As a kid growing up after World War Two, I was fascinated by two women living on the fourth floor of our Peterboro apartment building. Each had short-cropped hair. Each wore slacks.
They were always friendly, and – nascent gay lad that I'm sure I surely was – I liked them, but not quite sure just why. My mom said (winking at my father) they were Rosie the Riveters.
And just down the hall there was another of this patriotic breed: Jimmy W's mom. I noted that she was often visited by one of the Burton School non-slacks-pleated teachers. They hugged in and out. Brown baggers, no doubt.
Then, too, there was Mickey, happy tipsy on weekends, who owned a candy shop where we kids gathered after hide and seek. God bless her kindly heart, I now know of course that she was a lesbian. A frequently stone(d) butch. Slacks and all.
The legendary, and real, Rosie the Riveter started muscling around on the scene during the militant days when Detroit was "the Arsenal of Democracy," home of tanks, planes, guns. "Praise the Lord, and pass the amunition."
Her face still pops up on posters, memorabilia, and recently on the cover of a do-it-yourself manual for housewives with husbands who are all thumbs and single gals who have as yet undetermined plumbing needs to fulfill.
Rosie's slogan is "We Can Do It!" although what, is not specified. (With her macho expression, stevedore bandana, flexed 14-inch bicep at the ready I have my suspicions; though I hasten to add, not with, at, or on me.)
Yes, our Rosie's something of a butch icon these days, but during World War ll any woman who worked for the war effort earned the title, and with it the liberating privilege of wearing slacks. (My mom was not so liberated.)
The original Rosie – Rose Will Monroe – was living in Detroit and working at Ypsi's Willow Run plant when she posed for the world-famous pinup. She was "discovered" belting rivets (roughly five per nonstop minute) into B 24 and B 29 bombers.
(Another well-known WW ll stud driver with the same soon-to-be-acquired last name was 16-year-old Norma Jean Baker. She later worked many an energetic – and democratic – swing shift as Marilyn Monroe.)
One Detroiter who did his bit for the war effort – but as a Nazi spy – was Edmund Carl Heine, an engineer for the Ford Motor Co.; later for Chrysler Corp. He earned $30,000 a year but was cheap and lazy when it came to espionage.
Heine spent his spy time reading "Popular Mechanics" and "Popular Aviation." He cribbed tidbites, rewrote them in der/das/die engineering jargon and sent it all with three-cent postage and a "Heil Hitler!" to his German cronies.
Heine used Chrysler letterhead stationery to beg, borrow, steal, aeronautic data from unsuspecting fellow engineers, while running ads offering $20 American to "anyone who can provide an airplane buff" with new design information.
(Please note: Times are definitely not favorable for starting your own computer-based spying operation using stealth solicitation in BTL. Do, however, feel free to rivet at any time in the privacy of your own home. Or, my studio.)
Just in time for the Thanksgiving Holiday I came across this newly plucked item, about another turkey of a spy, a gay Englishman this time, one Hugh Montgomery (no relation to Jeff). My source: "Espionage: An Encyclopedia of Spies and Secrets," Virgin Books. (Publisher title not applicable to either Montgomery.)
"Montgomery, a devote Catholic, was also the homosexual lover of Giovanni Montini, the future much loved and respected Pope John Paul l. Montini's wartme romance with Montgomey … made him detested by right-wing elements in the Vatican."
Gobble. Gobble. Slacks vobiscum!
