George

 Although a rather ill matched couple, George Owen and Shirley Myrtle Chamberlain were my parents.  It doesn’t sound as though my mother considered other alternatives because once when I asked why she married George, she said “because he asked me.”  Both had been born in Everett, MA, like me.  However, I think that George was probably pretty comfortable living in the city while Shirley was more the “country bumpkin” type.  Both had been only children.  It seemed that George’s mother was pretty devoted to him probably because his parents were together and his father was a good provider.  Shirley’s mother was busy trying to get what she felt they needed out of life because it seems that she and Shirley were pretty much on their own during the early years of Shirley’s life. .  George was the artistic one, outgoing and jovial.  Shirley was the earthy one who spent much of her time trying to please and be accepted. Both George and Shirley attended and graduated from Everett High School and both were active members of Glendale Baptist Church.  However, George was 4 years older than Shirley so although they knew of each other they had never hung around with each other or dated.  That didn’t happen until probably around 1946 after my father returned from WW II and they were married June 21, 1947.

Their wedding was a pretty big affair with the reception held in the church hall.  My mother's gown was hand made by my grandmother and it was beautiful 

 

with a long flowing train.  They spent their honeymoon in Atlantic City New Jersey where 

my mother, who never liked eating anything with vinegar, got sick and spent much of her 

honeymoon throwing up with my father alone in the bar getting ice.  She insisted that it 

was because she had eaten spaghetti that had probably been made with a ketchup/

vinegar based sauce. But when they returned home my mother ended up having to have her appendix removed.  Because she was going to be laid up recuperating for awhile, she actually went back home to live with her mother because she would not have been able to go up and down the stairs on Reed Avenue.  This may have also been part of the reason why I was not born for two years after they got married.  My mother always told me that I was late being born.  I don’t actually know when I was supposed to be born but she said that when she finally went into labor she had just sat down with a cup of tea.  Although everyone was excited by my upcoming birth, she claims to have looked at her belly and said that she had waited long enough for me to get myself ready and I was going to have to wait until she finished her tea.

My parents did not fight or argue that I was witness to.  As a matter of fact, they didn’t spend much time communicating with each other at all.  Later in my life I would begin to realize that there were certainly divisions between them that were never resolved and they, for the most part, were quite separate individuals rather than a solid couple.  However, during the early part of my life I unified them and others did not get in the way.  Certainly, when the 3 of us lived alone in that house on Reed Avenue things were pretty good as far as I was concerned.  

GEORGE

My father was born in Everett, MA on February 2, 1920 and spent most of his early life there.  At the time of his birth Woodrow Wilson of Virginia was president.   The country had only a few years before George’s birth, become involved in WWI despite President Wilson’s efforts to keep the US neutral.  This was a time where individualism was valued but also the period in which we were first introduced to the concept of income taxes.  But shortly after George’s birth, Harding was elected as president for a short time because this president died in 1923.  

George graduated from Everett High School and went on to a 2 year preforming arts school called Curry College.  While in high school he participate in school plays and was apparently president of his high school drama club.  He was apparently always interested in music and performance.  His family went to church at Glendale Baptist

 

Church and they were all pretty active there and in civic organizations around the city.

After graduating, George apparently wanted to go into some area of the preforming arts.  He had jobs as a radio announcer, acted in numerous plays, sang with the Shubert Club and in 1939-40 he formed a 15 piece band named Buddy Laine and his Orchestra.  Acting requires memorizing lines and following direction along with lots of practice, practice, practice.  Announcing is another story.  A friend of my father’s once was joking with my father and told me a story about one of George’s auditions.  Announcing is sometimes impromptu and requires reading something you may never have read before.  George was given an advertisement that he was supposed to read on the air about some sweaters. The sweater’s were made of alpaca, the fur of a type of
small South American llama and it would have been pretty expensive in those days.  Apparently George was not familiar with this particular type of wool and read the commercial for “alba ca ca” sweaters.  The station thought that people would be turned off to wearing something in the animals digestive system rather than the soft fur off its back.

In 1939 shortly after getting started in his adult life, World War II broke out and in 1942 George ended up in the army being shipped out to a war zone.  In those days George lived with his mother and must have spent more time traveling to Lubec and Machias, Maine than we ever did after his mother’s death.  George met a girl in Lubec, and, as was often the case when men were going off to WWII, George asked her to marry him.  The two were married in SC about a week before George shipped out.  Apparently most of his relatives did not really like this woman and probably for good reason.  While he was overseas she ended up having a baby girl.  She eventually wrote him a letter explaining that she had been dating an older man prior to meeting my father.  But the two had broken up and she learned that she was pregnant.  This was not something that she had made George aware of before they got married but someone in the family must have let him know after the child was born.  Probably not the best timing.  It must have been devastating  news to get while in a war zone.  To make matters worse, she later died from complications resulting from surgery and by the time he returned home he was a widower.  I do not know the child’s name. 

While in the war, George was again active in doing plays and organizing performances for the troops.  His army unit was apparently one that was often attached to other units and sent to various European cities.   

When George returned from the war he ended up back in Everett.  He bought the house on Reed Avenue and he and his mother lived there.  My father became active in Everett political life and because he had been injured in the war he became active in the Disabled American Veterans.  His injury involved having lost his teeth when he was hit with shrapnel.  Until I was about 10 years old I had never seen my father without his teeth so I was blissfully unaware of the situation.  That is until he had a bout with diarrhea that my maternal great grandmother said could be cured with a tablespoon of cinnamon.  I've never downed a spoonful of plain ground cinnamon and don't think it's a very good idea after seeing my father drop his teeth and spend about a half hour trying to gargle and rinse it all off of his lips and gums.  When I was little my maternal grandmother made me a little uniform that looked just like my dad's DAV uniform except that it had a little skirt.  Every year the DAV would hold an annual poppy drive where they would sell plastic red poppies as a fund raiser.  My dad wasn't much of a salesman so I had to go with him and I would be the one who made the most money

In the middle 1940’s the Big Band Era, although changed somewhat, was still upon us and George again led his Buddy Laine Orchestra.  My dad always told me that the name Buddy was a name that many men had when they came home from the war.  George told me that during the war they all referred to everyone as their buddy because they weren’t always with the same guys and didn’t always know everyones name.  

Around this time he also got involved managing singers in what he called the Star Agency.  Lorraine of my haircut obsession, was a client of Star Agency.  It was during the time that George was traveling around New England with the Buddy Lane Orchestra that he started to date Shirley.  There were lots of benefits available for veterans after WWII.  One of the benefits that George utilized was the ability to rent a small cottage on Lake Winnepassauski in NH.  George had a "gig" at Weirs Beach during the summer so he and his mother stayed at these cottages.  By this time his mother, Cassie, was working in a dress factory.  As luck would have it, Shirley's mother, Pauline was her forelady.  Perhaps because she wanted to impress the boss, Cassie invited Pauline and Shirley to stay with them.  Perhaps because she thought that George was fairly well off financially, Pauline accepted.

George continued with his career after getting married but after I came along Shirley did not like the fact that he frequently had to travel and she convinced him that he should get something that brought in a weekly paycheck.  He continued to manage several acts but at the same time took a job cutting meat in a butcher shop.  This was not exactly something he was suited to and later he went to work for the city of Everett.  After working on the campaign of Governor Sumner Whittier, George eventually went to work for the State of Massachusetts as an insurance examiner.

Although George did not continue with his acting or preforming career he never lost the urge.  By the time I was 9 years old George had become involved with SPEBSQSA, Inc., an organization of men whose hobby was singing in the barbershop quartet style.  For most of the rest of his life our family was involved in some aspect of this organization.  George sang in several choruses and also several quartets, and he was active politically in the organization.  I never considered George to be much of a singer.  Unlike my mother and I, he could, as they say, carry a tune, but his was not a vocal quality that people wanted to pay for.  However, his sense of humor and performance abilities were his strong suit.  He helped a number of quartets with what was called the category of stage presence and frequently emceed at quartet shows and contests.  His own quartet claim to fame was named the “Harmonuts,” four middle aged men who tried to sing funny songs while wearing striped old fashioned bathing suits.      

George always had an easy going, somewhat dry sense of humor.  He was outgoing and usually jovial.  However, he had a pensive side that always threw me for a loop until I read a book about WWII veterans called “The greatest generation.”  Men returning from WWII apparently didn’t like to talk much about their experiences and post traumatic stress syndrome was not part of the DSM back then.  I remember my father getting a somewhat blank look on his face for no apparent reason and he would seem to be in his own world.  When there was a thunder storm, my dad would take a book and go down into the basement by himself.  When I asked why he exhibited this strange behavior, the only thing he would say is that he never liked the loud noises or thunder after coming back from the war.

Throughout his life George was a rather tall, thin man with dark hair and brown eyes.   He claimed he was approximately 6 feet 2 inches.  I’m not sure when he started loosing his hair but in most of my recollections he was already bald.  My father used to tell me that “men who are bald in the front are thinkers and men who are bald in the back are lovers.”  He said that those men, like himself, who were bald all over “think they’re lovers.”

But my dad seemed to be very attached to me and frequently doted on me.  Given his fondness for the dramatic he thought my childhood modeling was something to be proud of.  It was my father who took me out trick or treat while my mom stayed to hand out the candy.  I remember being a clown, a cat and a cowboy.  George and I would frequently sing while riding in the car and I am still very fond of some of these songs.  My favorites were “My Funny Valentine” and “Hey there, You with the stars in your eyes” and  "Old Cape Cod."   And I still remember the words to them all.  He also attempted to teach me how to sing harmony but at age 4 or 5, singing the tune while someone else sung the harmony threw me off and I went right along singing whatever my father did.