Besides Bill and Seagle, there were other cousins. Barbara Foard and her sister Lucy, lived through the woods to the south, on Woodside Place in a pretty house, comfortable and modern, in contrast to Aunt Bell's more old fashioned house, and Aunt Lucy's Victorian mansion. The house had two story columns supporting the roof over the front porch, which faced Hibriten. Lucy was admired as a pianist. She played beautifully. We went to her recital one year. Barbara played well also, but Lucy was more advanced. Alma and Robey lived beside in another pillored house, and also John Bernhardt, Lynn's Brother, had a house on Woodside, the street given a family name. But let me get these people straight. Aunt Lucy's daughter, Lucy Ramseur Bernhardt, was Mom's age, and her favorite cousin on that side. And a lively, active and social cousin, at that, ususally described as "wild", by Nana and Boo. "Flapper" was also mentioned. Everybody had a nick-name, and hers was "Tootie." She married Fred Foard, an exec in the Furniture Company, in 1928. Alma was Aunt Bell's step-daughter, from Uncle Jake's first wife. She married Robie Courtney, also a Furniture Exec, in 1924. Their daughers, Seagie and Ginny, were already grown by the time of my visits. I don't remember them at all.The war was the main topic on people's mind. Aunt Bell subscribed to Life Magazine, and kept all the old issues upstairs, where I slept. I spent many hours looking at all those amazing pictures. The downtown movie house showed the war movies that were being made. Many were very disturbing to my young mind, and I remember the pain and suffering, the sadness of loss and separation, more than the actual fighting. Bombing of cities and the terror of the inhabitants. Film is so vivid to a child. What would it have been like to be in a house being bombed, rather than watching it from a comfortable chair in a dark, cool theater on a flat shiny screen 22 frames per minute??? My dreams of the ensnaring furnace abated to be replace by nightmares of being cought in an air raid, with no place to hide. One afternoon, Barbara, Bill, Seagle and I went to see a movie about submarine warfare. "The Enemy Below" may have been the one. Our ships were trying to destroy the murderous submarines of the enemy, Jap or Kraut, I can't remember. But afterwards, on Aunt Lucy's front lawn, we sent up an impromtu tent with Woots artist's easle, and a blanket. We rolled logs down the hill like the depth charges in the movie to destroy the unseen subs lurking below trying to torpedo our vessel. I was the lowest man in their pecking order, and was just barely able to get in the tent, where Barbara and Bill were in firm charge, and cuddling a bit.
Woots, by the way, was Isabel Fontaine Bernhardt, Aunt Lucy's sixth child, third daughter, and unmarried. She was a bit simpler than the rest, and a great companion and favorite of the next generation. She was a tallented artist, when she put her mind to it. Her sense of space and color were dead on. It was a pity she did not pursue her tallent. The only works left are some domestic scenes and several paintings of the "The Old Mansion", a version of which she painted for any family member that wanted one. I have my Grandmother's. There was some titter about her entertaining a beaux, that summer. Aunt Bell and Boo speculated about whether it was appropriate, if he was from the "right" family, and all, but nothing ever came of it. I am not sure any candidate was ever introduced to the family. Woots remained unmarried, and I believe, virginal, as I am pretty sure Boo was. She remained faithful companion to her mother as long as she lived, just as Aunt Willie, my saintly Boo. Love was something highly prized by that virginal spirit, though.
One movie we saw that summer, had an ill effect on me. "Swiss Family Robinson". That story of the resourceful family stranded on a tropical Island, I knew well. Boo had read it to me. Twice. And the movie had the audacity to change the story!!! They added a scene in which the young son chases a butterfly into a cave, runs into these impossibly elaborate spider webs. While trying to extricate the butterfly, a spider of horrible proportions, similar to a tarrantula bites the boy, and he almost dies. That scene was so graphic, photographed for terror and pathos, it initiated a terrible case of arachniphobia in my 8 year old mind. I stopped running thru the woods to Bill and Seagles for fear of the spider webs strung out over the trail. I would walk carefully with a stick, to clear the cobwebs out of the way. It took a long time to overcome this fear. I decided they should leave stories alone: if they make a movie of a book, why change it? The book was the way the story should be told, I thought then. This has set up a life time urge to read the book first, then see the film.Other movies I remember seeing at that theater were the latest Tarzan with the handsomely muscled Johnny Weissmuller, olympic swimmer, and so scantily clad that Boo would not encourage a viewing, and Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotton. A thriller that scared me almost as much as the spider in Swiss Family. I think Bergman got an oscar for her performance. This was just before she created a scandal by having an adulterous affair with Roberto Rossolini while filming "Stromboli", and I learned what adultry really was. Before, it was one of those commandments I had to memorize, that set of rules that are just words to the innocence of childhood. I asked Daddy what all the fuss was about. Ingrid Bergman, the beautiful Sister who played fast and loose in the habit to Bing Crosby's dapper Irish priest in Bells of St. Mary's, and now they were about to release her portrayal of Joan of Arc. I received a morality lesson from Dad, in his Faulknerian phrasiology, about a married woman, leaving her husband on the American shores, and taking up with a brilliant, but never-the-less Italian, film director, and becoming pregnant during the long filming on the terrible volcanic island of Stromboli. Those Italians! Always erupting. Just like their volcanos. And just like the smoldering mountains, the results were destructive and fertilizing at the same time. The grainy realism of all that black and white footage. Sweaty closeups. Dirty refugees. Boy, what little post-war verite got to rural North Carolina in those days must have been powerful, because in those pre-television days, all we got were clips on the Paramount or Pathe news reels, shown before the cartoons at all movies then. Why did they stop doing that? I would much rather see them now than so many spoiler trailers, most pretty awful, for future releases. Poor Ingrid. Joan of Arc was boycotted by outraged Baptists and others including Boo, I guess. But I saw it and cried. It was sooooo beautiful. Soooo sad. That exquisite woman, no make up, well, not much, in the suit of mail. That tragic execution in closeup, the cruel flames lapping.
Another film Seagle and I saw at that theater, another summer, was one of those holiday in Mexico or Capri, or Summer of Love with Powell and Debbie Reynolds types. Seagle was always singing. He was the most out-going, happy, person I had ever met. After a movie, we would stay up half the night listening to the cicadas in the huge oaks along Hibriten Street, and re-playing scenes of the movie, or singing endless choruses of "Lay that pistol down" His raspy delivery of "Drinking beer in a cabaret/ and was I having fun?/ Until one night she caught me right,/ and now I'm on the run."
Lay that pistol down, Babe,One movie we decided to pass on. Aunt Bell had just called the theater, and was told the main feature was "Diarhhea of the Chamber Maid". Much merriment ensued. Later I recognized the world of nineteenth century novels in the lives and thoughts of my Aunts. Louisa May Alcott was their favorite writer. Little Woman, their favorite book. Each of those girls were created with reference to the four Richmond girls. The parallel was unavoidable. The sentiments were not too far from an older lady scribbler, Jane Austin. The trials and grubby reality of Dickens was appreciated, but not empathetically embraced. The bloody novels of Walter Scott were not read. Nor the Bronte's. I discovered "Wuthering Heights" later, as it was considered too disturbing to be read to young people. English and American women surely left their mark on literature in that century.
Lay that pistol down!
Till that night, she caught me right,
and now I'm on the run.
Next: Aunt Lucy's way.