Shirley’s senior portrait, from a 1944 South Division High School year book.
A while back, I introduced you to an autograph book of Shirley, a young Milwaukee girl who grew up in the 1930s. By an odd stroke of luck, I have another autograph book in my collection – also from the 1930s and also belonging to a young woman named Shirley. This week’s Shirley is a bit more of a mystery. Although I cannot find any information about her beyond her graduation from South Division High School in 1944 (she most likely married and took her husband’s name sometime before 1950), I know a bit more about her life during the time when this book was signed.
All of the dated signatures in this book are from 1938. Shirley would have been about 11 years old, based on her stated age on the 1940 census. She lived at 1423 South Comstock Street , in the largely Polish neighborhood of Muskego Way . She was the youngest of her family, with an older sister and brother and an older step brother. Her parents were Arthur and Louise, a crane operator and a homemaker. She attended Longfellow Elementary School on South 21st Street In the front of the book, she lists her favorite subject as science, her hobbies as swimming and the piano, and her favorite flower as the gardenia.
Pictured: Patricia Mylnarek, a girl from Shirley’s neighborhood who was killed at age nine by a dynamite bomb.
One interesting note before I get to, well, the interesting notes… Shirley lived just a few blocks from the West Mitchell Street garage where 21-year-old bomb maker Idzy Rutkowski killed himself, a young accomplice, and a neighbor girl while trying to fix a timer to a massive dynamite bomb in November 1935. I wrote a piece on Rutkowski’s reign of terror for the Wisconsin Magazine of History that goes into more detail, but the innocent victim in explosion was nine-year-old Patricia Mylnarek. Patricia would have been just a year or two older than Shirley. It is likely that some of the kids who signed this book knew poor Patricia and certainly most of them would have witnessed the explosion.
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In the front of the book, Shirley lists Marilyn as her best friend. Here, she references some spat between the two, or maybe just exhibits a self-deprecating sense of humor. I should also mention the little “Yours till…” notes. These are very common and often invoke some kind of cute-but-implausible situation.
A pretty sour attitude on marriage for an eleven year old. Needles and pins, indeed. As the Mississippi River has not yet begun to wear rubber pants, I can only assume Jean Ann and Shirley are still friends.
I’ve wondered about these little sayings. Many variations on the same rhyme or joke appear in books from various years and regions. Did these exist outside of books like this? How did they disseminate around the country? Are there hints of geographic regions with the variations? Can you really rhyme chessese with squses?
Helen takes things to a dark place here. This is the only reference to suicide I’ve found in any of these books. At least she spelled everything correctly.
This is one of the truly somber pages I’ve found in these books. I was able to find a short obituary for Adam Luell a few days after the date noted here. He lived about a mile from Shirley. No cause of death was given, but his age was listed as just 13. Certainly, Shirley did not forget him, considering she went back to this book to note his death, over two years after he wrote this.
Evidently, Shirley and Buddy were an item.
Yet another play on the rolling pin theme – but also another reference, perhaps, to Shirley and Buddy.
More evidence of a romance with Buddy! But look just above that, crossed hearts linking Shirley with a boy named Eugene – which is crossed out in a different pen than it was written, indicating that the break with Eugene occurred while this book was being signed. Hm.
So, what happened to Eugene ?
Maybe he was too eager to “get marriage.” That line beneath the word “marriage” is done in pencil, as though someone proofed his note after he wrote it.
Of course, maybe I’m overblowing this “Buddy” thing. Maybe Shirley was too young for dating. Perhaps, when it came to (boys), she hated them all. Some fair-minded advice here from a father of one of her classmates. And just to tie everything together – the name of the daughter of Louis Abel who was Shirley’s age? Laverne, of course.
