More Carl and Marge Sepia Saturday Week 27

I continue with my Uncle Carl and Aunt Marge from last week, because there are so many grand photos in her album. This is the youngest photo I have of Uncle Carl, taken at the Renton School in PA, about 1926 or27 when he was about 8-9 years old. I found an old  newspaper clipping in Uncle's Carl's collections that this school was considered for renovation to senior housing in 1993; we could not find it today so it may have been destroyed.

Two photos taken at commemorative events brought memories of conversations I recall between Carl and Marge.  One of her famous ways of dealing with her stubborn husband was to look up at him and say, "Carl Konesky, if you can't talk nice to me just don't you say anything at all then."  And she would walk away.  I shared that with the aides in the care facility where Carl is today at age 92, because sometimes he gets cranky when they  tell him it's time to shower and he doesn't want to.  He is used to having things his own way, so that's a bit of an obstacle.  I told the young aides they could use those words, from Marge.  They did and he really looked at them oddly and then  said, "That's what Peg used to tell me!"  So he well remembers that.

This first photo from 1940 is from Herman Pirchner’s Alpine Village Playhouse Square, when my Aunt Marge went to Cleveland to attend beautician school. I don’t know why she went to Cleveland because there must have been similar training in Pittsburgh, but that’s what she did and it must have been an adventure for her. Marge is standing, third from the left, and marked on the back, “went out with my girlfriends and had a good time.”  No names for her friends, nor of the others in this photo, but notice the young sailor seated amongst all the lovely women, the only other gentleman two seats down from him. The hats some of the “girls” wore made me recall that Aunt Marge was never a hat person, priding herself on fixing her hair quite nicely and not considering hiding it under a hat. This caused some “talking” at church where all the women wore hats, but not Aunt Marge! That is one reason she preferred the Lutheran church to the Catholic of our family, she did not have to cover her hair.

This “supper club” must have been quite the big city event for a young country girl from Worthington, PA. The front of the folder with the wonderful sketch of the owner with a Tyrolean hat aroused my curiosity, so off to Google which revealed this was a premier theater restaurant in Cleveland in its day. NBC broadcast radio shows coast to coast from this theater with such well known entertainers as Artie Shaw, Cab Calloway and Pearl Bailey. I learned that the owner, Herman Pilcher was quite the entertainer and showman and died at 101 in February 2009. The PS at the bottom of today’s post is a bit of fascinating history from his obituary. 

I remember that Aunt Marge told of living in a rooming house while she went to beautician school and this photo shows her with her roommates, likely in front of that place as it was marked “Me and my roommates” Both photos are 1941. I can see  these same girls in the supper club photo. 

When I saw the supper clubs photo I recalled the banter between my aunt and uncle. Carl always called her Peg and I remember his saying, “well Peg went to a fancy club but I did one better in Los Angeles!” To which she’d reply something, like “Well Carl, that was before we were married and I was with my girlfriends but you did that after we were married and I was back home in PA!” I think this photo taken in 1944 in Los Angeles at the Palladium Club and the one in Mexico must have been the reference of that banter. The soldier with him is Ray, no last name. Uncle Carl was tall at 6’2” but looks short next to his friend.

Can you imagine what his young bride thought when he sent this to her and he was supposed to be on maneuvers in  Arizona and California? That’s my Uncle Carl in the middle front row, sombrero and serape. No names of the fellow soldiers. I can hardly imagine him in such a get up and had never before seen these photos, until I discovered Marge's album this trip to PA.  To be fair, I imagine the young soldiers of the 809th Tank Destroyer Battalion appreciated and took advantage of any breaks for fun that they could while they were stateside. They were training for gruesome life on the European front lines; the desert maneuvers make me think they were to be prepared for combat anywhere, including Africa. It also strikes me that they had more training time stateside than did my father in pilot hours. 

This last photo shows Uncle Carl outside his tent January 12, 1944 Arizona/CA Maneuvers. All his life until he could go no more he was a hunter, a fisherman and an avid outdoorsman.  He said his love of the "woods" began when he was a boy.  

And this 1943 snapshot of his Peg is one Carl carried with him through the war, so it was a bit wrinkled. She had written on the back, “Always thinking of you, dear.” She has a marvelous twinkle in her eye and this appears to have been taken in one of those arcade type photo places, but the tint is interesting.  It shows her with hair just so and as pretty as can be.

PS. Herman Pirchner obituary:
“Herman Pirchner, 101, whose popular Alpine Village supper club on Playhouse Square drew some of the biggest names in entertainment, both as performers and as patrons, from 1934 to 1961, died Sunday. He had run Pirchner's Alpine Village from the early 1930s to 1961. He was known for putting on fabulous floor shows, presenting souvenir rolling pins to new brides in the audience and treating teenage couples, who stopped there for dinner after their senior proms, like royalty.
Cab Calloway, Jimmy Durante, Pearl Bailey, Nelson Eddy, Henny Youngman, Perry Como and the Mills Brothers were among the many top-notch singers, musicians and comedians who performed at the supper club. Other celebrities, such as Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire and Henry Fonda, might have dinner in the restaurant, and then go upstairs to Pirchner's exclusive Eldorado Club.


Pirchner, who wore Bavarian leather shorts and Tyrolean hat to add to the alpine flavor of his restaurant, delighted his customers by performing his "beer hefting" routine. He would stack steins of beer -- from 25 to 55 -- and balance them in his hands, while running and sliding, like a baseball player, toward a table without spilling a drop before passing the free beer around to amazed diners. In 1933, his beer-carrying accomplishments made Ripley's "Believe It or Not" and March of Time.


As a teenager in the 1920s, he performed as an aerialist and clown for circuses in his native Austria. In 1927, he immigrated to the United States. He ended up in Cleveland, where he had relatives. The Alpine went out of business in 1961 and was torn down in 1993.”

 http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2010/06/sepia-saturday-week-27.html
As usual, click on the title to see other Sepia posts this week or here