Asho Craine Writings 1993–2009
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Re-entering Packer’s “old gray ivy walls” at thirteen I felt even more an outsider than I did when a seven year old. Although I recognized some of my former classmates they had become strangers who had much to talk about among themselves but not with me. How could I greet them as if I knew them when we had led such different lives? Then there were all those intimidating new students because the class doubled in size at the high school level. Many wore silk stockings and heels while I stuck with bobby socks and loafers. Worst of all I was fat! I was sure everyone was looking at me with disdain as I hurried through the crowded halls to the safety of my assigned seat in my next class. I usually lingered to the end of the line going into morning chapel because I was too shy to ask someone if I could sit with her. Once it dawned on me that perhaps the other girls were too preoccupied with what others thought about them to notice me, but this revelation was small comfort. I wanted to be noticed, in a nice way, of course. The day I wore a little glass-studded donkey pin to school I was noticed all right! Everyone jumped on me. “How can you be for Al Smith, that Catholic?” “He says ra-adio instead of radio.” “Don’t you know the Pope would rule the country?” “Who would want Mrs. Smith in the White House?” My feeble protests that my father knew Governor Smith had done a lot of good things for our state fell on deaf ears. As for the Pope, I realized I was ignorant of his powers, but I knew they did not extend to our government. I’m sorry to say I did not have the courage to wear that donkey pin to school again. Thank goodness politics played no part in my friendship with Edith Smith, also a returnee after four years at Adelphi. We were disappointed not to be in any of the same classes, but every day we ate our lunch together in the crowded basement cafeteria, too depressed to converse. After school we would come to life on the streetcar ride home, often visiting each other as our houses were only three blocks apart on Clinton Avenue... One free afternoon Edith and I had a bold adventure. We had often wondered what kind of entertainment took place inside the burlesque theater we passed daily on our way home. Although I don’t remember ever raising the question with an adult, I had the impression that it was considered not nice, and certainly unsuitable for young girls. Naturally we resented exclusion on the basis of our youth or gender, and we felt quite capable of judging for ourselves what was nice or not nice. One sunny afternoon, (we must have been about fourteen), curiosity got the better of us. With our schoolbooks tucked under our arms, we walked right into the theater, stepped up to the counter and purchased tickets. I’m surprised now that nobody stopped us, but business was slow and they probably needed the cash. In the dim light we could see a few men slouched in the back row. Edith and I headed for the center where we became a small island in a sea of empty seats. Then we observed our surroundings. The theater was dingy and drab, the air stale and hazy with tobacco smoke. The show itself was utterly boring. First a couple of guys told some stupid jokes and engaged in childish slapstick. After a while a weary looking woman, too old to be called a girl, wandered on stage. She sang a languid song while slowly taking off one sleazy garment after another until she was down to a g-string and a bra which hardly covered her nipples. That was all! Then came more slapstick followed by another tired woman going through the same slow routine. It was a far cry from the sparkle and pep of a Broadway musical. The only act that appealed to us at all was a trumpet soloist who, standing bare naked on a runway that projected into the audience, raised her trumpet high and blasted out a familiar tune. At the intermission we ducked out of there in a hurry. As we turned to go I could see that more men had filled the rows behind us. This time I noticed their sullen looks, which I found unnerving. It was a relief to get out into the sunshine and breathe fresh air again. On the ride home Edith and I were too depressed to talk much, but we agreed it all seemed shabby and sad and certainly not nice. We wondered what those men got out of the show. Surely we would never want to watch men taking off their clothes! The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. As soon as I got home I brushed my teeth with soap, and felt better for the penance. Later I told my parents what we had done. My father couldn’t understand why we would want to see the seamy side of life. He told me that when he was in Paris at the end of the war he saw ugly and sordid things he would rather forget. What they might be I had no idea, but I was impressed by his solemn concern for my welfare. I was sorry that my naive escapade had caused him distress.
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About the Book
This collection of Asho Craine’s writings is organized into three sections titled “Asho’s Story,” “Family and Friends,” and “Poetry.” Following her husband’s death in 1993, Asho Craine joined the Learning in Retirement Collective in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and began writing about her childhood and youth. The first part of this collection tells about her family background, her experiences growing up in Brooklyn, New York, the challenges she faced in school, her experience as a member of the first class of students at Bennington College, and her first romance. The chronological account of her life ends with a description of her first job after college. Rather than continue chronologically, Asho then embarked on a series of “Memory Letters” to her late husband, Lyle Craine. These letters weave recollections of the fifty years they spent together with updates on her life and the lives of her children in the late 1990s. They include her account of Lyle’s stroke in 1988 and the four and one half years he spent in a nursing home. The appendix to the first section contains three short autobiographical summaries of her life. The second section of the book contains character sketches of members of Asho’s family and close friends, written for various occasions. Following her move to Connecticut in 2004, Asho turned to writing poetry. The third section of this book contains her poems written between 2004 and 2009.
About the Author
“Asho Craine, a champion with a social conscience,” read a headline in the January 11, 2002, Ann Arbor [Michigan] News, days after her 87th birthday. The article continued, “Her mother was a suffragette. Her father, a lawyer, was Brooklyn borough president in the reform-minded administration of New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia...She was a member of the charter class—1936—at Bennington College, a free thinking school in Vermont, an experience she says ‘opened up the world to me.’ Sixty-six years later, she retains liberal views on the environmental, politics, and social issues.” In 1934 Asho traveled with the first student group to enter Russia after President Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union. After graduation she worked for a consumer-farmer milk cooperative, which led to a job in Washington with the Consumers’ Counsel Division of the Department of Agriculture. There she met Lyle Craine, whom she married in 1942. They had two sons and a daughter. In 1953 the family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Lyle earned a Ph.D. and then joined the faculty of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources. They enjoyed life together in Ann Arbor for forty years until Lyle’s death in 1993 following a 1988 stroke. In Ann Arbor, Asho became a volunteer and community activist primarily through the League of Women Voters and the Gray Panthers, and once ran for school board. Following her husband’s death, Asho joined the Learning in Retirement Collective and began to produce her memoirs, excerpts of which appear in The Man Who Eats Snakes, an anthology produced by the Collective in 2001. In 2004 she moved to the Seabury Retirement Community in Bloomfield, Connecticut, where she joined a poetry group and begin writing poems. This volume is the product of sixteen productive years as a writer.