September
1, 1943. A date which will live in...oops, wrong speech.... _
My
parents, Ann and Wes, met when my Grandad was appointed pastor of
Austin's Central Methodist Church, then located across the street
from the capitol building and since torn down to make way for the
state supreme court building. Central was a Swedish congregation, and
in that era of entrenched cultural segregation, the appointment was
unacceptable to some of Central’s parishioners, who were aghast to
have a pastor who was not only of German extraction, but one who had
the temerity to preach to them in English! "Dot Yerman l"
they'd say, "doesn't belong here!" At one point, however, a
more open—minded member of the church chided the others for their
prejudice, telling them, "You vouldn't be satisfied vith Yesus
Christ himself!"
Now,
among the accepting members of the church were the the Brogrens, who
had been active in the Central for four generations. Ann Brogren and
Wes Schulze's paths crossed at church, but as Wes was still attending
college in San Antonio, they didn't become acquainted until he
transferred to the University of Texas. Though Wes was a hot-shot
junior and Ann a lowly freshman, somehow they ended up in an
economics class together. According to Ann, one of them made an A in
the class, and one made a B. But I can't I for the life of me find
out who made what.
After
being graduated from UT, Wes went on to Perkins School of Theology at
SMU, and he hitchhiked from Dallas to Austin as often as possible. No
doubt he was an attentive son, but these trips may have had an
ulterior motive. The young lovebirds got engaged, and when Wes
finished his studies at Perkins, he pressed Ann to set the soonest
possible date for marriage. Just as Supreme Allied Commander General
Eisenhower would base his choice of the date for the Normandy
invasion the next summer on the weather——even on a good day, the
English Channel is rough, windy and cold—Serene Bride—to—be Ann
held out for sometime after August, the weather of whose central
Texas days is NOT among the subjects touched upon in travel PR
campaigns. Wes was convinced to accept a date on which the blazing
Texas heat of August would be but a hazy memory-—September 1.
In
the summer of '43, the whole world was embroiled in the second War to
End All Wars. It was the burden of those on the home front to deal
with constant shortages of some goods and rationing of others. With
the help of his dad, Wes managed to get his hands on a '38 Chevy
coupe, the carriage in which he planned to carry off his new bride.
Sadly, the car turned out to be what is commonly referred to as a
lemon. It acquired the appellation Louise, the name of a neighbor who
was constantly ailing.
Now,
you couldn't have a wedding without cake, and cake requires sugar.
Apparently you couldn't have a war without sugar either, so it was
rationed. Perhaps sugar is the secret ingredient in that perennial
foxhole favorite, creamed chipped beef on toast, known to its
connoisseurs by its military acronym SOS. As Napoleon said, an army
marches on its stomach, and many a veteran will tell you that after a
serving of SOS, one does indeed feel as though he has spent the day
marching on his stomach.
But
I digress. By pooling their meagre resources, friends and family
scraped together enough sugar ration coupons to make it possible to
have a wedding cake and punch. Wes was even presented a precious gas
ration stamp by his future father-in—law. This would enable the
couple to fuel up Louise for their honeymoon trip. In order to
utilize the stamp, however, Wes had to employ the traitorous
subterfuge of carefully gluing its edge into a blank space from which
another stamp had already been torn. It is fortunate he never had to
face a senate confirmation hearing; this heinous affront would no
doubt be revealed and his career end in ignominy and disgrace. This
criminal act was so skillfully executed that the gas station
attendant tore the stamp out without question. The law had specified
that loose stamps were unacceptable, which may have been the source
of the byword, "Loose stamps sink ships."
The
wedding ceremony was, naturally, performed by my Granddad. Wes had
requested—-nay, begged——"Please, Dad, don‘t preach a
sermon. Just do the ritual and get it over with." But this plea
had the same effect as a requesting the tides not to rise and fall.
Naturally, Granddad couldn't resist the opportunity the spread the
word, so his son's request was ignored. The homily was probably
short, but to Ann and Wes, it seemed to last hours as they stood in
quiet resignation, waiting anxiously for the concluding sentence.
D-day was nine months in the future, but to Ann and Wes, this was the
longest day.
Wes’s
sister Sylvia sang two solos, and Ann's sister Fran was bridesmaid.
Nan Ledbetter, one of Ann's students from Round Rock High School,
played the organ, and the reception was held at the Brogrens’
residence.
Everyone
enjoyed the almost forbidden pleasures of plenty of cake and punch. I
just hope some poor GI at Bastogne didn't have to forego a helping of
SOS to make this pleasure possible.
At
last came the climax of the evening's festivities, as the triumphant
young couple jumped into Louise, a smile on their lips and a song in
their hearts as they prepared to journey down life's road together.
Wes hit the ignition and—-nothing. Louise did not respond. Helpful
well-wishers gathered around, offering varying advice. Ann was
mortified with embarrassment, as was Wes, who was extremely
frustrated as well. Everyone else, of course, was laughing at the
hapless couple's plight. Some friends, eh? Finally, some of the male
guests began pushing Louise and she coughed hesitantly to some
semblance of life. Thus began the first of my family's many motoring
adventures.
Ann
and Wes trekked all the way from Pflugerville to the luxurious
Driskill Hotel in Austin that night. The next morning, Ann discoverd
a fact about Wes that those of us who know him intimately are well
aware. Among his many virtues is not that of being an early riser. It
would be accurate, in fact, to say he is comatose any time before ten
AM. Ann, on the other hand, reaches her peak of alertness at or
before sunrise. Experts in the area of marital relations maintain
that such a couple is ill-suited for marriage, but living proof here
contradicts that assertion. At least they've made it to the year
mark.
Now,
in all the excitement of her wedding day, Ann had scarcely eaten a
bite. Unsurprisingly, she awoke ravenously hungry. She patted Wes and
said gently, "Honey, wake up. I'm hungry." No response.
Repeated entreaties elicited the same reaction——or lack thereof,
to Ann‘s great consternation. However, being a strong and
emancipated woman, she determined to get breakfast on her own. Upon
arriving in the dining room, however, she suddenly thought, "What
if someone I know sees me here, in my home town, eating breakfast
alone the first morning of my honeymoon?" She this repaired
stealthily to an obscure corner of the dining room and hastily
consumed her solitary repast.
Once
nourished and no doubt revitalized by coffee, Ann then started back
to her nuptial chamber. Now, it may surprise you to know this, but
the sophisticated world traveler you see here today was once a simple
Phi Beta Kappa farm girl, unschooled in the ways of the world, and to
her horror and consternation, she had neglected to make note of her
room number. Seriously, folks, you can’t make this kind of thing
up! She did at least remember the floor, which narrowed the search
considerably. She proceeded down the hall, trying her key in likely
looking doors until the right one opened, revealing the still
slumbering form of her new husband, who had the whole time been
blissfully ignorant of her absence.
But
Wes did awake, and Louise did start, so the newlyweds set out for New
Braunfels and San Antonio, destinations that would consume their
entire (fraudulently obtained) gas ration. On the open road, Louise
insisted on a leisurely pace. When accelerated beyond 30 mph, she
would shudder and shake and make hideous noises, as if ready to fly
to pieces-—or as my son Evan would say in his preschool years,
"blow to submarines." Finally reaching old Camp Warnecke on
the Guadalupe River, the young pioneers rented a rustic log cabin,
which turned out to be infested with cockroaches, insects neither had
ever encountered before (yes, it was a simpler age!). This encounter
proved to presage their future years, most of which have been spent
in south Texas engaged in a never-ending battle with these noisome
invertebrates.
Just
before the wedding, the district superintendent cornered Wes and
pressured him to accept the position as Wesley Foundation Director at
Texas A&I University in Kingsville. This would mean abandoning
plans for graduate study in comparative religion at the University of
Chicago, but there was a serious shortage of pastors and Wes heeded
duty's call. They set out for Kingsville within the next week in a
revived Louise, who had undergone extensive mechanical repairs. She
atoned for previous failings, faithfully carrying Ann and Wes as far
as Canada. I know this to be a fact; I've seen a photo of Louise
parked by her namesake lake in British Columbia. Could it be that her
journey was so amazing that the Canadians named the lake after the
car?
In
Kingsville, the housing shortage was so severe they spent their first
year there living in a bedroom of the parsonage. Here Ann and Wes
made lifelong friends of the parsonage's family, the Redmonds. Wes
carried on a program of Christian education and recreation for the
college students and local military personnel. Ann taught in the
local school district, where she made double the salary she had in
Round Rock, going from $900 to $1800. For the younger members of the
audience, that was her annual
salary, not her weekly one! Because she was the youngest and most
agile member of the all—female faculty, she was assigned to "teach"
boys’ P.E. She was referred to by her charges as "coach,"
and she supervised them in football, basketball, track, and baseball
as the seasons changed. One of her football players went on to be
nominated All-American; but modesty prevents her from taking any
credit for his success. But she will admit he was the first—and
last--kid she ever paddled.
Thus
Ann and Wes spent the first of these 70 years together.
