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Title
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Scottsbluff Narratives, 1946_010
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Alternative Title
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1946 Scottsbluff Narratives
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Date
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1946
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Creator
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Frank Shoemaker
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Description
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Frank Shoemaker - Sandhills Narratives
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Identifier
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321301
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Transcription
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Aug. 18, '46 (sheet 2) With what I carried it made quite an armful; so presently I entered the postoffice, almost empty on Sundays, to use desk space for reassembling the papers; and while so doing, Mrs. Mattes entered. She is the mother of Merrill Mattes, custodian of Scott's Bluff National and my friend and daily associate of the mid-'thirties; so I gave her numerous botany and bird papers to take home and look over. Merrill's early return from an eastern trip is expected. Then it occurred to me to call on Wylma Nichols' mother. I was about to leave the postoffice and hunt up a telephone directory to find her address, when a woman turned from her box, carrying a fair lot of mail; she will know, I thought. So I ventured to inquire, stating the fact of my friendship with the family several years ago, before Wylam's marriage. She said at once, "I live quite near Mrs. Nichols, and I am now going home. May I drive you to her place?" I found Mrs. Nichols at home; only one boy, her youngest, is now with her, and he was absent for the moment. She recognized me at once with lovely cordiality, after my absence of eight years, and we visited for an hour and a half. She told me of her family and their wartime occupations; all of the boys, except the youngest now with her, having been in active service, and all of them surviving; all married, and having a child or children. But to me the most thrilling narrative concerned Wylma. She had been in West Coast production service for war, for a year or two, and left San Diego finally to join and marry her fiancé, stationed then and I believe for two to three years preceding, as an officer in the military service at Pearl Harbor. She reached Hawaii late in November, and they were married at once. Their housing was in a building on the water's edge. -On December 6, the mere fact that "tomorrow" was Sunday and her husband absent on military duty, led her to spend that nigh t with friends. -On Sunday December 7, their home (a hotel? apartment house?) was totally demolished with many deaths, by the Japanese attack. Her husband was somewhere in the confusion, his status not known for days. Meanwhile he of course knew of the destruction of their home, so his state of mind may be barely imagined. They finally got together. But it was a month before Mrs. Nichols received happy assurance. Wylma is a slight, comely little thing, about 4 ft. 10in., with a maximum displacement of 95 pounds; and I am sure that that appraisal must be in troy weight. During my tenure in Gering, she and her brothers and I had many happy trips together, about the Bluff and in the badlands, among the flowers and birds.
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Rights
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To inquire about usage, please contact Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. These images are for educational use only. Not all images are available for publication.
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Is Version Of
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frank_h_shoemaker_321301-03993.jpg
