Mark Dunn - Ibid - A Life

Traveling tent Chautauquas were popular vehicles in the early 20th century for exposing non-urban communities to culture, intellectual thought, and the more refined performing arts. They also provided — as Jonathan and his new girlfriend Lucile were probably well aware — the opportunity for young men and women in such communities to meet and mingle outside the auspices of church and the socially regimented workplace. Indeed, for many of Jonathan’s generation the word Chautauqua served as acronym for “ Clever, handsome and unambiguously tantalizing adults under-canvas quietly uniting anatomies .” John B. Paperwhite, “Courting and Cavorting in Rural America,” Rustic Review 17 (1975): 12–17, 72-79

8. “We spend long hours together working jigsaw puzzles…and doing other things.”Jonathan took an instant liking to the recently invented jigsaw puzzle and shared this interest with the new love of his life. Jigsaws would remain a favorite form of entertainment for him. He even carried a box in his “ol’ kit bag” when he began his tour of duty for Uncle Sam in 1917. On those occasions during which things got quiet on the Western Front, Jonathan would pull out the box and try to scout a flat, clean surface upon which to reinstate the disassembled picture of a smiling Dutch school girl holding a bouquet of colorful tulips. He was rarely rewarded for his efforts; the pieces quickly became soiled and blood-blotted, a trench rat chewed a large hole in the box, and fellow doughboys made fun of him, calling him “Jigsaw Jugglehead.” “It was a stupid idea,” Jonathan later wrote to Lucile from the front, “but I did somehow finish those tulips.” Ibid., 17 June 1914.

9. “I will not rest until I am sent to the front.”This letter is typical of the more than forty earnest yet politely couched appeals Jonathan sent to various public officials and army personnel in an attempt to overturn his disqualification from active duty in the First World War. The following, however, is a letter of a different sort, an unusual exception to the rule, submitted to demonstrate the degree of frustration Jonathan felt over not being able to pass muster for the muster. He later apologized for the harangue by sending its recipient a basket of fresh figs, following in the family tradition. JBP (carbon copy).

July 7, 1917

To Captain Reuben Milone

Draft Board

I beg you to reverse your decision regarding my suitability for service in the expeditionary force being assembled to fight in Europe. I was afforded not so much as an interview, receiving, as you must recall, the most cursory of visual inspections and a dismissal so preemptive that I was left brain-dazed from its celerity. In all my twenty-nine years I have never met a man so quick to prejudge another and so contemptuous of those who don’t fit neatly into one’s narrow concept of soldiering competency.

That very same day on which I was removed from any further consideration of my potential as infantryman, I learned that you had enthusiastically approved for active duty an obscenely obese baker with a maddening eye tic, three men wearing rouge and sequined pantlings, and a German-American youth who had just moments before his interview loudly professed his love for the Kaiser and his desire to sabotage whenever possible the efforts of the Allied armies to achieve victory and make the world safe for democracy. This was followed by a ditty that made my patriotic blood boil: “In my marrow I’m a Hun. Gonna have myself some fun. Shoot me a Yank, with a big ol’ tank. Turn a doughboy into a hot crossed bun!”

You had no difficulty approving any of the aforementioned candidates for service. Why you would not afford me the same consideration I do not know, although I am tempted to attribute the fact to simple stupidity, your mother being a simian creature far down the evolutionary ladder, perhaps a rung very near the bottom just above the introduction of opposable thumbs.

With all sincerity,

Jonathan Blashette

10. “Will somebody please enlist that courageous three-legged man before Colliers picks up the story and Pershing shits a brick?”Newton Baker to Tasker Bliss, 17 July, 1917U.S. Defense Department Archives.

11. “Now what do you want to go to that silly ol’ war for?”Lucile Moritz to Jonathan Blashette, 4 September1917, JBP.

12. “If you must go, I will be resigned, but I will miss you so.”Lucile Moritz to Jonathan Blashette, 15 September1917, JBP.

13. Each soldier was also provided a book of helpful French phrases.In Jonathan’s copy a few additional phrases have been scrawled on the blank last page. It is doubtful that he ever had the chance to use any of them. JBP, Ephemera Collection.

Monsieur le boucher, avez-vous un poulet qui n’est pas mort de la gale? Mr. Butcher, have you a chicken that didn’t die of poultry mange?

Excusez- moi, mon ami le fermier français, mais y a t’il des Boches morts dans votre grenier? Excuse me, my French farmer friend, but there are dead Boche in your hayloft.

Je n’ai pas demandé si votre fille étaìt une prostitutée; j’ai demandé si cette prostituée était votre fille. I didn’t ask if your daughter was a prostitute; I asked if this prostitute was your daughter. Pouvez-vous nous diriger vers le front? Nous sommes perdus et tres saouls et plutôt gênés. Can you direct us to the front? We are lost and very drunk and somewhat abashed.

Votre char est sur mon pied. Your tank is on my foot.

Quelque chose a pondu des oeufs dans vos cheveux. Something has laid eggs in your hair.

Est-ce la puenteur de la guerre que je sens ou êtes vous tous français? Is that the stench of war or are you all French?

JBP, Ephemera Collection

14. “I’m going to kill my sister.” Lucile had absolutely no control over her younger sister; Beryl would continue to write to Jonathan pretending to be Lucile until the end of the war. Jonathan got fairly good at distinguishing the counterfeit correspondence penned by Beryl from the legitimate letters written by Lucile, and even came to look forward to them as humorous diversion. What follows is one of Beryl’s more obvious efforts at deception. JBP.

April 17, 1918

My dearest Jonathan,

I miss you so deeply that the pain of your absence has manifest itself in a palpable ache in the abdomen that results in frequent bouts of crumpled cramping. You would not wish to see me right now.

Toddy asked me again last night to accompany him to the new Arline Pretty/Douglas Fairbanks picture. I confess that this time I succumbed and accepted his offer. I know that you would object strenuously to the liberties he took with me in the darkened theatre, yet I hunger so much these days for the touch of a man — any man, for that matter — including, but not limited to Mr. Pamida the unkempt ragman and his daft assistant Squib, and the offensive line of Devanter College’s varsity football team.

I left the theatre on Toddy’s arm, not because of any abiding affection for the gentleman but because I was undone. He had explored my body with his hands and mouth without intermission, finally leaving my bodice and undergarments in shameful dishabille. He then proceeded to take me to his lodgings on the outskirts of town where I was further disrobed and disgraced and where I do most grievously confess I came close to having my virtue fully compromised.

I must say, dearest Jonathan, that I am a woman whom you would do best to scorn and dismiss, having degraded myself not only with Toddy but with all manner of men, including, but not limited to, Teaseman the manure vendor and his grime-caked, toothless apprentice Happy, and the Wilkinson County Volunteer Fire Brigade.