Christmas oranges

I saw an orange in a bowl of fruit on Thanksgiving day.

It made me think about stories of the Depression told by my mother when I was little. In turn, that led me to a picture of where my grandmother worked during those hard times.

There was always an orange in my Christmas stocking when I was a kid. I was never overly impressed by the orange. As I turned the stocking upside down to shake out the contents each Christmas morning, my mother would inevitably tell me how a fresh orange was a real treat for her and her brother and sisters at Christmastime during the Depression.

But by the time I was a kid in the late 1940s, oranges were much more plentiful, even in the dead of winter. It would be years before I learned exactly what the Depression meant and before I could appreciate that, back then, wintertime oranges were scarce -- and therefore highly valued.

For my mom, in the midst of tougher times than I had ever known, the orange in her stocking was a prized present because it was meant purely to be enjoyed. It was an indulgence to be savored when what few other Christmas presents she got were practical: socks, underwear, shoes, or a new dress sewn by my grandmother.

Times in Richmond during the Depression were hard, although not as tough as in some other areas of the country. Both of my mother's parents were fortunate enough to have jobs. Her father worked for the C&O railroad. My grandmother, after her five children were older, worked as a seamstress. The sewing skills she had learned from her mother and used to clothe her own brood stood her in good stead. In the 1930s, she was employed by the Friedman-Marks Clothing Co. The company survived, even thrived, during the Depression. Friedman-Marks, the tobacco industry, and the DuPont plant helped to keep Richmond's economy afloat.

(If you're old enough, you might remember the Rockingham men's-clothing store near Sears on Broad Street. Rockingham was a Friedman-Marks trademark. The company went out of business a few decades ago.)

As I grew to be an adult, I finally got it: I realized that my mom was putting those oranges in my Christmas stocking each year as a reminder to herself, and as a lesson to me, about scarcity and value.

Yesterday, I was still thinking about that orange I saw in a bowl of fruit on Thanksgiving day. My curiosity led me online to find out more about the Great Depression and its effect on Richmond. That's where I learned that the Friedman Marks Clothing Co. had been an economic mainstay for so many Richmond families.

And I found a picture of all of the company's employees, taken sometime in the 1930s. They're all standing outside the Friedman Marks factory in Richmond. There are so many of them, and their faces in the picture are small. It's hard to recognize anyone specific.

But my grandmother is likely one of those hard-working seamstresses.

She used her sewing skills during the Depression to help my grandfather put food on the table and to buy what they couldn't make for themselves.

And to buy oranges in wintertime to put in their children's stockings for Christmas morning.

The four seasons

I like living in a place with four distinct seasons.

It means that no matter what kind of weather you prefer, you'll inevitably get your wish.

Sooner or later.

It seems to me that the changing leaves have been spectacular in Richmond this fall -- richer in color than they have been in recent years. I passed this tree on Monument Avenue this morning on my way home from fitness class. If the color of its leaves were any more intense, it would be considered "showy." And we all know that Richmond doesn't do "showy."

Some people are looking forward to winter. Not me. Rest assured, I'm glad that we get the occasional foot of snow. And the city is beautiful on the sparkling sunny mornings that seem to follow ice storms. But the price that snow and ice exact is high. Trying to cope in a house without power or heat or lights on a cold January night can be, as my Grandfather Nichols used to say, rougher than a cob.

I usually cope with winter by hunkering down, laying in a supply of firewood, checking the batteries in the flashlights and radios, making sure I have kerosene for the lamps and becoming obsessed by the weather channel.

Spring is my favorite season -- or, more specifically, late spring, when the dogwoods and azaleas bloom. Spring is a season that tantalizes the senses. Spring seems to hint that we might get life right this time.

Sitting in the jury box

"Justice? You get justice in the next world; in this world you have the law."

--American novelist William Gaddis (1922-1998)

In real life, court trials are not all about DNA.

They're more about common sense.

If real life were like TV drama, there wouldn't be so many trials down at the John Marshall Courts Building. If the defendant's body fluids are all over the crime scene, where's the doubt? If immutable testimony puts the accused on the scene with a bloody knife in his hand, what's the issue? When the facts are black and white, who needs a jury? Clear-cut cases most often end in plea bargains.

A few years ago, I was summoned for jury duty and served in two trials. Both cases involved thoughtful consideration of the nuances of the testimony and the evidence.

The forensic scientist who testified in the first case, which was about a grim double murder, wasn't much help. The key to the case turned out to be a dumb mistake made by the defendant. In the second, a traffic case, it was one man's word against another's.

Sitting in the jury box is often confounding. But it seems to me that the really important thing to remember is that you're not supposed to leave your common sense at the jury-room door.

The two-day murder trial was about two brutal drug-related killings in a parked car, at night, on the city's Northside. In his rush to get away, the killer had left his cell phone in the car's back seat. Guilt or innocence hinged on cell-phone records that took up hours of the prosecution case. Testimony was confusing. It was up to the jury to sort it out and connect the dots. We did, using our common sense. Without too much dithering we found the defendant guilty and sentenced him to 40 years.

The second case was about an automobile accident, and both sides admitted that there was no way for us to really know who was telling the truth. Two cars crashed at an intersection. Both drivers claimed their light was green. There were no other witnesses. Both sides were equally credible. Again, those of us on the jury used our common sense: we compromised. The man who had been injured in the crash was awarded his minimum medical expenses but nothing more.

Did we mete out justice?

I'll never know with certainty.

But in both cases we thought we were as fair as we could be -- using our common sense.

Into the wild blue yonder

Virginia War Memorial (2010 Don Dale photo)

My friend Bill was the first person to take me flying.

Airplanes were always his thing. He hung around the old Northfield Airport in Hanover County when he was a very young teenager and eventually snagged a job. He traded his meager paycheck for flying lessons, and by the time we were in high school together he was routinely flying solo. He was as happy a kid as you'd want to know, especially when he was in the air.

He took a couple of us up in a pint-size plane one afternoon during high school graduation week for the class of 1960. That sunny June afternoon was the first time I had ever flown, and I loved it.

Bill and I were both accepted at the University of Richmond, and we hung out together there, too, in the Slop Shop between classes, in the Student Center and at freshman mixers. When fraternity rush started, we explored maybe half of the dozen or so houses on campus and decided that the one we really wanted was Phi Delta Theta.

The brothers at the house on the hill did issue us a bid, and we both accepted. Bill and I became not merely friends, but brothers among Phi Delts who prized "sound learning and rectitude." (Phi Delts also prized raucous parties at the house on the hill, preferably with a bottle of Virginia Gentleman hidden away in the kitchen because the university forbade alcohol.)

In his spare time, Bill continued to perfect his skill at piloting small planes, while I devoted my energies to campus journalism.

In the late 1960s, the Vietnam War was raging and Bill and I were both in the Air Force. Bill joined after graduation and became a fighter pilot. His squadron was stationed near Dallas. I was in basic medical training school at Wichita Fall, Texas. We got together for a weekend to catch up. It was especially important to be able to spend time with an old friend when we were both far from Richmond.

I wound up as a surgery tech at a small hospital in Bitburg, Germany. Bill's squadron of fighter jocks wound up in Vietnam. I got a letter from home one day. Bill was dead. His plane was shot down in a dogfight over the South China Sea.

Bill was the first person I knew personally who was killed in Vietnam. He was not to be the last.

I got to thinking about Bill on Thursday, Veterans Day. Yesterday, I spent some time at the Virginia War Memorial thinking about what it all means.

A commonplace observation

Pansies planted yesterday in two urns next to the front steps have already found the sun. (Don Dale 2010 photo)

Fall planting is an act of faith -- a demonstrated conviction that we'll survive the coming winter to appreciate spring anew.

Planting is always an act of faith. Ask the farmer who earns his living in his fields or the gardener who takes pleasure in getting his hands dirty. Both put things in the ground with the hope that they'll survive and flourish. All the while, they know it's a crap shoot.

I completed the last of the fall planting yesterday. I've put down grass seed front and back, added a pink crape myrtle to bring some color next summer to a spot along the fence in the back yard, added to a row of yellow and red tulips along the front walkway, filled in a few bare spots in the daffodil bed under the big maple in the back, and replaced the impatiens with pansies in two urns on either side of the front-porch steps. The pansies, which bloom even through snowstorms, will provide winter cheer. They'll tide me over when the days are ragged and short.

Sure, there are those who will say that rattling on about investing in springtime is trite. They're right. It's trite because it's commonplace, because everybody who plants is moved to express the agreeable emotions that accompany the act. So call me trite.

But call me next spring, too, when my tulips and daffodils are in bloom, and I'll tell you how much I'm enjoying the display of color. Faith in the future -- even though it's demonstrated with just a few seeds, bulbs, plants and shrubs -- distinguishes us as a species.

One engine and a prayer

The interior of a working Gooney Bird was Spartan, but the plane, which was the military version of the DC-3 airliner, was a workhorse. (U.S.A.F. undated photo)

TV news coverage this week of the engine troubles on board an Airbus A380 with 440 passengers over the Pacific reminded me of a white-knuckle flight in an Air Force Gooney Bird in the late 1960s.

The Bitburg Air Base football team needed a medic to work its practices and games in 1967. I was working as a surgery tech at the Bitburg hospital. The team had a couple of away games that year, one at a Royal Air Force base in Mildenhall, England, and another in Naples, Italy. Being the team medic was a volunteer job. I took it. For me, the payback was the free plane trips.

The Bitburg Gooney Bird was an adventure in itself. The Gooney Bird -- so nicknamed because of the way the nose sits high up in the air when the plane is on the ground -- was Bitburg's small, general-purpose, work-horse troop and cargo transport. It had been around since World War II. The interior was Spartan -- stripped-down seats and no passenger amenities. Known officially as the C-47 Skytrain, the Gooney Bird was the military version of the commercial DC-3 airliner, but with a cargo door and a reinforced floor.

The two-engine, propeller-driven C-47 had been a mainstay during World War II. Gooney Birds dropped supplies to American forces who were surrounded by the Germans at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. They also famously flew over "The Hump" from India into China. They played a major role in the early stages of the post-war Berlin Airlift.

By the late 1960s, the Gooney Bird was far from being state-of-the-art, but it was such a reliable and sturdy plane that many were still in service then. A few are still flying today.

The football team's flight to Naples was noisier, longer and rougher than the trip would have been on a commercial airliner, but it was uneventful -- until we were about 30 minutes away from landing. We heard a boom. We looked out the window and saw flames and smoke pouring from the back of the right engine. Lots of flames. And lots of smoke.

Heck yes, we were scared. One of our two engines was on fire in a plane that was older than we were. But we were Air Force troops, and coming in on one engine and a prayer was something we had to be cool about. So we stayed calm. The pilot sent back word that all was under control and we'd be on the ground shortly.

Yeah. Right.

The flames coming from the engine grew larger and smoke continued to billow. Eventually the propeller stopped turning, the engine fire-suppression system kicked in, and the heavy black smoke tapered off.

We did land safely on our one good engine, although touchdown was rough. Keeping the plane flying level and straight wasn't easy under the circumstances.

On the ground, firemen in flame-retardant suits and headgear raced to meet us and sprayed foam on the dead engine. We all watched through the windows and applauded. When the pilot walked back to tell us that it was safe to disembark, we applauded him, too.

The engine was still smoking as we filed down the steps to terra firma.

At least one football team member kissed the Naples runway.

And the pilot told us that it was a good landing: "Any landing you walk away from is a good landing."