My parents married on December 20, 1941, in Ringgold, Georgia with, as far as I know, only 1 family member, my Aunt Dorothy, in attendance. They were two gorgeous young people in love on the cusp of World War II. They lived on Mulberry Street.
My dad was 3 years older than my mother, so he was attending the University of Chattanooga by the time she graduated from high school. My dad had learned to fly through the Civilian Aviation Corps at Lovell Field. Learning to fly was being encouraged by the US military due to the events in Europe that led to World War II. In his own words, “On the Sunday afternoon after her baccalaureate sermon, I took her up in a little old yellow 40 horsepower Cub airplane for a flight around Chattanooga. In August of that year she was 18. We were married in December – I was 20”.
My mother did not have permission to go flying that day and they did not divulge their plans to get married. But they remained close to their parents, all 4 of whom lived on Mulberry Street. So you might say, Mulberry Street was the beginning for me.
After they were married, my dad joined the Army Air Corps and reported for pilot training in Avon Park, Florida. My mother and a group of friends traveled together following their husbands as often as possible during training. According to one friend, “We had more fun – no money – just fun”.
On one trip my mother sat on the top of the back seat of the car holding an uncooperative convertible top down. Before the days of seat belts. From Avon Park they traveled to Greenville and Columbus, Mississippi, where he received his wings and officer’s commission. Afterwards, he and my mother had to part company.
My mother went on to work as a Red Cross volunteer and to prepare for the birth of their first child. My dad and his buddies traveled on to Savannah, Georgia, and Princeton, New Jersey, and finally to New York City to board the Queen Elizabeth – the fastest ship on earth at the time.
Four days later – with 16,000 men aboard, 12 per state room, beds stacked 3 high – they landed at Firth of Clyde, England, and continued on by train to their base at Rattlesden. Three weeks later, they flew their first B-17 mission over Berlin. On that first mission, 9 of the 13 planes that flew to Germany were “knocked down”.
My dad flew 2 missions on D-Day, one lasting from 4 am to 10 am, the other from 4 pm to 12 midnight. He is credited with flying three of the longest missions ever made over Germany. He went on to fly a total of 50 missions, an astonishing feat, considering the odds. After flying 35, a full tour of duty, he was allowed a 30-day leave to come back to Chattanooga to be with my mother for the birth of their first son in August, 1944. He returned to Rattlesden to pilot 15 more missions, and one year to the day after leaving on the Queen Elizabeth he was back home for good.
My dad came back to a different country from the one he left. Thanks to millions of returning veterans and the GI Bill, the United States was energized and transformed by a flurry of educational opportunity and creative activity that was to make the country the richest and most powerful on earth.
From the days on my grandparents’ and my parents’ porches, my own history intersects with the history of outdoor furniture from the post-war period and earlier. I remember the glider on Mulberry Street as the platform for many “play pretend” activities while visiting my grandmother. It was where the church choir (my brother and me) sat while my sister preached at the brick pillar. It was a peaceful place to be at night watching the fireflies and listening to the crickets after a full day of activity, basking in the light from indoors, knowing the people inside would be checking on us soon.
I remember the comfort of sitting with my grandmother, Mama Beattie, on our own glider at night talking about things larger than everyday life, conversations between just the two of us. Our glider was a 2-seater and I remember the joy of being very close to her and having her full attention.
When I sold my first glider, the lady who bought it told me she and her granddaughter would sit and have conversations on it. That brought me full circle and that is why I love this furniture and why I go to great lengths to give it a second life. Not just for the furniture itself, but for the people waiting to have conversations on it. For the memories that without doubt will be made on these gliders and chairs with family and friends…and even pets. For the time taken to build and enhance relationships…at a slower pace, out on the porch.
e.e cummings said it this way:
“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
When I first started restoring this furniture, some people said, “It’s not worth saving”. If you are fortunate enough to have this furniture still in your family, imbued with your own family story, by all means, preserve it for the next generation. That is precisely what we are trying to do. We are keeping these chairs and gliders out of landfills and reuniting furniture with families. Unfortunately, I do not have my family’s furniture, but I now have a big, beautiful Barcalo glider with its original cushions on my front porch. It tells somebody’s family story and I love listening to it. My own family is writing the next chapter. It was definitely worth saving.
