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 into June 1918, and the wedding plans are coming together.
I asked my AI Assistant Anthropic Claude to tell the story of Emily and Lyle preparing for the wedding in early June 1918 (I offered helpful suggestions...).
(AI Google Notebook Infographic -- Wedding Plans Coming Together - Early June 1918)
Wrapping Up the Remaining Tasks --
Early June 1918
June 6th — The Church, Confirmed
On the first Thursday of June, before the errands of
ring-collecting and house-moving had fully consumed the month, Lyle
and Emily stopped at Central Christian Church on their way downtown.
Reverend Crabtree was in his small office off the sanctuary, and he
welcomed them with the same unhurried warmth he'd shown in March.
He confirmed the date in his calendar book — June 19th, two
o'clock, already entered in his careful hand since their first
conversation — and walked them through the order of service once
more, this time in more detail, since the day itself was now close
enough to require precision rather than general planning. He asked
whether they'd settled on any scripture reading. Emily had thought
about this and suggested a passage from Ruth — whither thou
goest, I will go — which Crabtree said was a fine and fitting
choice, if perhaps more commonly used than some, but no worse for
being commonly used, since the sentiment endured for good reason.
He asked after the marriage license, and Lyle told him they were
going to the County Clerk the following Thursday, June 13th, which
would leave the license current and in hand well before the ceremony.
Crabtree nodded, made a note, and reminded them gently that he'd need
the license itself brought to the church before the ceremony began —
a formality, he said, but a necessary one, and better remembered now
than discovered missing on the day.
"You'll want to arrive by one-thirty," he added. "Gives
us time to settle everyone before the two o'clock start, and a few
minutes for you both to catch your breath."
They thanked him and left, and Emily said, once they were back out
on E Street, "He remembers everything."
"It's his profession to remember everything," Lyle said.
"Weddings, at least. I imagine funerals require the same
attention, which must be a harder kind of remembering."
Emily considered this and said nothing further, but she held his
arm a little more firmly for the next block, in the way she did when
a thought had briefly touched something serious before releasing it
again.
June 8th — Approval
The paperwork came back to Corporal Briggs's desk on a Saturday,
which was unusual enough that Briggs mentioned it when Lyle came on
shift Monday morning.
"Approved," Briggs said, sliding the form across the
counter without ceremony. "Off-base housing, effective June
fifteenth. Your hours don't change — ten-hour days, six days,
Thursday liberty as before. You'll commute from wherever you've
landed."
"Harrison Avenue," Lyle said. "Near 22nd
Street."
"Trolley run from there's not bad," Briggs said, which
was, from Briggs, a form of congratulations. He made a notation in
the roster and moved on to the next matter, and that was the whole of
the Marine Corps's participation in Lyle Carringer's wedding,
delivered in under a minute and entirely sufficient.
Lyle wrote to Emily that evening with the news, and by Thursday,
when he arrived at First and Hawthorn with his Liberty Pass in his
pocket, she had already told Georgia, who had already told Della, who
had already begun, in her own quiet way, planning the moving weekend.
Thursday, June 13th — The County Clerk
The County Clerk's office occupied a solid, unglamorous building
downtown, its corridors busy with the ordinary business of a growing
city — property records, business licenses, and, in the appropriate
window, marriage licenses, processed by a clerk who had clearly seen
a great many young couples pass through and had developed a brisk,
kind efficiency in response.
Charlie Morrison and Gladys came along as witnesses, which had
been arranged the week before over lunch, when Emily asked Gladys
directly and Gladys said "obviously" in the tone she used
for things that required no further discussion, and Lyle asked
Charlie the same afternoon, receiving an equally immediate yes.
The clerk's questions came in the standard order, and Lyle and
Emily answered them in turn, the four of them — bride, groom, and
their two witnesses — arranged before the counter like a small
delegation.
Full legal names: Lyle Lawrence Carringer. Emily Kemp Auble.
Ages: twenty-six. Eighteen, as of the previous August. Both well
above the legal minimum — eighteen for the groom, fifteen for the
bride, under California's requirements — though the clerk noted
this almost as a formality, since neither of them was anywhere near
the threshold that would have required additional parental consent
paperwork.
Birthplaces: San Diego, California, for Lyle. Chicago, Illinois,
for Emily, a detail Charlie hadn't known and remarked on afterward —
"I always assumed you were a San Diego girl through and through"
— to which Emily replied that she'd been a San Diego girl since she
was eleven, which was long enough to count.
Current residences: both listed as San Diego, Lyle’s as the
Marine Base in Balboa Park, Emily's given as First and Hawthorn
Streets, both for the last time in any official capacity, since by
month's end it would no longer be true.
Occupations: Private First Class, United States Marine Corps
Reserves, for Lyle. Saleswoman, Marston's Department Store, for
Emily.
Names and birthplaces of parents: Henry Austin Carringer, born
Pennsylvania, and Abbey Ardelle Carringer, born Wisconsin, for Lyle.
Emily gave her father's name — the late Charles Auble, born in New
Jersey — and her mother's name, Georgianna (Kemp) Auble, born in
Ontario, Canada.
Previous marriages: none, for either of them, which the clerk
recorded with the brief efficiency of a question he asked a hundred
times a week and rarely needed to follow up on for a couple this
young.
The clerk had them both sign, then Charlie and Gladys signed as
witnesses beneath, and the license was issued — an official
document that made the wedding, in the eyes of the State of
California, a legal certainty six days before it became, in the eyes
of God and Central Christian Church, an actual one.
Outside on the courthouse steps, Charlie clapped Lyle on the
shoulder. "Well, that's official. County knows about it now, at
least."
"The county's opinion was never really in doubt," Gladys
said. "It's the church that matters." She turned to Emily.
"Speaking of which — I'll collect the dress from Mrs.
Hennessey Monday, and the flowers Matie's arranging can come to the
house on Tuesday evening so nothing wilts overnight. I'll bring
everything to the church myself Wednesday morning before I go to
work, so it's there and settled before anyone has to think about it."
"You've planned this already," Emily said.
"I plan things," Gladys said. "It's my nature. You
should be grateful rather than surprised at this point."
Emily was grateful, and said so, and the four of them parted on
the courthouse steps — Lyle and Emily back toward the trolley for
30th Street and dinner with Lyle’s family, Charlie and
Gladys back toward Marston's.
The House on Harrison Avenue
The house at 2064 Harrison Avenue was a modest single-story frame
cottage two blocks off the trolley line, furnished simply but
adequately by its owner, a Mrs. Halloran who had moved north to Los
Angeles to live with her daughter and preferred a steady tenant to an
empty house. Thirty dollars a month, three bedrooms, a kitchen with a
decent stove, and a small front porch that faced southwest, which
Emily noted approvingly meant they'd have the evening light.
Lyle moved in on Saturday, June 15th, with his father's help.
Austin borrowed a neighbor's flatbed cart for the morning and the two
of them made the short trip from 30th Street with Lyle's footlocker
contents from the base, his civilian clothes — worn only
occasionally in the past year and needing airing out before they'd be
fit for anything — and the small collection of personal items that
had accumulated in his room at his parents' house since childhood:
books, a few photographs and mementos, the Marine Corps citation he'd
received for his marksmanship qualification, and the box where his
letters from Emily lived, tied in bundles by month.
"You're keeping all of these?" Austin asked, hefting the
box, which had gained considerable weight since May 1917.
"Every one," Lyle said.
Austin didn't comment further, but he carried the box with visible
care, the way a man carries something he understands to be valuable
even if he wouldn't describe it that way himself.
They set up the front bedroom for Lyle and Emily, the smaller back
bedroom for Georgia, and left the third room, facing the garden,
empty for now — "for whatever comes," Austin said, with a
look that made Lyle color slightly and Austin laugh, once, briefly,
in the way he laughed perhaps four times a year.
On Sunday, Austin returned with the cart to help Emily and Georgia
move their own things from First and Hawthorn. Della came too, an
addition nobody had needed to request — she simply appeared at nine
in the morning in her working apron with a box of her own kitchen
linens as a housewarming contribution, and the four of them spent the
day in the productive, companionable chaos of a household
establishing itself.
Georgia directed the kitchen setup with the authority of a woman
who had run one for thirty years and did not intend to relinquish her
standards for the sake of a new address. Her pots went in the
cupboard nearest the stove, in the order she used them. Her good
china — inherited from her own mother, carried from Canada in 1889
— went on the high shelf, safe from careless hands, though there
were no careless hands in this household and everyone understood the
shelf placement to be ceremonial rather than strictly necessary.
Della and Emily made up the beds with linens from both households,
combined without much discussion into whichever configuration made
sense. Austin fixed a loose hinge on the pantry door that had
apparently been loose since Mr. Delacroix's tenancy, without being
asked, because fixing loose hinges was simply what Austin did with
his hands when they were near one.
By Sunday evening, the house at 2064 Harrison Avenue held enough
of both households' belongings to function, though Georgia's
remaining items — the larger pieces of furniture from her own room,
the things she wasn't ready to part with until the very end —
stayed behind at First and Hawthorn for now. She had given her notice
to vacate that address by June 30th, timed deliberately to fall after
the wedding and the two-night honeymoon, so that the final move could
happen without anyone rushing it.
"Two weeks," Georgia said, standing in the mostly-empty
front room at First and Hawthorn that evening, looking at what
remained. "That's enough time to leave a place properly."
To be
continued...
==============================
Here is the Video Overview of this story by Google NotebookLM (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. In this case, I don't know what their swedding rings looked like. I do know where they resided after their marriage.
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
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Copyright (c) 2026, Randall J. Seaver
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