would definitely find that class if he was to be stuck here in 1945. He walked up the upper part of Broadway happy that he had finally ‘made it to Broadway” although it was the part that was away from the theaters.

When he got to the Ration Board there was indeed a line. He stood at the end of it but loved to see the sign for shoes.

[The National WWII Museum. “Rationing” https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/rationing-during-wwii. ]

He talked with others before and after him in the line and he learned that stamps within the Ration Books were what was needed to buy shoes, clothing, and food. He was told it would take about three stamps for a pair of shoes.

Then he learned of the obvious thing he had not thought of before.

One needed to show identification and address to the War Price and Ration Board.

He stepped out of line and walked away in pure disconsolation. He saw the open space of Columbus Circle, and he sought a bench to plop down upon. In the late afternoon of an early April day in 1945 he saw that he was near the edge of the bright green Central Park.

He wondered where within that great expanse of trees and grass he would be able to find a bench on which to sleep the night as he had seen so many actors do in movies of the 1940s.

Just one block away at the same time, Bruno and Sandy, whose real name was Elise, stepped away from the Art Students League on their way to the subway to find Bohemian life in Greenwich Village.

Jonah was too wrapped up in his miseries and fantasies to recognize her.

Elise was too much Sandy to recognize him.

(Click here for Chapter Eleven)

(Click here for the rest of WordWrangler Writes on Substack)

Hey, It’s Our Birthday Today

[ ]

There’s something profound; there’s something weighty.

Today, your Wordwrangler just turned eighty!

This on our nation’s celebrated day

Of when it became the U. S. of A.

[ ]

We are quite proud to have lasted so long,

Though not exactly as wise nor as strong,

As others who have survived through life’s grind

Thence to be more useful, more fair, more kind.

[ ]

The nation or me, you ask of this post?

One of us may fall and give up the ghost.

The other may regroup beyond the boast

And turn it all around from coast to coast.

[ ]

I really do hope to savor this day.

I will say why in my favorite way:

This land is OUR land, not owned by a fool.

It’s time to think past the King of Misrule.

[ ]

Think of ourselves, our kids, our civic health.

Think what we owe each other, not to wealth,

Think what will sustain our national pride.

Think of the changes we now should decide.

[ ]

Happy birthday to the U. S. of A.

Happy birthday to a long-lasting me.

The best gift to give the nation and me?

March and VOTE for Social Democracy!

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes on Substack)

When Elise came out of the passion swirl, she was on her knees with white cloth below her and folded behind her.

She saw that she was still naked. She grabbed the nearest fold of cloth and covered herself in case there were prying eyes.

There were multiple groans and cries of contempt at her actions.

As she looked past the bright lights around her, she saw there were dozens of prying eyes. Each pair was behind an easel. They were the eyes of artists that surrounded Elise. Some wore smocks and some did not. They were all dressed in drab clothing under the smocks. Most seemed to wear extraordinarily high waisted trousers, some with suspenders.

There was a tall person who lifted his head up from eyes focused on an easel. He turned to Elise.

“Please do not move until we tell you. Remove the sheet, if you please, and resume your pose. You still have fifteen minutes to go with this session. Then you can have a break for five minutes.”

Was this a classroom? Or an open studio, Elise wondered?

“I’m sorry,” said Elise. “I’ve never modeled before. Not this way anyway.”

She still held the white cloth around herself.

The instructor walked toward her and stood near her with concern.

“Did you just discover you are afraid to pose in the nude?”

Elise wanted to say she wasn’t. Young people of the 1970s were definitely open-minded. After all, she thought, the Hippie musical Hair had been popular for many years with its famous all cast nudity at the end of Act One. And as an actress she knew she had to consider if nudity in a play or a movie was required she would have to consider if it fit the role and the situation.

But, here in front of so many eyes to which she appeared without understanding why, Elise somehow felt embarrassed.

She finally said, “Yes, I suppose so.”

“How then did you get here to a figure drawing class at the Artists League of New York then?” asked the instructor kindly.

Elise was unable to answer that.

“I don’t know. I was in a swirl of … I don’t know. I was swimming and then …”

The thought that she may just made love at the beach on Cape Cod occurred to her. But she said, “ I just appeared here.”

“From where?”

“Not here,” she answered coyly. “Where is this?”

“It’s 215 West 57^th Street in New York.”

“In New York?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Eleven o’clock in the morning.”

“I mean what year is it?’ Elise dared to ask.

The instructor stopped being concerned and raised his eyebrows in disbelief. He looked away to signal for an assistant to come by.

The assistant came over and the instructor whispered to her and made the motions of a person describing a mentally ill person. The instructor then turned again to Elise.

“I think maybe you will find a better modeling role down the hall. Please grab your robe and follow my assistant.”

Elise looked around. There was no robe.

“There’s no robe here,” said the assistant to the instructor.

“Then how did she end up here?” the instructor asked rhetorically. “Just take her away as is. Please. Send out another model.”

The assistant helped Elise to stand but kept her from taking the white cloth with her. She walked the naked woman to a side door which opened to a kind of changing room with other models who sat or stood in robes wearing various levels of street clothing and lingerie. There were robes and clothing pieces hung up on walls and hanging in and on lockers. Most of them, like the clothing of the artists in the studio were olive drab or dark brown.

The assistant asked one of models in the room to go into the studio to replace Elise. That experienced woman began to take her robe off at the door and strode freely into the studio where the instructor explained to his students the change of models.

Elise grabbed a robe that was hanging on a hook and put it on. Nobody seemed to care as such robes were provided for the models daily. The assistant, however, asked Elise where she left her clothes when she was here in the changing room before.

Elise flashed her blue eyes as if she was an innocent dweeb.

“Oh, I must have been drunk or something and they just dumped me here naked as a jaybird from that party all night.”

The assistant was not at all surprised. “A good time gal?” she said. “Okay, come with me.”

Elise felt much better in this persona. The assistant then took her down the hall to another studio.

Along the way, Elise noticed there was an open door to a changing room for male models as well. Some were preening, a few of them just played cards in shirt sleeves. A couple of them were in some kind of embrace until a third came over to shut the door.

The assistant kept pulling Elise along and then stopped at another studio door.

“Here are the cartoonists and pin-up sketchers whose work has to remain safe for the general public. Over here in the wardrobe room there are racks of costumes for models to wear for whatever month or event set up they’re working on. I don’t think anyone would notice if you walked out wearing one. But do return it the next day if you can.”

The assistant took Elise to the side room with the clothing racks and left her there with a wink and good wishes.

“Oh, thank you so much,” said Elise as she pawed over the choices left to her.

She selected a sunny beach outfit with a high waisted red shorts and a loose fitting nearly transparent blue blouse and tried it on in the bathroom adjacent. Before she could even find shoes from a another rack full of them, a hairdresser and aesthetician came into the wardrobe room.

They corralled her in her bare feet into the studio where she saw a large canvas that showed her that she was now within the time frame of World War Two. At the bottom of the drawing was the section of a plane, a World War Two bomber, with a cloud and flying planes above already painted at the easel.

They placed her in front of a dull sheet and began to work on her. Her hair was brushed and skillfully arranged with questions from the hairdresser and nods to and from the artist. The aesthetician applied makeup to her face, and when satisfied with various poses, the artist began to sketch her on the canvas.

The wardrobe mistress came by to raise the lower edges of the blouse to show off Elise’s midriff. It may have been a war poster or a plan for a pin-up drawing on a bomber, but it was about sex overall as all the pin-up posters were from time immemorial. But it was not full, nor even partially nude as the figure drawing class was, so Elise felt more content to be caught up in it.

After a few pose positions were found unsatisfactory the artist finally directed her to pose with one leg raised and her right arm resting backward on a stool which another assistant brought over. Elise kept touching her hair with her left arm, which the hairdresser sought to remove each time until the artist said, “No. I like it. Keep it there.”

Elise could not see how it was going turn out as the easel was away from her, and she could not maintain any parts of that particular pose for long. But the artist was kind and allowed her to focus on only limb at a time as he had already sketched out the whole figure.

When she could take breaks, the assistant brought in water and soft drinks to her and to the artist and they engaged in friendly but not specific conversation. By the mid-afternoon it was all done and Bruno, the artist, proudly showed his day’s work to this brand new model who said her name was Sandy.

“Like the color of my hair,” she told him.

Bruno laughed. “Sandy, I don’t know where you came from, but I hope I can convince you to become my number one model from now on.”

Elise was both pleased and frightened. She smiled and asked, “Will I be paid for it?”

“For every session, of course. You’ve already earned a day’s pay today,” Bruno explained. “I am signing this voucher which you can collect at the cashier’s office.”

Oh, good, she thought. At least I may have enough to rent a room for tonight at the YWCA.

“Thank you,” she said to Bruno when he handed the voucher. “I will be happy to model for you. Professionally, of course.”

“Oh, naturally,” Bruno replied, although his growing ardor for this model could not be hidden by his widening eager eyes.

“Well,” Elise suggested. “I have got to go now. Get into some street clothes and get to the cashier’s office.”

She backed away toward the wardrobe room and after she and Bruno exchanged glances of mutual interest, Elise managed to shut the door behind her. But the wardrobe mistress was still there ironing a bathing suit.

“Here, let me help you take these costume pieces off,” the woman addressed her as she moved to unhook the blouse from Elise.

Elise stepped sharply backward, though. “I apologize,” she said falsely. “I just don’t like somebody coming up on my back like that.”

“Oh, I understand, dearie. Had one of them encounters, did you?”

“You might say. I don’t like to talk about …” She was prepare to act out the part of the homebound Laura from the Glass Menagerie that she had played in high school until she could bore or send this woman away so she could steal some street clothes.

As she paced coyly as a shy put upon young woman she looked with each backward step through the racks of clothing to see what she might fit into.

The wardrobe mistress allowed whatever space the “poor young thing” needed and let Elise disappear behind any of the racks.

Fortunately, within a minute the assistant from the figure drawing class came in and told the wardrobe mistress that she was needed in the other studio. “They’re doing Grecian nudes now.”

“Oh, great. More flowing robes from their wardrobe then.” She turned to Elise who was behind a far rack. “Sorry, love, got to go. Just find the clothes you came in on,” the wardrobe mistress told her. “Just leave this costume on the table here. I’ll take care of them when I come back.”

Both she and the studio assistant left for the other studio. Elise found suitable attire to leave the building with and came out of the back of the clothing racks in a sleek black dress that might have been evening wear. But it fit.

She rummaged through the shoes available and found a smart set of high heels. She mumbled that she would bring them back as soon as she got paid enough to buy her own real clothes.

She decided she was going to find the way outside dressed like that, but as she opened the door of the wardrobe room to the hallway, she walked right into the artist, Bruno.

“Oof!” she said.

“Stunning,” he said.

“Were you waiting for me, Bruno?”

“Sandy, I’m sorry. I was just on the way out.”

She wasn’t sure. “I have to get to the cashier before they close. Is that on the first floor?:

“I’ll walk you there. It’s on the way out.”

So they walked through the Artists League of New York and continued talking as they had before. Elise got her ten dollars from the cashier under her new same as Sandy and she had no idea if that would pay for a room or not.

Bruno waited for her again. On the way out of the building, as Elise was struck with amazement how the Forties’ cars and cabs, looked, and the number of males with fedora hats walking by, Bruno asked his new model if she was doing anything that night.

“Um, no. Just crashing,” Elise remarked thinking only of finding a place to sleep.

“Crashing? Into what?” Bruno asked.

Oh, thought Elise. I bet they didn’t use that vernacular expression in those days, she thought to herself..

“Oh, nothing. Just a word they use for sleeping back home,” she told Bruno.

“Where’s thast?” he asked.

“Upstate. Don’t worry about it. I haven’t really got used to New York City ways yet.”

“So you’re new here?”

“You might say that.”

“So, you have nothing planned then?”

She wasn’t sure if she should answer, but he seemed fine and gentlemanly all afternoon.

“No,” she said.

“How about if I show you some real Bohemian nightlife down in Greenwich Village?”

Bohemians, of course! Elise was reminded of her history and sociological classes. Before there were Hippies, there were Bohemians.

“And then came the Beats,” she uttered unintentionally to Bruno.

“I beg your pardon?” Bruno asked not knowing what she meant.

“Just words,” Elise told him. She grabbed hold of his arm. “So, let’s go get into some Bohemian fun, shall we?”

(Click here for Chapter Ten)

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes on Substack)

He opened his eyes and saw a script in his hands. His mouth was moving and he realized he was vocalizing the words in front of him.

“Just inside the border of New Mexico he was waiting for me outside the Navajo reservation where I stopped to check my tires.”

Jonah looked above the script page. There was a very large old-style circular microphone on a stand just in front of him.

“I saw him in Albuquerque when I bought 20 gallons of gas. I was afraid to stop now.”

Suspenseful music cut in from a speaker overhead.

“I began to drive faster and faster. I was in a lunar landscape.”

There was a microphone next to him with a woman fussing with her script, another actor with a script in hand, and there a man in a suit who stood calmly away from them but also with a script in his hand.

“the great arid Mesa country of New Mexico.”

In front of him was a booth with a sound engineer at an audio table and a man next to him who signaled with his hand to increase intensity.”

“I drove through it with the indifference of a fly crawling over the face of the moon.”

Jonah suddenly realized he knew this script. He had performed it once before

“Now, he didn’t even wait for me to stop unless I drove at 85 miles an hour over those roads.”

It was The Hitchhiker, a radio play by Lucille Fletcher that had been performed on the Orson Welles Show several times in the 1940s. The narrator is on a long cross country drive and keeps running into the same hitchhiker many times after the driver thought he left him off miles ago.

Allie Turnbull had directed Jonah as part of an Oral Interpretation class Readers Theatre presentation at LeMoyne. She led other students in the same old time radio show with Fletcher's Sorry, Wrong Number, another suspenseful radio script that became a movie.

He realized that he was here in an actual 1940s radio studio. Besides the two microphones, there was a sound effects table in the corner with a guy with his hands on a bell and telephone before other paraphernalia in front of his own microphone.

Jonah knew the character of the narrator and the tension required as the long narration of the odd but compelling action built through the exciting text to its sudden impact of the climactic moment in the hands of the female actor to his right. She would need only a single line of four to thrill the audience with a stunning revelation.

Jonah followed the director’s indications and tried to speak in a lower, more textured tone reminiscent of Orson Welles who did it first. But he strove to heighten the suspense.

The tension of the piece built deeper and more strident. He felt the excitement of it in his veins as he continued. He knew that was needed to create the strength of the final twist to come. The director in the booth smiled with pleasure to hear and feel the crescendo coming as well.

More fear in the character, more strangeness happening around him to a point in which the character must explode unless …. unless he could phone long distance to someone at his home in New York to explain why he was on this fateful road trip.

Jonah got to that critical crescendo point and turned with his character’s final line to the woman at the microphone to his right with a fever pitch of desperation.

“Mother?”

And the radio actress said, “Oops. I lost my page.”

She stood there with a dumb look on her face. The director in the booth threw his script pages into the air in wild consternation.

Jonah immediately, as an actor always at the ready for something to go wrong, spoke quickly to keep the tension high in an ad lib. He began to get the same point of the twist climax across to the audience by suggesting his character would realize what the woman was supposed to say to him.

He didn’t know if he succeeded, but, as it turned out, he didn’t need to.

The man in a suit stepped immediately to his microphone and began a plea for war bonds. He had the clear polished voice of a professional announcer.

“So ends the Hitchhiker and to Orson Welles are considerable thanks for his playing of the title role.”

Jonah looked stunned as the announcer continued.

“You yourself personally can stop the Nazis from winning as you know you don’t have to give up your well-paid job to do it. You needn’t have to be a soldier a sailor or an Airman or a nurse or a war worker to ensure American victory. Just tell your boss to deduct ten cents from every dollar he pays you and lend it to Uncle Sam in your name. Sign up for this simple savings plan today and when Victory comes he will have war bonds in your pockets instead of Axis Bonds on your wrists.”

He stepped away with confidence in an undistracted demeanor.

The director stormed out of the booth and faced the female performer with anger.

“You had one line!” he screamed at her.

“Actually four,” she said casually. “She answers the phone and then …”

“The money line!” the director bellowed to cut her off. “Did you hear what he had to do to cover it?”

“I was still looking for my line,” she groused. “Twenty-seven minutes before I speak. How do you expect me to get through all of that without my mind wandering?”

The director just fumed and threw his hands in the air. He sought the sound effects table to lean against it. The sound effects guy stepped aside to allow him to do it.

Everyone, with the exception of the announcer who was not about to allow himself to be concerned, waited for what outburst might still come from the frustrated director. The other male actor, who had done two minor characters, including imitating a nasally female phone operator, edged away from the offending woman.

After bringing calmness upon himself, the director sighed heavily and stood up again.

“Thank God, this was rehearsal. Can you imagine what would happen if we were live?”

Jonah let out a large breath with relief. But he was still confused at being here.

“You’re fired,” said the director to the woman.

“You can’t. I’m union,” rejoined the woman.

“I don’t care, Failure to perform is reason enough.”

The woman threw her mixed-up script pages toward the director and stormed out.

“You’ll hear from my steward,” she said at the door to the hallway.

The director said, “He’ll hear from all of us. Right, boys?”

The other actors, the audio engineer, and the sound effects guy all nodded, so Jonah did, too.

The director turned to Jonah.

“Nice save, kid. Great job standing in for the big guy. I think you’ve got a great future here in radio.”

“Thanks,” said Jonah still a bit confused.

“Only there’s one thing I don’t understand,” questioned the director.

“Yes?”

“Do you speak better like that? Or is it just a rehearsal thing?”

“Excuse me?”

The director pointed downward.

“I’ve never seen anyone at the mike with no shoes before.”

Jonah looked at his bare feet with confused eyes.

He wanted to remember why, but he couldn't quite do so. So, he ad-libbed again.

“It reduces any chance of scuffing loudly with leather shoes,” he lied.

“Okay, works for me. But you ought not to audition that way for now until you get hired for a regular show. Then you probably can do whatever you like.”

The director looked around the studio. “Where are your shoes?”

Jonah quipped, “Must have left them at the barracks.”

The director looked concerned.

*You on leave, boy?”

“No. Just gave them up to the war effort.” He smiled obliquely. Then he came clean. “I guess I don't really know what happened.”

The director came up to him and pulled him aside. “Look, kid. I know you just got thrown in here at the last moment by that swarm of actors that blew through here this morning, but are you living on the street or under a bridge!”

Jonah didn't know how to respond.

The director put a hand in his own pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill.

“Here. Get yourself down to the Bowery and get yourself a pair of secondhand shoes. Then you come back here and I'll set you up to audition. You got talent. Do you do comedy?”

“Sure,” said Jonah as the director ushered him out the door to the hallway.

“Uhm,” said Jonah. “Which way is the Bowery?”

The director laughed. “Yep, that’s comedy all right. When you’re discharged ask for Murray at the desk. Tell them I sent for you., What’s your name, kid.”

Jonah began to answer but he wasn’t sure since the passion swirl sent him here.

“Uh, Jo …” He couldn’t quite finish it.

“Ah, Shoeless Joe!” The director laughed again. “We can make something out of that!”

Then he shut the door to the studio behind him. Jonah was left alone in the hallway.

He walked to the elevator as several people passed who commented to each other about his lack of shoes.

At the elevator when it opened, he was surprised to find a much older woman operating it. He hadn't experienced such a laborer in his life that he could remember.

“Floor?”

“Whatever gets me outside,” said Jonah.

“Lobby then.” The operator cranked the puller from what Jonah could see was the seventh floor. “So, you new here?” she asked with a Brooklyn articulation.

Jonah nodded.

“Actor or crew?”

“Actor,” Jonah was proud to say.

“Break a lip,” the woman offered with a chuckle.

“Uhm, thank you.” Jonah said with hesitation. “Is that like saying good luck?”

“Not a real radio actor, then,” the operator said with disdain. “Say, where are your shoes?”

“Well, that's quite a story.”

The elevator operator shot the puller all the way up and the elevator came to a sudden stop between the third and second floors.

“I got time. Tell me all,” she said as she turned in her stool to face him.

Jonah did not tell the woman anything of how he came to be here without shoes. Instead, he thought of his relation to his hometown which was built by one of the biggest shoe factories in the world, the Endicott Johnson Shoe Company, and if he could find one of their stores nearby, he hoped he had enough to purchase a pair.

“The two towns, Endicott and Johnson City upstate, are filled with Polish and Italian immigrants who came to be employed there under one of best employee square deals anywhere,” Jonah told the elevator operator. “The story goes that they would get off the boat and say, ‘Which way, EJ?’ So, I ask you the same. Which way EJ? Is there store here in New York City?”

The operator looked down at her own shoes and lifted one leg.

“You mean like this one? Had them since I started here twenty years ago. It's an EJ shoe. This model is called the Endwell.”

Jonah laughed out loud. “Yes! My suburb between Endicott and Johnson City is called Endwell. It was named after the shoe. Or the shoe was named after the town. I don't know which.”

“They make them for men, too. I know. Sitting here all day, I study shoes. Can figure out a man or woman's character by seeing the kind of shoes they got on.”

“Well, what can you tell about a man with no shoes?” Jonah asked with a smile.

“I figure he's either running away from something or running to catch up to something. Which one are you?”

“Maybe both,” Jonah sighed.

(Click here for Chapter Nine)

(Click here for the rest of Wordwrangler Writes on Substack)

Jonah got to his feet. He spoke wildly without realizing he was naked.

“We’ve got to get help. Elise has been swept out to sea!”

Allie looked placidly at him.

“Not out to sea, Jonah,” she said. “Out of time and place.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Here, put on your clothes,” said Ken as he offered Jonah the trousers and shirt he had brought from the bedroom.

“Thanks,” said Jonah who began to put on his garments.

“It’s your own fault, actually,” offered Ken as he stepped back with Allie.

Allie smiled at Ken but placed her hand on his arm to cause him to withdraw his line of explanation.

“Not your fault alone,” Allie said to Jonah. “It is the fault of the generations we belong to.”

“What do you mean?” Jonah pleaded as he turned back to look over the calm waters at the shore.

“You and Alana, you and Elise. You’re all related. Distantly, just as Ken and I are to each other and to you three. You could be tenth cousins, seventh, twelfth, whatever. Certainly, what has happened is not like what may occur between first or second cousins, some sort of diminution of mental ability in children.”

“We all have the same two ancestors. Way back,” Ken added quickly though his wife waved him down from any further outburst.

Jonah tucked his shirt into his pants.

Allie took over the conversation. “But what we all share is a sort of a magical strain that if … shall we say, gets combined through some sort of passion … may result in a loss of time and place position to one of you.”

Jonah did not think this respected woman was making sense. He stepped away and paced angrily on the sand, clothed but still in bare feet.

“It’s true,” Ken said as he strolled toward him. “A kind of family curse.”

Jonah shook off Ken’s proffered hand and paced further.

“We all have the same twelfth grandparents, the oldest couple on the Mayflower. A special couple with a strain of magic in both of them. But those magical genes did not stop the couple from dying from a fever on the boat in Plymouth Harbor before they would get a chance to land with the others,” Ken explained breathlessly to catch up to Jonah’s far strides.

“Oh, come on,” Jonah scoffed as he stopped and turned back toward Allie.

“Their grandchild, who was with them, was the first English colonial person to touch land here, though. On Plymouth Rock. And she and her mother, who came over on the next boat from the Puritans’ hideaway in Holland, carried on that magical strain which still lives in ten thousand descendants from them today,” Ken continued.

“But.” interjected Allie, “should any of us with that magical genetical makeup come together by chance, as we and you three have, there has and will be transcendental transformations of one kind or another.”

“Both Emerson and Thoreau are in our family. The name ‘transcendental’ came from them,” explained Ken.

“I thought that the transcendental writers were just a literary movement,” said Jonah.

“Yes, literary but also a personal understanding in which one finds any form of deity not just from established authoritative religions that constrains persons as much as connects them. But comes from understanding within one's self the pervasive connections of all nature and existence through time and space,” Allie spelled out. “Some of us are born with an ability to access our shared oversoul through passionate experience.”

“Oversoul!” complained Jonah. “I just graduated from a college that demanded I take religion and philosophy seriously, although I really can’t. I feel what’s inside me more than the weight of the words of heavy prose thinkers.”

“I know. That’s the point,” said Allie. “I teach in that open minded Jesuit institution, too. But they do not care what I think in my Oral Interpretation courses. I teach people how to bring feeling to words they speak as well as write. Your Shakespeare professor believed in expressing those iambic words as feelings, too, instead of just noting the intellectual surface of them.”

“I loved your courses,” Jonah shared. “And his, too.”

Ken thought an idea he had would be pertinent. “There’s a show this summer off the cape called The 1940s Radio Hour. Perhaps we could get you into it to use your oral interpretation skills you learned from Allie’s courses,” he said.

“I don’t need another audition at this point,” Jonah responded somewhat angrily. “I need to find out what happened to Alana and Elise!”

Allie pushed Ken away from Jonah and stepped in front of Jonah to face him directly.

“Alana and Elise are not lost,” she demanded as she held his face with both hands. “They will be back within these few actual moments after they will have had months or even years of experience in other places, other times. They may or may not find each other or you in any of those places, but your … our connection to them will never be lost.”

“My?” Jonah was aghast.

“Yes, you,” Allie said. “Because you are going after them now to find them and bring them back. We still have a round of Charades to get to tonight.”

Jonah stood flummoxed. “Here? Tonight? How in …”

Before he could finish his sentence, Allie brought his face close to hers, and she kissed him passionately right there in front of Ken who looked utterly pleased to see this.

Jonah was stunned and stood helplessly.

“We’ll see you in a couple of minutes,” Ken chuckled. “After a world of other lifetimes that you may or may not enjoy.”

Jonah, still reeling, tried to step back from Allie but couldn’t. His legs seemed stuck in the sand.

“He’s not moving,” Ken whispered to Allie.

“Hmm. More passion is needed, I think,” said Allie.

So, she kissed Jonah again with a longer, more intense pressure. She swooped him downward into a backwards bend and then twirled him down and around until a purple swirl overtook him.

The woosh of it all sent Jonah into the air and within a few seconds he vanished into nothingness.

Just like Alana and Elise did.

Allie and Ken came together and kissed each other lightly on the cheek. Ken made a move to indicate he wanted to go further.

“Not this time, darling,” Allie reminded Ken. “No time traveling for now until all three are back safe and sound.”

Ken picked up the empty bathing suit and trunks and followed as Allie swirled and skipped back toward their cottage as if nothing much had happened.

Ken grumbled along the way.

“Life as a witch,” he mumbled to himself. “A witch’s life is a bitch. Hah.”

He laughed heartily at himself and pranced into the seashore cottage.

(Click here for Chapter Eight)

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