Forties Discourse

George Morpheys and Meg Tymeson come of age prior to Pearl Harbor. Discontent urges them to dream and dream they do of a life worth living They grow up in the Mid-Hudson Valley and Binghamton. George dreams of a farm of his own in Millbrook where his uncle still owns a truncated piece of land. There George got up early, ate 3 squares a day during the Depression, and hopes to return after his time at Delhi Ag College. Meg moves from Endicott where her dad, the hospitalized electrician, touched the live wire and where she comes alive in touch with boys. She escapes to her grandmother Mooer’s Prospect Street house above Binghamton, starts over again unknown in high school, and publishes her writing like Reggie Levine’s sci-fi in the school Oracle. The life worth living she wishes to write about her world and live that dream. Together at Delhi they meet and settle for work on Bontecott’s farm in Millbrook which keeps George out of the war. They work the farm with a family of their own. They work for Bontecott, not his foreman or his son, the job George deserves till postwar the boss lets him go. Before the end of the Forties decade they find work at IBM in Poughkeepsie where as a family they flourish in the smaller house behind George’s dad, Jakim Morpheys. Others sign up for the war effort and in the postwar peace find the work they dream doing. Georgie’s buddies meet at Shug’s Tavern for beers. Pete Pulaski as Seabee plows airfields at Midway home to his own construction company, while Eddie Rasmus prepared for D-Day, then postwar meetings as driver for Hoover, becomes postwar management for IBM. Meg’s brother Keith’s ship sinks crossing the Atlantic with supplies for Britain, while her Jewish friend, Reggie Levine, fights in the Phillippines and then writes of his postwar time fighting for the Jewish homeland of Israel. Carlo Kallini carries the diamonds and secured ownership papers from Antwerp back to America where the Hasid cutters on 47th Street of NYC do their work. The fathers of Kennedy and Scott families die in Anzio’s Italian campaign, whose wives pick up their insurance and realty business. Son Gordon Scott plans to marry Pam Kennedy, but sadly dies in a Korean War. Mani and Jed work for the Pentagon and the Manhattan Project which will end the Pacific war. Out of West Virginia coal mines come the Groves to Wheeling and then Detroit to first preach God and then the UAW union. Son Riley Grove does flight logistics for the planes from Japan over Korea. Everybody has a part to play in the world at war. Afterward they come home to better times, when dreams of a life worth living come to fruition and they prosper like George and Meg Morpheys during the postwar peace.