Here is the latest chapter in the story of the courtship and early married life and times of my maternal grandparents, Emily Auble and Lyle Carringer, who married in June 1918. The background information and the list of chapters of their life together are listed at the end of this post. This is historical fiction with real people and real events, and is how it might have been.
And now we are up to September to November 1918, and life is routine until it isn't.
I asked my AI Assistant Anthropic Claude to tell the story of Emily and Lyle about their next two months in September to November 1918 (I offered helpful suggestions...but Claude remembered a major event I didn't consider).
(AI Google Notebook Infographic -- September to Early November 1918)
The Long Autumn: September to Early November
1918
September — Roads South and East
September settled over 2064 Harrison Avenue like a well-worn coat.
Lyle rose at half past five, six days a week, and rode the trolley to
the PX at Balboa Park. Emily rode the trolley to Marston's and the
gloves and accessories counter, where the fall stock was arriving and
Gladys Nolan was reporting on it from the administrative offices in
her usual undertone. Georgia ran the household with a precision that
neither of them could have matched, and by the second week of the
month she had made good on her promise to Mrs. Alcott next door: the
two women spent three sweltering afternoons in the Harrison Avenue
kitchen putting up tomatoes, beans, and a batch of cucumber pickles
that Georgia pronounced "adequate," which from her was a
rave.
"Eleven jars of tomatoes," she told Emily, setting the
last one on the pantry shelf with ceremony. "Della said she
managed nine."
"You asked her?"
"I inquired. Casually. On Sunday." Georgia lined up the
jars so their labels faced out. "She was gracious about it."
Mondays, meanwhile, had become the best day of the week. With
Austin's automobile at their disposal most weeks, Lyle and Emily had
worked their way through most of the city's familiar pleasures, and
in September they began pushing the edges of the map.
On the second Monday of the month, they drove south to Tijuana,
the three of them with a picnic basket and Georgia's cloth bag,
Austin's advice about the radiator ringing in Lyle's ears. The road
ran south through Chula Vista and the flat farmland beyond, the
Pacific haze lifting as the morning warmed, until the border town
appeared on its low hill: dusty, colorful, and louder than anything
they'd seen in San Diego.
The main street was a long run of curio shops, restaurants, and
cantinas, with vendors calling from doorways and Mexican music
drifting from somewhere around the corner. Emily, who had spent two
years learning the art of the polite sale, found herself on the other
side of the counter for the first time and discovered that she
enjoyed it. She bargained for a hand-embroidered blouse with a
shopkeeper who clearly recognized a professional when he saw one, and
the two of them arrived at a price with mutual respect and no hard
feelings.
Georgia was, to Lyle's mild surprise, entirely at ease. She
examined a rack of woven baskets with an expert eye, rejected three,
and bought a fourth with a lid, which she announced was for her
sewing. At lunch in a small restaurant with a courtyard and a tile
fountain, she tasted the chicken in red sauce, considered it for a
long moment, and ordered a second helping.
"Well?" Emily asked.
"It's not trying hard at all," Georgia said. "That's
the difference between this place and Coronado. They simply are what
they are." She took another bite. "I approve."
Lyle wrote that down that night in the leather notebook, under the
heading that was now a running feature: Georgia on Tijuana.
The following Monday took them in the opposite direction, east out
of the city through El Cajon and up into the back country toward
Descanso. The road climbed steadily, the coastal haze falling away
behind them, the air growing drier and cooler and smelling of sage
and dust. Somewhere past Alpine, on a long grade, the radiator began
to steam, exactly as Austin had predicted it would.
"He said it would do that," Lyle said, pulling to the
side of the road.
"Did he say what to do about it?" Georgia asked from the
back seat, entirely unruffled.
"Wait. Let it cool. Add water slowly."
"Then we'll wait," Georgia said, and got out of the car
to examine the view, which turned out to be spectacular: ridge after
ridge of chaparral and oak falling away toward the distant haze of
the coast, with the Pacific a faint glint on the horizon.
Descanso, when they reached it, was a hush of live oaks and tall
grass, a handful of cabins and a small store, and a creek running low
and clear under the trees. They spread a blanket in the shade and ate
a late lunch with the whole valley to themselves, the air sharp and
golden with the first hint of autumn. Emily lay back on the blanket
and watched the light move through the oak leaves.
"Do you realize how quiet this is?" she said.
"After Tijuana, I'd noticed," Lyle said.
"I could live somewhere like this," Emily said, and then
reconsidered. "No. I'd miss the trolley. And Marston's. And the
bay." She turned her head toward him. "But I'm glad we
came."
Georgia had wandered off down the creek with her shoes in her hand
and returned with a small collection of oak galls and a handful of
wild herbs, whose identity she announced with more confidence than
Lyle felt was strictly warranted. "I shall try them in the
stew," she said, and did, and nobody was ill afterward, which
she considered a vindication.
In between there were smaller Mondays: Balboa Park on a clear day,
when Lyle took the long way around the barracks so as not to find
himself accidentally recruited into anything; another afternoon at La
Jolla, the cove glittering below them, where Georgia found a sea
urchin shell and carried it home for the windowsill.
But at the very end of September, a note appeared in the
newspapers that none of them paid much attention to at first. A few
cases of influenza had been reported among sailors at the naval
training camp in Balboa Park, and a few more at Camp Kearny. The Sun
had assured its readers that San Diego was merely full of colds.
October — Gauze and Closed Doors
The colds turned out not to be colds.
By the first week of October, Lyle's base had gone under strict
precautions. The Marines were forbidden to leave the grounds without
specific permission, and men on liberty were told to avoid theaters
and public gatherings. Corporal Briggs delivered the new regulations
to the PX staff on a Tuesday morning with his usual economy: counters
were to be wiped down hourly, men were to be served in small groups
rather than crowded at the register, and everyone behind the counter
would wear a gauze mask from the beginning of shift to the end.
"Cheesecloth," Hennessey said, holding one up. "We
look like we're about to rob a stagecoach."
"You look like a man following orders," Briggs said.
"Put it on."
The city moved faster. On the twelfth of October the Board of
Health closed the schools, theaters, churches, and dance halls, and
the quarantine that began soon after would run into November. The
newspapers carried the weekly count in columns that crept upward: two
hundred cases, then more, a handful of deaths at first and then a
number that was harder to look at. Masks were urged and then insisted
upon, and the Union scoffed at them in an editorial, noting
that only highwaymen and holdup men wore them professionally. Most
San Diegans wore them anyway when they had to, with the expressions
of people who feel foolish and are not willing to take the chance.
Emily wore hers at Marston's, over the objections of nobody, since
Gladys had begun the day by tying one on with a flourish and
declaring that she had never looked so mysterious. The counters were
quieter, the aisles thinner. The store stayed open, but the customers
who came in stayed short and purposeful, and the afternoon traffic
was a ghost of itself.
At Harrison Avenue, Georgia dealt with the crisis the way she
dealt with everything, by assuming it could be managed if one was
thorough enough. She cut and hemmed a stack of gauze masks on the
kitchen table, boiled them each night, and laid them out by the door
for morning like an extra set of boots. She stopped the household's
visits to anyone who coughed. She scrubbed the doorknobs. She sent
Lyle to work with a sprig of eucalyptus in his pocket and a lecture,
and he took both.
"You don't believe the eucalyptus does anything," Emily
said.
"I don't believe it does harm," Georgia said. "And
I believe in being thorough."
Sunday dinners at 2105 30th Street went on, though not as they had
before. Austin came by with the automobile to fetch them rather than
have them share a crowded trolley, and the table at 30th Street held
only the household itself: Austin, Della, Abbie, Edgar when he could
manage it, and the three from Harrison Avenue. Davey and Amy stayed
away, as did Matie. The dinners were quieter and shorter. But they
went on, and no one suggested they shouldn't.
Austin's news from Rockwell Field was grave. The flu had thinned
the ranks of the student pilots, and the instructors were working
double duty. Flying schedules had been cut back and then cut back
again. "You can't teach a man to fly from his sickbed,"
Austin said, with the helpless irritation of a man who understood
engines and could do nothing about influenza.
On the sixteenth of October, Private Dowd, the PX's perpetual
gloom, came down with a fever and was moved to the base hospital.
Lyle noted the news in his notebook, flatly, and said nothing to
anyone at Harrison Avenue for two days, until Dowd's fever broke and
the news became bearable. When he finally mentioned it to Emily, she
took his hand and held it for a long time without saying anything.
The Monday liberty days were quieter now too. The drives to Ocean
Beach and La Jolla were out, since Lyle's pass restricted him to the
immediate neighborhood, and the trips to the back country were out as
well. They walked the streets around Harrison Avenue in the
afternoons, masks in their pockets for the moment, taking the air and
the small comforts that remained, and in the evenings Lyle sat at the
kitchen table with his notebook and drew plans.
The plans were for a house on Fern Street. He'd begun sketching
them in August, after Della and Austin's offer, and over the autumn
the sketches had grown from rough rectangles into something
resembling real floor plans: a front room with a bay window, a
kitchen large enough for Georgia to rule comfortably, three bedrooms,
a back porch facing the garden. Emily looked over his shoulder most
evenings and made suggestions that were, he noted, always correct.
"Put the pantry on the north wall," she said, tapping
the page. "It stays cooler."
"Why didn't I think of that?"
"Because you're an accountant and I'm a gloves woman. We
notice different things."
"That's an unfair division of labor," Lyle said, and
moved the pantry.
The Birthday That Waited
Emily had sent out the invitations on the seventh of October,
before anyone knew what the following week would bring. Twenty-two
small cream-colored cards, addressed in her careful hand, announcing
a birthday supper for Lyle Carringer on Saturday the second of
November at the Carringer home, 2105 30th Street, at six o'clock.
She'd spent two evenings on the guest list: the family, naturally,
and Charlie and Eddie Hartwell and the Yamamotos from the Class of
1913, Gladys and her boyfriend Boyd, and Ruth Clemens from the
telephone exchange, and the Teagues, whom they had come to know since
Emily's birthday. She had planned the menu with Della and the cake
with Georgia, and she had bought the gift.
The gift had taken her three weeks of thought. Lyle was a man of
few material wants. He didn't smoke, which ruled out the usual
masculine presents, and he already owned a perfectly good watch. But
in August, on a Monday at the beach, Emily had watched him look at a
small group of sailors photographing each other with a folding
camera, and she had noticed that he watched with more attention than
the scene deserved. She remembered that he had taken a photograph at
the road race in 1915, and the pictures of the Exposition he'd
mentioned, and the way he always studied the light on people's faces
as if working out how it might be fixed on paper. She had said
nothing. But she had gone to Marston's camera counter and asked a
great many questions, and in late September she had bought a Vest
Pocket Kodak, the little folding model that servicemen carried in
their breast pockets, and two rolls of film. It cost her a good part
of a month's savings, which she did not mention to anyone, including
Georgia.
On the fourteenth of October, when the quarantine took effect, she
sat down at the kitchen table with her pen and wrote twenty-two
notes: The supper for Lyle is postponed, with great regret, until
the health authorities permit it. Gladys wrote back that the
cancellation was an outrage and she intended to hold it against the
influenza personally. Charlie wrote that he would be there whenever
it was, if he had to walk.
So Lyle's twenty-seventh birthday, a Saturday, passed quietly.
He worked his full shift behind the mask, came home on the trolley
at dusk, and found the front room of Harrison Avenue lit by a single
lamp, a covered tin on the table, and Emily and Georgia waiting with
the expression of two people who have conspired and are not sorry
about it.
"Happy birthday," Emily said.
Georgia lifted the cover from the tin. The lemon cake sat inside,
three layers, perfectly iced, with twenty-seven small candles that
Georgia had counted out herself twice.
"We couldn't have the party," Emily said. "But we
could have the cake."
Lyle looked at the cake, and then at the two of them, and was for
a moment without any words at all. Then he blew out the candles in
one breath, and Georgia cut the first slice and handed it to him.
"Lemon," he said, after tasting it.
"Obviously," Georgia said.
"It's perfect."
"I know."
The gift came out after the cake. Emily had wrapped it in brown
paper tied with string, and she watched his face as he opened it with
the same careful attention he gave every package now. He lifted the
lid on the small box and went still.
"It's a Kodak," he said, in the voice of a man naming
something he'd been afraid to want.
"The Vest Pocket model. The soldier's camera, the clerk
called it." Emily's voice was brisk, but her eyes weren't. "It
fits in a pocket. You can carry it anywhere. And I thought, you
notice things. The way people look. I thought you might like to keep
some of them."
Lyle turned the little folding camera over in his hands, working
the latch, opening the bellows, looking through the finder at the
lamp and the room. He didn't say anything for some time. Then he set
it down, crossed the room, and kissed her.
"Come outside," he said. "There's still light on
the porch."
He loaded the first roll himself, with his hands only slightly
unsteady, and he stood Emily and Georgia on the porch steps in the
last of the October dusk. Georgia objected. She said she did not
require her picture taken. She said photographs were for people who
had something to prove. Emily said, "Mother," in the
particular tone she used on exactly one person in the world, and
Georgia sighed, lifted her chin, and held perfectly still.
It was the first photograph Lyle took with his own camera, and
when it was developed two weeks later, it showed two women on a porch
step in the failing light: one young, laughing, her hair coming
loose; the other upright and formidable, her hands folded in her lap,
with just a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth that she would
have denied was there if asked. He kept it all his life.
To be continued ...
==============================
Here is the Video Overview of this story by Google Gemini Notebook (also on my YouTube channel here):
This is historical fiction based on the facts that are available for the life and family of my maternal grandparents, Lyle and Emily(Auble) Carringer. It is based on my research, social history and society norms at the time and place, and it is likely realistic. It might have happened this way.
Stay tuned for the next chapters in this family story.
==========================
- Emily and Lyle's Story: The Dance.
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: A San Diego Romance In 1917.
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: The Promise Made.
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Letters From Boot Camp – Part 1, May 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Letters From Boot Camp – Part 2, May-June 1917.
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Letters From Boot Camp – Part 3, Weeks 5 and 6, June 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Letters From Boot Camp – Part 4 (Weeks 7 and 8), Late June to July 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Coming Home -- Lyle’s Leave, July 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Lyle Carringer Starts Work at the PX
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Lyle’s First Liberty Day -- August 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Emily’s Birthday Gift, August 1917 (Part 1)
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Emily’s Birthday Gift, August 1917 (Part 2)
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Lyle’s 26th Birthday Party in 1917 (Part 1)
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Lyle’s 26th Birthday Party in 1917 (Part 2)
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Holiday Season, Thanksgiving to Christmas 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: New Year’s Eve, 1917
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Ordinary Days, January and February 1918
- Emily and Lyle's Story: The Wedding Plan, March 1918 (Part 1 of 2)
- Emily and Lyle's Story: The Wedding Plan, March 1918 (Part 2 of 2)
- Emily and Lyle's Story: Wedding Preparations in April and May 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Wrapping Up the Remaining Tasks – Early June 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Parental Counsel – Mid-June 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: The Wedding of Emily and Lyle – June 19, 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: The Honeymoon and Back To Work, June 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Georgia Moves In, Late June 1918
- Emily and Lyle’s Story: Monday People -- July and August 1918
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Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver
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