A Trip Through the WayBack Machine

 

It started with a concert – the World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra.

 

I’d always loved Big Band music and jumped at the opportunity to hear the orchestra perform in Madison. Along with the wonderful sounds of the ‘30s and ‘40s, the concert triggered something in me akin to a WayBack Machine.

Add to that, I listened to Rachel Maddow’s podcast, Ultra, which details the Nazi influence in the US during the same time. Several organizations located throughout the country recruited and armed large numbers of conservatives, anti-Semites, white supremacists, and those on the religious right to gain social, and more frighteningly, political influence.

This in turn led to further reading – "The Nazis of Copley Square," "Hitler’s American Friends," and "Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America." I pulled out a thick history book, and was amazed that barely a page was devoted to the Nazi influence in the US prior to its entry into World War II. It’s a time in US history that was vastly under-reported – even buried – especially once the country was immersed fully into World War II and the horrors of Hitler became apparent.

 

The contrast between the beautiful music from that era – and the poignancy that Glenn Miller lost his life in a plane crash serving his country (another good read, "Glenn Miller Declassified") – and the dark underbelly of what was happening behind the scenes fascinates me to no end.  

 

My nostalgia was compounded during a trip to Old Saybrook to visit a new cat café. I lived in Old Saybrook as a child until 1955 and decided to take a drive around the area. First and foremost I was amazing that so little along the main streets had changed. Then I drove out to Boston Post Road, to the house where I had lived. The beauty salon I remembered from a number of years earlier was still there. I pulled in the driveway to the parking lot – the red shingled garage and chicken coops were gone, of course.

The entrance was along the driveway on the side with a hand-written sign on the door: Valerie will be back at 3:15. I paused for a minute and turned to go down the stairs when a car pulled in. It was Valerie and she said she had run home to let out her dog.

 

She’s close to my age with stylish white hair. She let me in and I explained who I was. She showed me around. Of course the house was nothing like I remembered it. Her salon, with its richly painted walls, took up the first floor, which has once been divided between our apartment and the Sparagos, an older Italian couple. She said there were two apartments upstairs. She explained that she had owned the house for 38 years – it had been built in 1830– and described the process she went through in buying it; it was now for sale though she said she was having second thoughts.

Given that it was 70 years since I lived there, much had changed – the fragrance of garlic and olive oil from the Sparagos (something I realized years later when I started cooking), the floral wallpaper in the living room in the front of the house, the aforementioned red asphalt shingled garage and chicken coops where “Old Man” Sparago sat in his chair and smoked and ate green apples (leading to a bout with the “gollywobbles”); I learned to tie my shoes on the hill in front of that garage and had an encounter with red ants. It was all level now with a parking lot (for 14 cars, according to the real estate listing) and various commercial detritus beyond that. 

 

An old Quonset hut at the adjacent lot was also gone; it had seen better days even when we lived there. 

 

 

However, latticework, which had framed a photo of my mother and me, remained.

 

While I was chatting away with Valerie, I mused that many family photos had been taken by the well, a square stone relic. “Oh, it’s still there,” she said, pointing out the window. I was floored. It was there, indeed, very close to the driveway of the adjoining gas station.

I’m pretty sure the previous occupants of the house were not familiar with the extent of the Nazi influence in the US prior to the war. But one can be sure that the tunes of Glenn Miller and the Big Bands echoed throughout the rooms.

 

The way that music has been echoing through my mind.