Sunday morning, fed up with festering about the Charles and Camilla festivities, I went to an estate auction. I love auctions; I love to have permission to poke around in other people's stuff, see what stories it tells, how it gets my imagination going, makes me feel people's lives. Especially if it's still in place, still in the house where it and its owners lived.
I had high hopes for this particular auction, the Estate of Kitty Kuhlman Bradley, widow of Omar Bradley, the last five-star general. (The rank was retired when he died in 1981, so there won't be any more. The creation of the rank during WWII is a ripping yarn in itself, but I don't know all the details yet so can't tell it properly.)
Born Esther Kuhlman in New York City in 1922, Kitty was quite the gal. She had a thriving Hollywood career as a writer for TV and movies; we have her to thank for many episodes of Father Knows Best andThe Untouchables, among other titles long forgotten. She was 43 and twice divorced when she and the General, then 73, met in 1965, just after the death of his wife of 50 years; they were married nine months later. Nobody would think twice about their age difference now, but back then, before the Sixties really got going, they were gossip material.
I wonder what he thought about that. He didn't look like a five-star general, he looked like the shy Missouri farm boy he was. I saw him once when I just a kid. Right around the time he and Kitty were married, he came into my grandmother's restaurant for dinner, and everybody went into a tizzy, pointing and whispering about "the great General." I'd seen Eisenhower in person, and pictures of MacArthur with his lantern jaw and corncob pipe, but this shrivelled little guy didn't look anything like them, so I just shrugged him off.
But now, all these years later, here I am, walking into his widow's house, looking for I-don't-know-what, but all my radar on full blast just in case. The general never lived here--she bought the place after he died--but he's everywhere anyway: giant monogram "O N B" worked into the doormat, lifesize statue of his favorite Doberman next to it, big portrait of the couple over the fireplace, photos of the two of them with assorted celebrities (she's petite, sparky, adorable in that 50s Doris Day way), bits and bobs of his minor belongings in display cases around the house--but actually not much, I realize on closer inspection: no medals, no uniforms, no boots, no guns (other than a couple of unremarkable .38 revolvers), no maps or papers. Just a couple of cigarette lighters, some business cards, a lot of insignia items. "What's the deal?" I ask the head security guard. "Where's all the juicy stuff?"
"Oh. Yeah. The War Department came and took a lot of stuff." I didn't bother to point out that it's been called (eupehmistically) the Department of Defense since 1947. "The War Department" sounded just right in Omar Bradley's widow's house.
So what was there? A lot of atrocious 70s furniture, the usual Republican lack of taste (but she was a nice Jewish girl from New York! she should know better--what happened?). A couple of good rugs--a nice Aubusson in the living room, some good china--Spode, Wedgwood, Haviland--but no complete sets. Stacks of her bound scripts of 50s TV shows. On an easel in front of the fireplace, a big album containing the original New York Times from the day she was born, July 23, 1922, my own mother's first birthday. Front-page stories included the Ku Klux Klan agreeing not to wear their hoods in public, in return for the governor of Georgia not investigating "allegations of violence"; a plane crash in a pond near Framingham, Mass., in which a doctor from Pasadena "probably was fatally injured" ["probably"-?!?!]; a pair of newlyweds electrocuted in a bathtub in the Bronx; a gunfight in Brooklyn, where "Liverpool Jack" managed to kill four cops, one of them a WWI hero; and President Harding was made an honorary member of the Flathead Indian tribe--all on the front page, the day adorable Kitty was born. A lively gal for a lively time.
She's here, too--in the portrait over the fireplace, gazing adoringly at her husband, who beams shyly down at her; in her office, set up for a writer; in her closets--a separate one just for shoes--full of designer clothes, furs, beaded gowns size 8. And 6. And 4. Down to practically nothing. This is the end of a woman's life, I realize. When did she stop writing? Did she keep it up after they were married? There's a photo of her on a set with Francis Ford Coppola, looks like late '70s--did she keep her hand in? Or when she married, did she just turn into Mrs. Him?
Out in the garage is the rest of her story, all for sale: besides the dusty sets of matched luggage and a lot of kitchen appliances, a shiny, horrifying array of canes, walkers, adult diapers, cases of enemas, and eight potty chairs. EIGHT.
I've seen enough. Driving away, and ever since, I'm not thinking about the General or where the rest of his stuff is, I'm wondering where the rest of her went? Stacks of scripts, racks of dresses, a few pieces of expensive but downright ugly jewelry--she never had children--everything else in this house is about him even though he was never there.
But those damn potty chairs. Those were hers. Eventually--way eventually, like late the next day, it hits me: one for every room in the house. Oh jesus . . . that's what it came down to for her, all the adventure and accomplishment and World War II and Father Knows Best and diamonds and Dobermans and Hollywood, all dwindled down into the contents of that garage.
Memento Mori, indeed.
Carpe diem never meant more to me than it does now. I'll be trying to outrun those potty chairs for the rest of my life.
Not a pretty story...but a POTTY story!
Posted by: Nancy | April 12, 2005 at 05:53 PM
This is good, Doc, you should send it somewhere.
Really.
Posted by: Pica | April 13, 2005 at 07:24 AM
What she said.
Posted by: dale | April 13, 2005 at 11:12 AM
Memento Mary. How do we not do "old"? Phooey.
Posted by: chorusgirl | April 13, 2005 at 08:06 PM
I have Kitty Bradley's stetson hat with her name embroidered on the inside that was given to her by her husband Omar Bradley, "The Last Five Star General", for christmas.
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