Restless, part two

Leta hadn't meant to, nor did she intend to, but somehow she spent nearly five hours in a bar, from shortly after 8:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. She had wasted those hours. She had wanted something to happen, but nothing happened. She had six drinks. She nodded to a couple of the men who were also in the establishment. Most of them were much younger than she, so she focused her attention on the older ones. However, the older ones either kept entirely to themselves or simply turned from her when she caught their attention.

These men must have seen her. Throughout the night, she was one of only ten women in the entire place. Four of them were obviously with their husbands or regular male companions. They came, kept to themselves mostly, and then left after an hour or two. Two were younger women, either escaping home for a night or seeking male companionship. Both stayed at least two hours and seemingly left alone, but Leta knew this deceptive practice. Right before the women left, one of the men with whom they had been speaking paid his bill (and most likely hers as well) and left before her. He was obviously waiting outside for her. Two of the women came together, as if checking out the place or getting a quick drink after going to the picture show. Leta watched them through the mirror that was on the wall behind the counter. They sat at a table and attempted to keep to themselves. A couple of the men spoke to them. Someone from across the room sent drinks to them. They shuddered and ignored him. After an hour, they left.

That left two other single women, both of whom sat at the bar for a couple of hours. One of the women was rotund with heavy make-up and a blouse that highlighted her ample bosom. She was loud and laughed with ridiculous ease. The other looked dirty and worn. Her clothes were out of style, and she spent much of her time pretending to stare into her constantly refilled glass of wine. Both were in their fifties, but looked older than they were. Neither was very attractive, and they drank steadily for the two hours they stayed at the bar. They walked uncertainly when they finally left. Leta shook her head sadly. She never wobbled after drinking in a bar.

As the evening wore on, she altered her intentions. Initially, she gave credence only to the more handsome men. However, when none even spoke to her, she turned her attention to the less handsome ones, the ones who seemed to be out of place and perhaps as in need of companionship as she was. Sometimes a fellow would smile, but mostly she felt ignored. She looked fine. She held her figure. She had bright eyes and an easy smile. How was it that no one showed any interest in her at all?

Was she in the right place, or had the times changed so drastically from the days when she was younger, never had to pay for her own drinks and constantly had some man or other eagerly speaking to her? She could not possibly have been doing anything wrong? Had she finally reached a point in her life where meeting a fellow, even to satisfy her own womanly needs for an hour was not going to be possible?

What was she going to do?

After she left the bar and was heading toward the trolley stop, Leta realized that the trolley was no longer running. She should have asked the bartender to call a taxi for her. She stood on the sidewalk. The street was deserted. A dampness had settled in the air. Eventually, it would rain, but not immediately. She turned back toward the bar. She could go back and ask the bartender to call, but she had already moved past that point. There was no turning back. Life moved forward. She drew her collar toward her neck, looked around for any potential threat, sighed deeply and then crossed the street.

An hour later she entered her apartment, kicked off her shoes, dropped her purse onto the chair and lay down on her sofa. Her legs were tired, her eyes were tired, and her heart was heavy. She pulled the afghan that she kept on the back of the sofa over her, wrapped herself as tightly as she could, and gradually settled into a restless sleep.

Restless, part one

Leta had plenty to do. She wanted to write a letter to her sister Mabel. She wanted to hem a dress. She wanted to make dinner. She wanted to read her magazine, finish reading the newspaper, read her book. The two shelves of knick-knacks needed to be dusted and the collection of red glass items she had on them needed to be washed. She could sort through her old stockings, write her grocery-shopping list, telephone her sister Louise whom she had not spoken to in more than three weeks. She could reorganize her jewelry box. There were a number of tasks waiting for her attention and time, but something else pulled at her. The sensation was almost outside of herself, as if a spirit in the air blocked her from what she wanted to do and pushed her to what she didn’t want to do.

Still, she did her chores. She washed, dried and put away the supper dishes. She collected all of the trash in the apartment into one basket and took it down the stairs and out the back to the larger garbage bins where she emptied it, hoping that she might see someone and strike up a conversation. She saw no one.

When she returned to the apartment, she washed her hands and examined a blemish on her neck, a little scratch. She looked at her fingernails. They were growing but not yet in need of a manicure. She retrieved paper and her pen from a drawer in the buffet and sat at the table. “To my dearest Mabel,” she wrote immediately and then stared at the blank paper for what seemed like many minutes before standing up and pacing around the room. She sat in her chair by the window and started to smoke a cigarette, but after a few puffs, she put it out. There was a smudge on the window, and she made a mental note to wipe it off later.

It was only eight in the evening. She had finished her supper and washed and dried the dishes by six. She had been basically doing nothing for two hours of this. Nothing else was pressing, and the nagging external spirit led her to the bedroom, where she changed out of her house dress and into something more elegant, selected earrings and a necklace, combed her hair, and finally left the apartment. While she was preparing, she told herself that if the telephone rang, she would stay home, but it did not. When she left the apartment, she told herself that if the streetcar was not there or if there was no one else waiting, she would return home, even though she had spent time and energy preparing for the evening. However, the streetcar was waiting for her. She rode the three stops to within one block of her destination—Larkin’s bar.

I’ll just sit quietly at the bar, she told herself. I’ll just have a couple of drinks, just enough to relax. Then I’ll go home.

Before she opened the door, she decided that if the place was crowded, she would not stay. After all, she was really just there to settle her nerves, to relax with a couple of drinks, to get out of the house where she was alone and to be in the presence of others.

The bar wasn’t crowded, but it was full. She decided to stay. There wasn’t a seat available at the bar, so she stood for a few minutes until a generous young man gave her his. He didn’t look at her, not really. He simply grabbed his beer stood and gestured. “For you, ma’am,” he said. She looked him over, but he walked into the crowd before she finished. She sat at the bar. She drank three scotches, and as she sat there, every three or four minutes, she surveyed the room. The men all seemed younger, energetic, engaged,  When she caught the eye of a couple of them and smiled, they turned away quickly. Time passed.

At 1:00 a.m., she gathered herself together. The bar was nearly empty by this time. The bartender was at the other end of the counter, chatting with a couple of jolly young men. Leta took a deep breath and walked out the door into the night.

To be continued.

Gray Hairs

One summer morning, Leta was combing her hair back so she could put it and get it out of the way to undertake the laundry. She had been letting it pile up over a three-week period of constant rain, and decided that enough was enough. She had no clean towels remaining, and her bedding was in desperate need to be refreshed. Her husband Ora perspired constantly. In addition, the children—Vivian and Dale—were beginning to look a little ragged. A good cleaning would refresh them all. She woke her early with the warm and inviting sun on her face. She smiled. Today would be a good day.

She rose quickly, dressed and washed her face. Then she set to combing her hair, which she would pin up in a bun under a scarf for the day. She kept her hair relatively short, and didn’t usually resort to this style. Yet, her chore called, and she didn’t want it getting in the way or even splattered with soap.

The sight of it startled her. There it was plain as her nose, in the middle of her forehead, pulled back with the rest of its peers—a highly noticeable gray hair.

Having gray hair terrified her, and over the years, she spent some thought-energy puzzling through her response when hers started growing in. Now here it was, and all she could think was to immediately yank out the culprit, which she did. She isolated it, yanked it out and then held it up to the light. “It’s gray all right,” she said aloud.

She could have ruminated for a long period on the consequences of this new development, but a quick inspection under the light yielded no other culprit and the laundry wasn’t going to wash itself. She put her hair up and covered it, and proceeded to complete her task. At the end of the day, she made another thorough check. When she found no other gray hairs, she simply forgot. For a few days, at least. On Saturday evening, she was again combing out her hair to prepare for a washing and there it was, a second gray hair. She quickly yanked it out, took a deep breath and then proceeded to comb her hair. Then she saw another, and pulled it out. After that, she refused to look closely at her hair. She washed it, dried it and let its natural curl tighten.

A few days later while she and her daughter Vivian were shucking peas at the kitchen table, Vivian began to look inquisitively at her, squinting her eyes under her glasses.

“What is it?” Leta inquired at almost the same time that her daughter said her name.

“I think you have some gray hairs, Ma,” Vivian said.

Leta swallowed hard. “Are you sure it’s not the light? It’s shining right across my head.”

Vivian reached her hand across and fingered several hairs on the side of Leta’s head, as if she was separating threads. Then she stepped back.

“I don’t think so,” Vivian said. “Those are gray hairs.”

“Well, don’t just stand there, then,” Leta snapped. “Pull them out.”

“All of them?”

“There can’t be that many. How many are there?”

“Four or five at least.”

“At least?”

Vivian resumed inspecting her mother’s hair. “And there are some over here and here. Ma, you have more gray hairs than I think I can pull out.”

“Stop it,” Leta ordered, slapping her daughter’s hands away. She stood abruptly, nearly knocking the girl over. “Finish the peas. I’m going to take a look at this myself.”

She wasn’t old enough to have so many gray hairs, she decided, peeling sections of her hair back and around. This was entirely unacceptable. Her sisters had gray in their hair. Her sister-in-law Florence had gray in her hair. But they were all older than she was. She was a lively woman, energetic, outgoing, witty, charming. Old women weren’t like that. Old women stayed home, cleaned house, knitted, gossiped. Old women pulled their hair back and wore housedresses and aprons on the street. She did none of these things. When she went out of the house, she dressed for it. How could she possibly have gray hair?

As she stared at herself in the mirror, terrified of the prospects for a woman with gray hair, she decided that she would have her beautician color it. She knew no other woman in her circle that did so, and these women often talked negatively about the women who did dye their hair—they were morally questionable and vain. But Leta did not are what these women thought. She made her appointment for Monday morning.

Leta was unhappy with the result. Although the beautician tried to match her natural color, result was two shades different. The natural shadings that gave their hair depth disappeared. It also lost its sheen and luster, and the result was artificial. Her hair looked dyed. Plus, the chemicals in the dye made her scalp burn. While she was sitting in the chair, she gripped its arms at the pain.

So Leta had to settle with what she had. At age 34, Leta began to have gray hair.

Edward Roy Metzker

Edward Roy Metzker was born to William B. and Anna (Haas) Metzker on November 10, 1914. According to the 1920 census, the family lived on Dearborn Avenue in Oregon Township. William was a salesman in a hardware store. William and Anna had one other child—Doris Jane, born June 17, 1923.

Edward attended Clay High School in Oregon Township and graduated in 1932. After graduating, he became a ham radio operator and enjoyed conversations with other enthusiasts all over the world.

On September 5, 1936, Edward married Vivian Faye Chetister in Lucas County, Ohio. She was 23 years old, and he was 22. He was a glass cutter, and she worked in an attorney’s office. Their first child, Donald Edward Metzker, was born on January 17, 1939. Edward and Vivian had two other children: Larry Alan, born on June 30, 1951, and Linda Leigh, born on August 24, 1953.

According to the 1940 census, Vivian and Ed lived on Dearborn Avenue in Oregon Township. Donald was one year old. Ed was an office clerk.

During World War II, from 1942 to 1945, he was a Civilian Naval Personnel, helping design and install radar systems for aircraft. In 1948, Ed and his father built a house at 608 Robindale Avenue in Oregon, Ohio, where he would spend the rest of his days. He also began working for Champion Spark Plug and remained with the company as a research and development engineer until his retirement in 1980.

In 1953, he joined the Oregon Board of Education. In August 1957, the people of Oregon Township voted to incorporate as a city; Edward was one of the individuals that spearheaded this vote. The timing was crucial, as the neighbor city of Toledo was aggressively seeking to annex parts of the township. Ed was elected Interim Charter Commissioner and chaired the finance committee. In 1958, Oregon adopted a charter to make the city official, and Edward stepped off the Commission rather than take a post as a City Councilmember. He assumed the post of head of the new city’s Civil Service Commission.

Edward, Vivian and their family were members of First St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, where Ed served on the Church Council for several years.

On February 23, 1976, Vivian went into the hospital for hip replacement surgery. Following the surgery, she began to recover as expected. For the surgery, she stopped taking her Coumadin, a medication that prevents blood clotting. On Friday morning, February 27, during her physical therapy she noted that she was having trouble breathing. By afternoon, she had died of a blood clot in her lungs. She was 62 years old.

On October 27, 1979, Edward married Ethel Dora Amsler Swope, whose husband Forrest had died in 1976. He was 64, and she was 65. They had known each other since high school. Ethel moved into the Robindale house with him, and the couple merged their families. Ethel had two sons, Ray and Ron, and eight grandchildren. Ed had four grandchildren and a fifth on the way.

Edward died of congestive heart failure on August 12, 1996. He was 81 years old. He left behind his wife Ethel, sister Doris Meier, three children, two stepsons, 13 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren. Ethel died on September 4, 2004, at age 90.