Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i Reminisce Extra

ST. PATRICK’S DAY Aside from corned beef and cabbage (rarely eaten in Ireland), how do you observe the holiday? “My aunt used to dye her food green.” DEBORA PRICE “Irish soda bread. Yummy!” JEAN ROUTH “I have to watch The Quiet Man (1952), even if no one else watches with me.” RANDALL BERG “My daughter used to do Irish dancing, so she’d dance around the kitchen while I made pancakes.” SONIA CLAUZEL Join the conversation:  FACEBOOK.COM/REMINISCEMAGAZINE…

You write, we read. Sometimes you send suggestions for doing things better. And sometimes, your letters just light us up: “I may be only 27, but I have loved your magazine for years. I have fond memories of doing crossword puzzles with my mom while I waited for the school bus.” —Calliope Luedeker, Flagstaff, AZ “Because of your magazine, I have met such wonderful people to reminisce with about the good old days.” —Patricia Vivardo, Cary, IL “I can’t find the best words to thank you for using my story. You really made my day.” —Lowell Collins, Umatilla, FL…

~ ACADEMY AWARDS ~ OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION You Can’t Take It with You Columbia BEST ACTOR Spencer Tracy, Boys Town BEST ACTRESS Bette Davis, Jezebel SPECIAL AWARD Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs One statue and seven miniatures presented to Walt Disney ~ SPORTS ~ MASTERS GOLF TOURNAMENT Ralph Guldahl KENTUCKY DERBY Johnstown INDIANAPOLIS 500 Wilbur Shaw WORLD SERIES New York Yankees over Cincinnati Reds (4-0) NFL CHAMPIONSHIP Green Bay Packers beat New York Giants, 27-0 59TH WIMBLEDON CHAMPIONSHIPS Men’s Singles: Bobby Riggs, U.S. Women’s Singles: Alice Marble, U.S. Men’s Doubles: Elwood Cooke and Bobby Riggs, U.S. Women’s Doubles: Sarah Fabyan and Alice Marble, U.S. Mixed Doubles: Bobby Riggs and Alice Marble, U.S. ~ PULITZER PRIZE/NOVEL ~ The Yearling Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings…

Do you believe in love at first sight? At one time, I didn’t think it was possible, but my wife proved me wrong. Let’s turn the clock back to June 1963, when I was in the service and arrived at the Savanna Army Depot outside of Savanna, Illinois, along the upper Mississippi River. I had just spent a month on leave in Chicago, where my mother had died that May. Sadly, I had not seen my mother for about three years because I had been stationed in Verdun, France, for a few years and in Germany before that. The Army gave me a compassionate reassignment to the Savanna depot, and after getting my mother’s affairs in order, I went to my new duty station. I spent my first day on…

After family members immigrate to a new country, it’s easy to lose track of them. Back in the homeland, many relatives still want to know what became of those who sailed to new shores. Where did they settle? Did they have a family? And even, did they survive the trip? Later generations may find that new connections come with language barriers. Here are some tips for coping. For information about the immigration process: wiki.rootsweb.com/wiki/index.php/Overview_of_ Immigration_Research For translations of common words used in genealogy: familysearch.org/wiki/en/Genealogical_Word_Lists Need a translator? Ask for help from a local high school or college student who is studying a foreign language. Use translate.google.com for reading and translating letters and information. PEGGY CLEMENS LAURITZEN, an accredited genealogist, writes and lectures about family history. Visit: misspeggy55.weebly.com…

During World War II, I was an armorer with the 445th bomb group, Eighth Air Force, stationed in Tibenham, England. I was responsible for loading the bomb bays and gun turrets of B-24s. One of the planes I was assigned to was Nine Yanks and a Jerk under the command of Jimmy Stewart, the movie star who’d put his career on hold to enlist when war broke out. You wouldn’t know an Academy Award winner was in our midst: Capt. Stewart was all GI. He didn’t fly easy missions. The men he commanded had a lot of respect for him. One day, 40 bombers left Tibenham bound for their target, a German supply depot in France. What the pilots didn’t know was that their promised return escort of P-51 fighters…

1941 PATROLMAN’S FAVORITE This spot details how Beech-Nut won a blind taste test involving 269 police officers in 15 cities. In the 1970s, Trident gum would take the concept that the majority rules to new heights with its “four out of five dentists surveyed” campaign. 1951 QUICK PICK-ME-UP Bubble gum had been popular with kids since about 1930, but mint gum was seen as an adult product. So a Wrigley’s Spearmint ad featuring children is unusual—until we realize that it ran in Family Circle and that its chief target is the busy mom eager for a “fine little lift.” 1947 PACKED WITH GLAMOUR Big makers like Wrigley and Beech-Nut saw their dominance of the so-called “nickel gum” trade fall with wartime shortages of sugar and other…

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WHERE WERE YOU? Unforgettable events such as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon remain forever etched in our minds. Our series starts with the moon landing, so tell us where you were when it occurred. Label your story “Where Were You?” PORTABLE MUSIC Long before boomboxes, Walkmans or iPods played, kids slipped a transistor radio into a pocket to kick out the jams. Were you a fan? Did you upgrade as music players improved? Where did your music take you? Label your story “Portable Music.” CHILDHOOD AWARDS Did blue ribbons adorn your bedroom walls? Did trophies fill the shelves? Whether you excelled at science fairs, chess club, sports or something else, we want to hear from you. Share your flair. Label your story “Childhood Awards.” SUNDAY FUNNIES…

The song “Over the Rainbow” was in big trouble. The pivotal tune in MGM’s forthcoming 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz was on the chopping block, as were several other scenes. The reason? The film ran nearly two hours—half an hour longer than the traditional 90 minutes—and studio executives demanded some trimming. The song was the creation of composer Harold Arlen and lyricist Yip Harburg. Harburg boldly denounced MGM’s power people as “ignorant jerks,” knowing that without “Rainbow,” the movie version of L. Frank Baum’s classic would make little sense. It is Judy Garland’s bittersweet ballad of hope and yearning that, at five minutes into the movie, helps her character Dorothy build a sense of wonder as the song’s storyline unfolds. But studio head Louis B. Mayer declared that the…

WHEN I STARTED rifling through my mom’s old recipe box while looking for a Christmas candy recipe, I was surprised at what I found. She kept newspaper clippings and typed and handwritten cards filed alongside wedding pictures, slides and a receipt for the new well her parents had drilled in 1950. The recipes ranged from pickled fish to homemade Play-Doh. Venison seemed to be a popular dish. Some of the recipes had no titles, but one look at the ingredients and I knew I would not be trying any of them. I never found the candy recipe for Mom’s Divinity (my grandmother’s recipe), but I decided to keep everything in the box. Just looking through the cards makes me remember Mom and some of the dishes she would try. I…

Open from 1917 until 2000, the 13,062-acre Savanna Army Depot, located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River in western Illinois, was used for military munitions testing and storage. After the Army closed the facility, the land was divided among state and federal conservation agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers, and a local redevelopment authority. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 9,857-acre parcel became the Lost Mound Unit of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge. The refuge is home to many state- and federally listed threatened and endangered plant and animal species. No longer endangered or threatened, bald eagles are found here, including nesting pairs. A rookery of more than 200 great blue heron nests is located on the river bottomlands. At 70 feet high and…

Batting for the Marines by BILL RAUN STATEN ISLAND, NY ON FEB. 16, 1953, I WAS A corporal in the 398th anti-aircraft automatic weapons battalion. We defended K-55 (now Osan Air Base), the big F-86 Sabre jet base near Osan, South Korea. I was coming off duty at the communications shed when a signal came over that Boston Red Sox superstar Ted Williams had just crash-landed his Marine Corps F9F Panther jet at the K-13 base near Suwon, about 15 minutes away. Ted had been one of my heroes since the day in 1941 when he’d handed me a baseball at New York’s Yankee Stadium. I was 9 at the time. Little did I know that 12 years later, both he and I would be serving in a war…

Springtime is probably my favorite time of year. Deciding what flowers and vegetables to plant—and which to grow in the ground or in pots on the deck—is my kind of anticipation. One problem: I currently envision a row of hollyhocks right where my husband was planning to install a bed of asparagus. What’s a couple to do? Anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship knows the answer to this one—compromise. Many of this issue’s stories involve skillful people using their wits to achieve a successful outcome. Paul Mayer, for one, was in the service in Illinois when he met the woman of his dreams. But when he was transferred to Germany after they married, Paul lobbied for his wife and child to join him rather than leave them behind. Read…

Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig played first base for the New York Yankees from 1923 to ’39. On May 2, 1939, after playing in 2,130 consecutive games, he took himself out of the lineup because of muscle weakness caused by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). What else do you know about the legend? 1 In which two years was Gehrig named the American League’s most valuable player? 2 Gehrig was the first American League player to do what in a single game? 3 In what year did Gehrig win baseball’s Triple Crown with a .363 average, 49 homers and 165 RBIs? 4 This nickname honored Gehrig’s strength, endurance, and ability to play through pain. 5 Gehrig’s accomplishments were often overshadowed by what two fellow Yankees who batted before him? 6 When…

As juniors at Lane Tech High School in Chicago, Illinois, in 1958, my friend Joe Danford and I were huge movie fans and shot our own 8 mm films, hoping one day to get into the business. So when Alfred Hitchcock arrived in Chicago to shoot scenes for North by Northwest, Joe and I cut school and went down to the LaSalle Street Station to watch him at work. The station was packed with people trying to get a glimpse of Hitchcock or any of the movie’s three stars: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. There was also a tall actor with dark hair who I thought was Cary Grant’s stand-in. Later, when I saw the finished movie, I realized it was Martin Landau, who played one of…

Comedian George Carlin joined the Air Force in 1954 and trained as a radar technician. Though his time in the service wasn’t exactly stellar—he was court-martialed three times—it did give him one of his most famous bits, in which he complained of shell shock being renamed post-traumatic stress disorder: “The pain is completely buried under jargon.” Tough-guy actor Steve McQueen joined the Marines in 1947, where he had difficulty restraining his rebellious nature. At one point, he spent 41 days in the brig. But he wound up a hero when he saved five of his fellow Marines from drowning during an Arctic training exercise that went horribly wrong. The renowned Humphrey Bogart served in the Navy in 1918 near the end of World War I. After his honorable discharge, he…

The zany Some Like It Hot (1959) was an unlikely hit about cross-dressing jazz musicians on the run from gangsters. It was legendary filmmaker Billy Wilder’s masterpiece. He was also known for edgy thrillers ( Double Indemnity , 1944), charming romances ( Sabrina , 1954) and rapid-fire comedy ( The Seven Year Itch , 1955). Set during Prohibition and filmed in black-and-white, it’s a sendup of gangster flicks. Bad guy Spats Colombo is played by George Raft, who acted in a string of gangster dramas in the ’30s and ’40s. At a Hollywood party, Wilder asked Tony Curtis to star as one of the madcap musicians, with the explanation, “You’re the handsomest kid in this town. Who else am I…

DID YOU KNOW THAT corned beef and cabbage is not served in Ireland as a traditional dish on March 17? So how and where did this food custom start? Cattle in Ireland were costly and used primarily in the field or for their milk. Salted pork and bacon were the mainstays of an Irish diet. Meat was preserved with corns, salt crystals the size of corn kernels. After the British conquered Ireland, they turned the country into an exporter of preserved beef. The Brits called the new product corned beef. When the Irish arrived in the U.S. after the Great Famine in the mid-19th century, they discovered kosher corned beef—similar to the preserved meat they ate in Ireland. Homesick Irish immigrants in the U.S. transformed St. Patrick’s Day into their…

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