Forever and a Day

By Buck Carson

On cold winter days, when youre driving through a heavy snowstorm, looking forward through the windshield, you can hardly see where youre going. But if you look in the rearview mirror, you can see a long way behind you. Life can be like that. On days when its hard to see where youre going, it pays to look at where youve been. In Forever and a Day, author Buck Carson looks back on his life, offering a look at the last ninety-some years.

In this memoir, Carson shares the details of his long-lived life, providing information about growing up in Pennsylvania, his love of baseball, being drafted into the Army in 1941, surviving three years of combat in the South Pacific, meeting his wife in Australia, raising a family of four children, and enjoying his retirement years.

Forever and a Day narrates the story of a life lived to the fullest, of a man having fun almost every step of the journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Aug 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781489704894

Buck Carson

Buck Carson was born December 8, 1919, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was drafted into the Army in 1941. After the war, he and his wife, Mary, eventually settled in Oreland, Pennsylvania, where they raised two sons and two daughters. Carson still loves to play tennis, golf, swim, and ride bikes.

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Prologue

The date was Friday, March 13th 1942, Pearl Harbor was history, the Philippines, Guam and Midway Island had all been captured and war was raging all over the south Pacific. But not in Brisbane, the garden city of Australia, where the weather was balmy and romance was in the air. I had found my way to the beautiful Trocadera Ballroom where a great orchestra was making sweet music and I was looking for a potential dancing partner. Across the floor, I spotted just the person and as I made my way through the dancers our eyes met and our world would never be the same. Would you care to dance? I asked. I’d love to, she replied. We danced that dance and every dance for the rest of the night and the rest of our lives.

She had gone to the dance with a bunch of her friends from work and her Mom had told her to stay with her friends and be sure to come home with them. It wasn’t going to happen. She [we] never went back to where we met, when the music would stop we would just stand there holding hands and talking, talking, talking and we soon came to know we were meant for one another.

At the last intermission, I asked her to marry me after the war. She agreed. Twenty-four hours later, I was a thousand miles away in the midst of a war that seemed like it would never end. Three times during the next three years I would get short furloughs back to Brisbane and each time we would pick it up right where we left it off - madly in love with one another. It would be five long years before we could complete that dream. Or actually start it. Through the years, a song formed in my heart that tells a little of the story that started many years ago and, for as long as I’m around, I’ll continue to play and sing it for anyone who wants to listen. The story of our love and our lives together will sing in my heart, in my head and on my lips until I take my last breath.

For 59 years, we lived the dream and loved every moment of it and we’d pretend it would never end. It is eight long years since Mary left me and I often wonder if we will ever meet again, and if we do will we be able to pick it up where we left it off as we did on those rare occasions when I would get back to Brisbane during the war. I am 94 years old now and those wonderful memories of yesteryear are growing dim, so I guess it won’t be too much longer before I find out whether our love affair was just another blip in the light of eternity or if our romance can really exist -

FOREVER AND A DAY –

And so there you have it. A short synopsis of what is to follow. I hope it piques your interest enough to continue.

Chapter One

The Adventure of Lucky Bucky

A good reason for writing this might be that I have had such a wonderful good life and that the life might just be worth a study. I am ninety-four years old as I write this and I have never had a serious illness. There has been no cancer, or heart attacks, or diabetes or arthritis or artificial joints, and I still have all my teeth, I survived three years of warfare in the south Pacific [most of it in the combat zone], and have traveled millions of miles by airplane, train, boat, auto and bicycle with nary a serious accident. And I still ride my bike, although I did get hit by a car once while riding my bike, a couple of days in the hospital fixed that up. I still play golf and tennis, swim, canoe and downhill ski. Was it all just luck or is there something about this life worth looking into? I’ve got to admit that I have been told I have an enlarged prostate, cataracts, a bad heart valve, herniated disks, curvature of the spine, my feet hurt, my right leg feels like it is broken [which it once was], and I need a pacemaker but so far I have managed to get along with what I have, and people seem to think I’m the picture of health.

Chapter Two

Mary

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Mary & her mom – 1940-ish

First I would like to tell what little I know of Mary’s early life B.B. (Before Buck, that is). She was born in the port town of Tarree, New South Wales, Australia, and was baptized Maud Mary Slyney. Somewhere along the line she decided she didn’t care for Maud and dropped it entirely. She thought it sounded like, Maud with a face like a Ford. The Slyney men made their living working on the boats that carried merchandise to the cities along the coast. The advent of the railroads pretty much put the craft out of business and most of the family moved to Sydney, except for Mary’s mom and dad, Tom and Maud, who moved to Brisbane. Tom spent the rest of his working days working for the Courier Times Newspaper. Tom’s parents were apparently well off and owned a big piece of ground along the banks of the Manning river in Tarree. That ground is a park and botanical garden today. They apparently had a large family but I never got to know but a few of them real well, mainly Pat and Glad Bevis and their two daughters, Anne and Marge, and, eventually, their families.

Mary had two brothers and a sister, Tom, Jim and Tess. At the age of fourteen, Tom went off to Sydney to become a Christian Brother and for all practical purposes never came back to Brisbane. The Sydney relatives adopted him and his life revolved around things down there. He went on to become the headmaster of Saint Mary’s College in Sydney. Jim studied for the priesthood in Brisbane and when that seminary closed down for lack of vocations he was sent to Rome to finish his studies. While he was studying there World War II broke out and he was unable to return to Australia. Eventually, he was assigned as the chaplain at an Italian prisoner of war camp in South Australia because he had learned to speak Italian during his time in Rome. Tess and Mary stayed close to home and lived rather sheltered lives. Neither ever learned to roller skate or ride a bike, but they did learn to dance at the dances that the schools they attended would have. And they always went away on family vacations together to Sand Gate and Coolengotta but only Mary became a fairly decent swimmer. Each Saturday afternoon, the two girls would go off to the movies. Before the show would start, there would be music with the bouncing ball on the screen, directing the singalong. They learned the tune and words to just about every song that had been written. The first time I heard the Pennsylvania Polka was when Mary and I were dancing on the night we met and she knew all the words!

Tess eventually married Felix Quinn and they had two children, Tom and Jim. Felix died of leukemia when Jim was but a little baby. Felix was a big happy, healthy, fun-loving guy and it was hard to believe he would die so young. He loved to go to the races and even took me along a couple times. I never had much luck gambling so I wasn’t prone to place a bet. That all changed when a horse named Sweet Romance almost won the race the first week I went. I came back the second week and bet a wad on her and sure enough she didn’t even show.

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Felix, Jim, Maud & Tess

When the family first moved to Brisbane, they lived in a big building down town [I think it might have been called The Mansion] that I believe was used as a temporary dwelling for new arrivals to the city. From there they moved to Villa Maria where they rented a house alongside the Villa Maria Senior Citizen home. Mary and Tess would often sing songs for the old folks who lived there. Mary said that one of the songs they would sing was called Queenie about the exploits of a stripper of that name. They, of course, had no idea what the ribald words meant as they were both very little girls at that time. From there, they bought the house at 31 Little Street in the Kelvin Grove section of Brisbane, which was a small bungalow-type house that would serve as the family residence until the present time, with Tess eventually being the sole survivor there. Tess is now in the assisted living facility at Villa Maria.

Little Street in Kelvin Grove is only one block long and is a very steep hill with their house right in the middle of the hill. Everything that came to the house in the form of food or drink had to be lugged in on their backs. They were all good walkers. Which was good considering that to get to Mass required climbing a veritable mountain first. The house was built on stilts with the front of the house being right at ground level and the back being eight or ten feet above ground. When I first got to know Mary, the toilet was in an out-house down in the backyard. But when sewers came through it was moved to under the house and later to a little room off the kitchen. The family’s parish loyalties seem to be divided between Saint Bridget’s at the top of Red Hill and Saint Ambrose in Kelvin Grove. My favorite was Saint Ambrose where a Father Boland was the pastor. He was a good friend of Mary’s Dad and he and I got along famously too. Mom Slyney had a nice garden in the back yard with chokos and pawpaws, and a pen with chickens and ducks and it all was a little wild.

Mary taught for a while in a Catholic school and tinkered with the idea of becoming a nun but I think she liked having fun too much for that. She would have been a great teacher because she really loved children She had very high morals, had no time for bigotry, cruelty, drunkenness, or slander. She was just what a young G.I. needed to keep him on the straight and narrow. Sadly, her distaste for drunks impressed me to the point that I never brought her Dad a bottle of booze or wine. It wasn’t available to the civilian population but G.I.s could buy it in the P.X. I never found out until it was too late that he would have enjoyed a treat now and then. During the war, the bars were only allowed to be open for two hours from four to six, which caused a lot of men to drink too much too quickly causing an excess of drunks to spill out on the streets at closing time which probably accounted for Mary’s distaste for drunks.

So who was this girl that was waiting for me on the other side of the world? I think I always had a mental picture of what the girl of my dreams would look like and it was like Mary up and stepped out of that picture. From there on it was not only what I saw but what I heard. Would you care to dance? – I’d love to! the voice was deep and melodious, the accent music to the ears. I soon learned of a deep love of home and family and of our mutual religion which was important to us both right from the start. Mary was very proud of her Irish heritage and one of the dances she taught me on the night we met was The Pride of Erin which was sort of a line dance with some quick little running steps. It was fun!

Coming over on the boat from the United States to Australia, we had been told that most all Australians have false teeth and are universally members of the Church of England. Mary invited me to pull on her teeth and set me straight on religion. Her religious connections were a good bit stronger than mine but it only served to convince me that here was the girl I’d been searching for. And what else did I see besides that beautiful face and that long black curly hair? Legs! Long, slender legs that could walk and walk all day and well into the night! Legs that could run along the beach with her hand holding mine, laughing and splashing as we ran through the shallows. When I would express admiration for those legs I would be told in no uncertain terms they were made for walking! But I don’t think she really minded my compliments. Did she have boobs? I don’t think I really knew until we were married for a while when I bought her a bra for her birthday -—completely the wrong size -— probably too big. I know she was always happy she didn’t have big boobs– considered them a terrible weight to carry around. As a matter of fact, Mary was slender to the point of being skinny. She didn’t fill out the top of a bathing suit too well but, fortunately, I wasn’t aware that it was a selling point. Finally, what kind of character did Mary display? Well in the fifty-nine years that we were married I never heard her badmouth anybody, never heard her use foul language or tell off-color stories or jokes. I never heard her make disparaging remarks about someone because of their race, color or creed and she showed she cared for those the world treated poorly. Because she was a child of the Great Depression she was always frugal with her money and possessions but never with her time. When you were with Mary she was 100% with you, whether you were one year old or 100. In brief, Mary was kind, generous, loving, courageous and brave and I was oh so lucky to have her for my wife.

Chapter Three

Dad

A little history of the family that I grew up in might be in order here. I had a great relationship with my Dad, perhaps because I was the baby of the family! I can only remember him getting angry with me on two occasions, once my fault and once, just circumstances - more on that later. I believe at one time Dad was in the candy making business. Wunderle Candy comes to mind and he was, in fact, part owner of the business. For one reason or another, Dad left Wunderle to go to work as a salesman for John Cassani, a confectionary distributing business on Second Street above Vine in Philadelphia. He worked for that business until he retired. I, too, worked there as a stock boy after I graduated from high school but only for a short time during the cold weather when the candy business boomed. I don’t think he ever made a lot of money as a candy salesman but he always bought new homes and never drove used cars. But he did have a very frugal wife. He just barely put up with his relatives and in-laws but was entirely devoted to his family and it was a rare weekend that went by that we didn’t go someplace to have fun, --swimming in the summer, ice-skating in the winter and picnics in the country in between. We went on two unforgettable trips to New England, had many weeks at Wildwood, New Jersey, and often visited Gerhart’s farm along the Perkiomen Creek. If there was fun to be had, Dad knew where to find it and I like to think I followed in his footsteps.

When he and Mom were first married, they lived on Palmetto Street in Lawndale and I have no knowledge of that house except that it was fairly close to his in-laws and that would have not set well with Dad. So down to Olney he went to a house on Duncannon Avenue between 5th and 6th Streets. But each time the city seemed to crowd in on him, he would move a little further out. First to 5854 North 4th Street but when I was about ten, a little girl was hit and killed by a trolley at Fifth Street and Olney Avenue, so the next day Dad went out and bought the house at 6233 North 4th Street. Each time we moved, it was only about six or seven city blocks from the last place but each move put us on the edge of the growing city. That last move was a great one and would serve him well to the end of his life.

Dad had two sisters, Florence and Mame, and a brother, Walter. We never saw too much of them except for Florence who lived just up the street from us. Florence’s husband was a drunk and eventually drank himself to death. He and his brother owned a taproom at the corner of 5th Street and Fishers Avenue. He was really in the wrong business! Her second husband, Bill Vent, was a peach of a guy and took good care of her right up to the time he died. Mary and Florence had a great relationship and when she died she left all of her possessions to us. I do not know how they came to know one another but one day Florence came to the door unannounced when Mary was living with Jack and Betty and happened to be home by herself and they knew each other instantly and were close ever after. Aunt Mame [Henzel] had a daughter, Florence, who, when last I saw her, had grown into quite a beautiful young lady. Cousin Walter Carson was about the same age as I and was quite adept at getting me into trouble when we would visit Grandmom Carson. He became a ship’s captain and when last I saw him had developed a very salty vocabulary.

I imagine Dad was a real good athlete in his youth. He played second base for the Lawndale baseball team and from the grace and form he showed throwing and catching a ball, even into old age, you could see he knew what he was doing. I cannot remember a time when he didn’t have a ball in the car to throw around when we would go for a walk or have a picnic. Often times, he would come home from work pile us kids in the car and drive twenty or thirty miles up in the country for a swim in the Perkiomen Creek. On weekends, there would be picnics with swimming or ice skating according to the time of the year at places like Shearn Field in Graterford, Montgomery County Park in Green Lane, Powder Valley in Hereford or Skytop in Feasterville. And that is probably a short list. When Montgomery County Park was in the making, Dad became friendly with those who were involved with the project so much so that when the park opened we were among the first to use it even though it was supposedly only available to Montgomery county residents. Dad could sweet talk himself into anywhere.

When the girls were in their teens and I was ten or twelve Mom and Dad took us on a tour of New England that was trip to be remembered! It would have been 1929 or 30 and the car was probably a Dodge that for some reason Dad always seemed to be partial to. There was no trunk on the car; the luggage was carried on a rack on the back and on the fender on the driver’s side where a metal grate held the suitcases in place. Marge sat in the front with Mom and Dad and acted as navigator and copilot reading the maps and so forth. As I recall the trip, we wandered through the Adirondack Mountains, stopping at tourist cabins along the way and swimming in the beautiful clear lakes. Paradox Lake sticks out in my memory as being the prettiest, clearest and most natural. The cabins had to have kitchen facilities or we couldn’t afford to stay. On through Vermont and New Hampshire we traveled and on out to Old Orchard, Maine. Dad took one look at it and saw that it was too expensive for our budget. So he turned us right around and headed back across Maine. Still in Maine we stayed that night in a cabin on the shore of Moose Pond. Us four kids took a canoe ride in the twilight and it was so beautiful and quiet and the water so clear and the mournful cry of the loons created such an impression that many years later I resolved to take my family there if I could find it. And of course I did and I’ll tell about that later.

The next day we continued our journey back into New Hampshire where we stayed in a cabin on Rust Pond near Lake Winnepasaukee. The place was called Boyd’s Camp and the owner would come by each morning and ask if all was well. He would be forever after known as ‘’All’s Well Boyd’’ in the Carson family and that would be our response when asked how we were feeling. Jack and I would go out in a rowboat on Rust Pond and he would catch big sunfish that he would throw back because he said they were too bony. One morning, without saying anything to anyone, I took a ride in the rowboat by myself to the far end of the pond and had everyone wondering where I had disappeared to. I caught heck for that! And each night the girls would write letters home to their boyfriends, Charlie and Woodie. We made a couple of little sojourns to Lake Winnepesaukee and traveled the length of it on our way home, but mostly we just swam and hung around Rust Pond for the rest of the week.

I don’t know how he did it [or how Mom financed it] but there was rarely a summer went by that we didn’t have a week at Wildwood, New Jersey as well. As I already said, Dad never made a lot of money so how did he manage always to live in new houses and drive new cars too? Mom! Mom was frugal. She could squeeze a nickel till the buffalo pooped! Some of her contemporaries were much more generous with the children, and grandchildren and great grandchildren. Mom couldn’t do it and she knew it. Her job was to make Dad’s dreams a possibility and that is what she did. And what do you know? - I married my mother! Well no, not really. But the girl that I married spent the rest of her life making my dreams a possibility.

Dad had a rather unique musical ability. He could harmonize beautifully to any song you wished to sing. On the piano - sing or play a few bars - and he could play right along with you by simply hitting the right chords at the right time. There were a number of songs that he actually played the melody and a few that he played in ragtime like I never heard anyone else do. I don’t think he ever had music lessons nor could he even read music but that never slowed him down when it came to having a sing-song around the piano. The last years of Dad’s life were not as happy as they could have been. He had always enjoyed a wee nip or two but as time went by he began to overdo it. Alcoholism caused him to lose his ability to make music. This was especially sad for me as I never enjoyed playing the violin by myself and still don’t. I would guess he was about seventy-two when he went into the hospital with appendicitis. When he came out, he went on the wagon and lo and behold was soon playing the piano again.

Then one day a neighbor, for whom, ironically, neither Dad nor any of us had any great respect, told Dad he was foolish to give up drinking because he had a heart condition. Why he would listen to this guy we never could figure out, but he went back to drinking and soon was back to square one. On June 27th, l961, he died in Germantown Hospital. The day before he died I visited him and he begged me to bring him a drink. With visions of his last recovery still fresh in my mind, I refused. Later that day Dad asked my brother, Jack, the same question and Jack’s answer was the same as mine. Later, Jack and I vowed that we would never let that happen to each other. Sad to say, I’m afraid poor Jack suffered the same fate.

Chapter Four

Mom

Mom’s maiden name was Fredarica Georgianna Laubmiester. Her parents emigrated from Germany bringing with them their oldest daughter, Elizabeth. Three more daughters would be born here, Mom, Mary and Bella. Mom and Aunt Lizzie were of obvious German decent but the other two seemed more Irish than German - they always seemed to be laughing at something. At one time, I tried to sell refrigerators, as well as fix them, figuring that I knew more about what was good about the refrigerators than the salesmen did. Aunt Mary was my one and only customer. It seems that Aunt Bella was not very old when she had a stroke that paralyzed her from the waist down. Her son, Frances, did a fine job of taking care of her the rest of her life and she never lost her cheery countenance.

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My Dad & Mom with Terry - 1948

When we would visit the first thing she would say was, ’Frances, make Buck and Mary a whiskey sour! Why, I have no idea, but they were awfully good. Besides Frances, Bella had a daughter, Mary, who lived next door, had a bunch of kids and was very pretty. One time when we were both in our teens I was standing on the corner with a bunch of guys and they were discussing a certain pretty girl. I was amazed when I found out it was my cousin, Mary, they were talking about. Being my cousin, she was just another girl. It wasn’t till that moment I realized she was also pretty. Bella also had a son, Charley, who is now the sole survivor of that family. Apparently, Aunt Lizzie got sick with T.B. when she was young and was sent back to Germany to recuperate. They must have done a good job because she lived well into her 90’s. For many years, she came to our house for dinner on Friday nights when she would tell us about her travels. She had never married and thus had the means and time to take trips to faraway places. One of her favorite stories was of the bear cubs in Yellowstone Park. She called them cubes, which, of course, caused a snicker from us kids. Aunty Lizzie, Aunt Bella, Uncle Frank and their three children and Grandmom and Grandad lived in adjoining houses on Argyle Street in Lawndale. It was a fluid arrangement with them moving from one house to another as conditions dictated.

There was also a Great Grandmother living there who was known as Grossmom and who could not speak or understand English. So they all had to learn to converse in German so she wouldn’t be left out. I think she must have died before I came on the scene because I don’t recall ever meeting her. Mom must have lived in that house at one time because she could speak German too. Mom was stern but compassionate. You had to eat a little of everything on the table and clean your plate up or there was no desert for you. And there were always great deserts. It occurs to me that some of the good luck I have had health wise could be credited to the healthy food that my Mom and later my Mary provided to me through the years.

Equal proportions of meat, green, white and red vegetables were the norm for the evening meals. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a half of grapefruit and oatmeal for breakfast six days a week. Sunday was always special with creamed dried beef on toast. In the early days, Mom and Mary always scooped the grapefruit, but one day a blind friend of mine showed me how to cut the fruit into wedges and strip them off with your teeth right into your mouth so that nothing was wasted except the skin. Also in the old days oatmeal was just oatmeal, but as time went by I began to flower it up with mixed nuts, raisins, blueberries and a big pat of butter, topped with plenty of sugar and milk, and a teaspoonful of Psyllium Husk in later years to keep the colon clean. We always used whole vitamin D milk and even raw milk when it was available. I have been accused of using too much salt but I claim it to be only in proportion to what is needed to properly flavor the food. I offer the above as proof that a healthy diet promotes healthy living. Mom’s favorite saying was Willful Waste Means Woeful Want but we never knew there was more to that saying till Mary came along and finished it for us.

Mom was a calming force and always ready to listen to your troubles. It wasn’t too often I had to cry on her shoulder but she was always a comfort when I did. She expected us to use our heads and not get into trouble. Where some kids might not be allowed to go on a hike or go camping Mom would send us on our way with but one admonition, be careful.

I don’t know where this story came from but I think it was Mom. At any rate, her parents had a taproom on Fifth Street below Walnut in Philly and one day when her Mom was tending bar a doctor stopped in for a drink when his workday was over and heard a baby crying and crying upstairs. ‘’Margaret, why is that baby crying like that?’’ he asked. She didn’t know why but she had other babies that died that way. The doctor asked to see the baby, and after examining her asked, for a tub of hot water. He then submerged the little body into the tube of warm water which caused an explosion of gas from the baby’s bottom and the crying stopped. That baby was my Mom which might explain why, to this day, I can fart up a storm and do so regularly.

I had two sisters and a brother. Marge was the oldest and