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Preface to the First Edition - Like a Montage
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Preface to the First Edition Like a Montage montage n. 1.a. The art, style, or process of making one pictorial composition from many pictures or designs closely arranged or superimposed upon each other [. . .] 3. A mixture of images. The American Heritage Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary On answering the phone she said, “Speak slow and loud. I am hard of hearing.” I explained the purpose of the interview, and she responded, “Nothing makes an old woman happier than to talk about the past.” A time to meet was arranged. The white frame house, set close to the street, was modest and traditional with a full, screened-in porch. She came to the door and her face was flushed. It was apparent she had been out in the pressing heat and humidity of the early summer morning. A ball belonging to children across the street had strayed into her azaleas and she had been trying to repair the damage. She did not appear angry with the children. Inside, the furnishings were simple and functional. There was nothing to suggest the dazzling lifestyle that had been just across the river. A gentle, chunky dog with short legs and sagging middle acknowledged my presence and then ambled to a corner. A cat stretched indifferently in the dining room. The woman commented that nothing gave her “ego” quite the boost as coming home to the greetings of her two pets. I thanked her for visiting with me and she said, “Young man, I have nothing but time, but it takes time to take it.” Although she and her generation can never recover the legacies of youth, Marian von Dohlen retained a mind that brought the war years into sharp and lively focus. From time to time she apologized for her memory, they called it the war effort xviii but she leaned forward in concentration and spoke instinctively, her recollections flowing with energy and confidence. The war years, when she was Mrs. Sam Smith, the belle of the Grove Dinner Club, are as distant as all half-century yesteryears, but she resurrected memories without apparent regret. Gone are the wartime festivities of “The South’s Finest Dinner Club, Famous From Coast to Coast.” Gone are the $500 dresses, the infatuations of youthful sea-bound naval officers, the lavish banquets, the launching parties, Pops the waiter, Slim the bartender, and Sam. Likewise departed are the shipyards and their furious activity, the tent cities, the boomtown vitality and fervor of war. Riverside, the site of thousands of temporary government housing units, is now a wasteland. Massive, long abandoned shipways list silently into the Sabine. No longer does the hollow booming of hammered hulls reverberate throughout the day and night, nor do thousands upon thousands of shipbuilders shoulder out of the yards. These are now but fleeting images she shares with fewer and fewer from that brief era. “Sometimes I have a lot of time to think,” she said, “and I think of [the war years]. But it’s like a montage, it just comes and goes.” She seemed tired when we concluded. Like a montage, maybe what follows is an art form, an Orange montage : narrated pictures of Orange, Texas, and the years of World War II. The different images merge and meld to form a new representation. More precisely, it is a composite portrait of people, the Orange people who were there. Ms. von Dohlen is one of those, but also included are Jewel Force, Edna Hare, S. K. Hubert, and Marion Tilley, all approaching centenarianism at the time they were interviewed. Many individuals from other life stages and other circumstances were part of the Orange war effort and they, too, contribute to the account. Personalities and perspectives are juxtaposed and superimposed one upon the other in a collective recreation of time past. These individuals provide the organization for this volume.Their recollections allow a personal glimpse into the very anatomy of a unique place and time. Themes, topics, conclusions, analyses—all are subordinated to a focus on lives. It is a story of adjustment and the remarkable transformation of a sleepy little southern town into a vigorous wartime shipbuilding center; a narrative of interrupted lives and people caught up in surviving what was to become a “maelstrom of social change.” In Life Histories and Psychobiography, William M. Runyan examined basic conceptual and methodological issues related to the study of individual lives. One of his conclusions was that “detailed studies of individual life histories” have special value...