Swing

By John M. Solensten

In the "hep" rhythm of her own Swingster voice18-year-old Margo depicts the restless lives of young people living on the verge between the Great Depression and WWII. As Margo attempts to escape from the limitations of small town life and the desperate struggle of her eccentric family to survive she becomes the recorder of universal struggles of young people in a world which, as she puts it, "No one is quite sure what will happen next." Artie Shaw once said, Swing is … a frantic and somewhat crazy mood." SWING captures the personal way in which young people lived and experienced that mood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781590883907

Book preview

One

What’s your story, Morning Glory?

June l0, 1939

Hello, Diary,

Well, here I am, riding on a swing tune!

For what? I mean, what’s it all about?

I keep telling myself that whatever it’s about I know this is gonna be the scariest, craziest, swingingest hepcat year of our lives for Sis and me. A million times a day we two swingsters are driving Dad and Mother nuts singing Three Little Fishies, which is now on the Hit Parade. Kind of like the song says, next June these two little sister fitties are gonna have to fim and fim right over the dam to somewhere far, far over the rainbow.

What’s it all about?

Oh, dear, our parents think we suffer from St. Vitus.

But it’s partly a case of senioritus.

And whoever heard of a saint who danced?

Meanwhile, all us cats are asking: Does it Swing? Can you dance to it? Bud—Bud Johnson—he’s the guy—the super Dancer among all us dancers. He’s the SPIRIT. He’s IN THE MOOD. Has big blue eyes and the face of a tired angel and sinewy legs like Fred Astaire. Dances in a kind of sweet trance. Has a heart condition so isn’t supposed to dance at all. Could die at it, Doc McCarthy told him. Looks bony and frail but when he dances he’s a dynamo of rhythm and movement and wiry power.

Bud even kind of dances sitting right next to you in the theater while one of those Astaire-Rogers dance movies flashes on the screen. Sits close in front, his feet doing quick, soft beats, his face goofy-happy...

Yes, it’s a jumpy-jive nervous time—a strange time. Our whole family is a little strange. We all cough when we eat ice cream. My father (who’s supposed to be a business man!) sits in a corner of our living room night after night reading ancient history and dreaming of the Isles of Greece. My mother shocks all our relatives because she sits in our kitchen and smokes like mad. But, of course, my twin sis Marty is pretty normal. In fact, she’s pretty AND normal. A problem sometimes for me. Guys are intense for her, cool for me—the Odd Girl Out!

I just have to tell you it’s not so easy growing up in this town right now. Wild kids, lots of sad parents. I mean really sad. Out in front of the house the WPA workers finished our new sidewalk today. Those men—they stop working once in awhile, lean on their long shovels and stare at nothing at all. Dignity. Mr. Amundson wears a dark blue suit and sometimes even a tie working out there in front of our house. He levers his long-handled shovel with a slow, mournful, steady motion. His eyes, when he looks up toward the house, are full of cool, blue melancholy.

Mother says the whole town is a little nuts because nobody knows what the whole, wide world is gonna do next.

Listen, I just want to know: Can life really SWING? I have these words in my head: Someday we shall recall these trials with pleasure. Oh, yeah... Am I improvisin’? Doin’ the right jive? Life is—wild and crazy. Why, I heard that even Benny Goodman—the King of Swing?—is afraid us jittering bugs will riot in the streets! Yeah! We’re all hep sinners!

In fact, once in awhile, my sis Marty and I do this WICKED routine upstairs (but far from heaven) in our bedroom:

Marty stands on the bed, barely keeping her balance on the give and sway of the poor old springs. She lifts her hands heavenward, then presses them together like a pious little brat of a saint. Me, I’m standin’ on the floor, next to the door, keeping an eye out for Dad and Mother.

Brothers and sisters, dancing is sin and inflames the young with unspeakable passions! she cries in a low, preacherly voice, her eyes lifted heavenward.

Well, who can resist that invitation! I cry like somebody (inspired) in the congregation.

Fools Rush In... she cries in the deepest voice she can manage.

Where angels fear to jitterbug! I chant.

Lord! Lord! Ye wicked generation of jitterbugs, your elders are going mad with your jive! she cries.

They’re just not wise to our divine exercise!

Repent, Little Sister!

Never!

Show us just a TINY bit of penitence, Little Sister!

Well, I know that sometimes the sweet, anxious faces of guys are so terribly serious and earnest as they press against us, I plead in my best simpy voice.

Better REALLY repent, Little Sister!

"As those hot guys try to defy the law of cubic displacement and occupy the same space at the same time...

Abomination, Sister!

Oh, but our heavenly sky is full of Stardust and skylarks!

Sacrilege! Sacrilege!

And I’d rather listen to Hoagy than some old fogy!

Oh, Sister, I can see you ain’t repentin’ one bit!

"Not while It’s A Lovely Day Tomorrow is a hit on the Hit Parade. So let’s take a chance..."

And dance! Marty cries, jumpin’ off the bed.

Then we dance, hummin’ In The Mood together...

Suddenly Mother stands there in the doorway shaking her head in disbelief.

We stop.

Your father is taking a nap, she says, her voice practically a whisper.

Aw! Aw! we cry.

So, you see we can be wicked little sinners, confusin’ our elders, et cetera.

Meanwhile, you—Bud—you gotta keep dancin’ your footsteps on the sands of time. Gotta keep the dance goin’! Gotta—even if Mr. Harkin threw you out of the theater ‘cuz you got up there on the little stage and made a tall, crazydance shadow like you were dancing with Ginger Rogers—who was oh, so tall up there on the screen!

Was it crazy? Was it make believe? Hey! We NEED make-believe ballroom time!!!

Cuz things can be depressing in a depression.

My unhappy father seems to be in love with long distance these days. He broods like he doesn’t want to be here with us. Sometimes he makes us all feel like crap and sometimes Sis and I wonder who this man God or somebody has made our father REALLY IS. When he gets that angry look on his face he’s like a stranger to us. Have we done something wrong? Are we really adopted or something? I and my sister ask ourselves.

Yes, who really is he?

For now, I’M just a girl who secretly calls herself SWING.

S (Yes, that’s me—Swing, Swing, Swing!)

P.S. (As in Pretty Serious) I think a lot about Matt, the sweet guy I’ve known for just ages. He’s like a guy out of Our Town—the kind of guy who hangs around like he thinks you’re destined for him, no matter what. Got to SWING away from him someday soon. Darn! Probably gonna HURT him!

Two

We are the Sunstones

(A s it haps, I guess , in the rhythm of all this, I’m doin’ chaps!)

June 12

Dear Diary,

Dad. I wish he could be happy.

When he comes home from his office up on Main Street, he gives us a very crabby smile, turns around and goes out to sit on the back steps with Flash, our white collie. Calls it his Marius Brooding Over the Ruins of Carthage. Taught ancient history in a little college a million years ago.

Every day I have to work hard at not talking back to Dad because he kinda spoils meals and things, sitting there at the head of the table, turning his silverware over and over, not looking at us, brooding...

Like a lot of other fathers I know.

I didn’t choose to live in this family.

People who love you can hurt you.

So??

June l4

Dear Diary,

Matt—this guy who thinks we’re destined for one another. I saw him uptown today. He leaned out of the window of his Model A Ford and said, Hi! Was wearing old coveralls. Has a nice face, but looked very TIRED. He makes ME feel tired, resigned. And he’s too FAMILIAR or something.

That was cruel!

Bills are cruel. I can tell when Dad is going to blow up about our grocery bills. He starts talking ABOUT Mother, not TO her. He calls her she or her. It’s like he’s kind of circling around getting up nerve. Yesterday he came home for lunch early. When he walked through the back door his face was a mask. No bounce in his step. He walked into the kitchen and began to yell at Mother. He held grocery charge slips from Jacob’s Grocery in one hand and was waving them at her. He was quite nuts.

You keep on charging and charging! he yelled at her back there where she stood at the stove. Four hundred sixteen dollars! he yelled. And, my dear Jesus, six dollars worth of cigarettes! I have a notion to take my car and go to Canada or hell or someplace! he yelled, waving the slips at her.

Pow! He threw the slips up in the air and they fell crisscross crazy all over like torn-up sheets of music, Mother just standing there, not turning, just stirring corn meal mush. Finally Dad sat down in a chair and just looked gray in the face.

I can’t make the money they make, my father groaned. I just can’t, that’s all!

I know who THEY are—my mother’s rich dentist brothers in Des Moines and Chicago. He always brings them up. He suspects they say things about him—like, We told you so.

There are two kinds of men in this country: good providers and me, Dad said in a dull, flat voice as he sat there, staring off toward Canada or someplace.

Before he could say anything more, Mother walked over to him and laid her hand on his arm and tried to comfort him, but he pushed her away. Then he went in and lay on the davenport to take one of his million naps, lying there staring at the ceiling, his eyes dull and far away.

Marty and I left. We went up to Barney’s Cafe to listen to the jukebox and maybe have a Coke and talk to Barney who’s a jolly little guy who puts lots of syrup in the Cokes. As we walked up Main Street toward Barney’s we looked back at the house. It has tall black screens at all the windows and upper windows that are curved upward like windows in houses in old English films. Mother inherited the house from her mother.

Maybe they’re our gothic, I said to Marty, pointing up to the black screens. She scowled at me and cried, You and your books!

Genealogy. Marty is prettier than I am. Guys like her better. She’s the very cute type with a kewpie-bow behind and high cheekbones and a nice little mouth. When she walks down the hall in school guys turn to really LOOK!

Up at Barney’s Cafe it’s the same old routine if Matt

isn’t around. Some guy yells, Hey, Marty! I Ain’t Misbehavin’ so come and sit with me and do some jive talk. Then the other guy (the one Marty doesn’t sit with) looks at me as if to say, Oh, well, maybe next time I’ll get Marty who’s much...

A lot of guys don’t like to talk to me. I’m dark. I’m a smart ass. I talk a lot in classes in school. I refuse to sing, IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN! I won’t be a cute little somebody who lets the guys show the brains in class. So maybe I got my mother’s blood. She has a distant cousin who is that weird Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch. Dad says he’s an artist in love with death.

I’m not, but it scares me to know that I am shaped by things I had nothing to do with—really.

As we’re having our Cokes Bud The Dancer comes into the cafe with a cute side-to-side step. He’s made a big curl in his hair in front. I want to grab him and hold him: he looks so—oh, I don’t know. No music on the jukebox, but he begins to do a slow dance in front of it, his shoes making soft, swishing noises on the tile floor.

What’re you listening to? I ask.

New York, he replies, not breaking his dance rhythm.

New York?

Yeah. Can’t you hear it?

Barney, the cafe owner, comes over, wipes his hands on his apron and watches with us.

"Me and My Shadow!" Bud exclaims, his voice very soft as he does a shuffle.

When Bud turns in his dance the skin seems to pull back on the bones on his face. His eyes bulge a little and I’m scared.

Come on, Bud, I say to him. Come and have a Coke with us.

But he just dances away past the magazine rack and out the front door.

Barney shakes his head, clears glasses and things out of a couple of booths and disappears into the kitchen at the back of the cafe.

He’s a little femmie! Jerry Watson cries.

I turn and look at him. He has a smirky leer on his puss.

I think he’s a little queer, Jerry says.

Ass! I exclaim under my breath.

Sure he is, Jerry says.

He makes you nervous? I ask, giving him my icky smirk.

Nervous?

You know what I mean?

Listen...

I can’t believe I’m talking to that guy like that so I’m relieved when Marty coos, Come on, you two!

When I go back and sit in the booth with Marty and the two guys, Marty has to keep up a lot of joy talk because the guys just