Josie - Chapter 02 - by Polly+Anna (3653 words) Our Lady in 1923 Jacksonville Florida (2/5/20)
March 1923
Josie's father and brothers had played ice hockey, and she remembered her dad's advice, that on the ice and in life people in large part make their own luck. By paying attention, and being prepared and ready for anything, one can take advantage of the randomly distributed happenstance that comes every person's way. Eddie Rickenbacker, America's 'Ace of Aces' with 26 aerial victories in the recent war, was building his high-end luxury cars with amazing technical advancements like four-wheel brake systems derived from his experience in automobile racing.
Rickenbacker, who lived in New York City, had just recently married Adelaide Frost Durant, a professional singer from Detroit and the former wife of Josie's neighbor, William Durant's son. The Rickenbackers were a thoroughly modern couple, she was older than he - significantly more than the few months that Elanor was older than Edsel, she was a divorcee, and she seemed to have a very tight relationship with her former father-in-law.
Detroit was the industrial center for all types of mechanical manufacturing. Besides the elder Mr. Durant, there were thirty or forty senior managers and parts suppliers who lived in her neighborhood alone. The Rickenbacker Motor Company built their cars in Detroit, and both Henry and Edsel were investors. Edsel was interested in aviation, the Rickenbackers had a summer home in Jacksonville, and Eddie was looking to start an airline down in Florida.
As the Ford's pilot, Josie had accompanied Henry and Edsel to Paxon Field, just west of the city of Jacksonville. Eddie's pitch was convincing, and Florida Airways was founded by himself, his fellow aviator from France Reed Chambers, and others including Percy Rockefeller - William's son, Edsel Ford and Anne Tracy Morgan - daughter of John Pierpoint. Henry, contributed three of Bill Stout's 2-AT 'Sky Pullmans,' and temporarily Josie's services. She was instructed to memorize everything that she was exposed to in Florida, in an effort to improve Stout Airways back in Michigan.
Josie flew paying passengers in both directions along the Jacksonville, Tampa and Miami, triangle. Harriett and Blake drove down, together with Josie they decided that a little sun - and not having to explain to "Singing Sam"'s minions why there would be no deliveries for three months - was in order. One day as Josie was waiting for them to arrive, Blake wanted to make several stops to film "natural phenomena," as well as waiting for her scheduled departure, just passing time by idly watching the steam freight train waiting at the interlocking- crossing just north of Paxon Field dad's advice paid off again.
Anne Madgigine Jai Kingsley Gowan was the most delicious shade of chocolate, and she was totally elegant wearing a long slinky pale peach-colored dress with a matching pillbox hat and a tiny mesh veil when she walked up to Josie. She was dressed in her straight-line white dress, white turban style hat with its golden 'Fenix' medallion, and obligatory brown leather flight jacket with epaulets. She introduced herself and then said, "Sometimes Miss Tracy likes to 'pull my leg,' but you really are flying that big aeroplane aren't you?"
"Miss Tracy?" Josie said.
"Well, both Miss Tracy and Miss Veitch, their given names are Anne," said, "I call them Miss Tracy and Miss Vietch, it gets really confusing otherwise since I am an Anne as well, they call me Madge."
"Well, yes Anne," said Josie, "I fly the 2-AT Stout 'Air Pullman.' Six days a week, here to Miami - one day down and back up the next, one flight a day stops at Tampa enroute."
"Please, you can call me Madge," she said, "mom is the only one who actually calls me Anne, and that's just because Anne Madgigine Jai Kingsley, was her great grandmother's name."
"So," asked Josie, "you work for my boss?"
"Oh no," said Madge, "I work for my mother, Miss Charlotte, she was the caterer for the party Saturday night at Miss Tracy's."
"Well," said Josie, "you obviously know them better than I do, I wouldn't feel comfortable calling Ms. Anne Tracy Morgan or Doctor Anne Vietch Murray Dike by their given names."
"Oh," said Madge, "they aren't all huffy or snooty or anything, really they are quite sweet ladies."
That is what Josie had heard, that the Annes were sweet on each other. The two women had traveled the globe together and shared homes in New York City, Jacksonville and in France near Soissons along the "Chemin des Dames" at Blérancourt. Not that Josie minded, she enjoyed what she and Harriett did with each other on camera, and she liked it when Blake got them to "try new positions" together, ostensibly so that he could "see what the camera would see." Many times she thought that Blake did it simply because he enjoyed watching them have sex together, not that Josie complained, she liked Blake too.
It was another one of those weird boy-things, guys loved to see their girl with another girl, it gave them a chance to recover and get hard again. Most of all it showed guys in concrete terms how somebody else that wasn't a threat to their manhood found their girl to be desirable. Josie could tell that Harriett enjoyed it too even though she was too shy to say so. That was kinda what Harriett's relationship with Blake was like, he was the extrovert who took her for a fun ride while allowing her to pretend that it was her "just placating him."
Josie wasn't brought up like Harriett, she didn't go to the fancy schools, and wasn't taught how to be all prim and proper. Growing up amongst the wealthy acquaintances of her father Harriett was like Ms. Morgan, privately schooled, she was a world traveler, taught to be a society wife and a philanthropist. But Harriett's family had lacked the business and political acumen of Anne's parents John Pierpont Morgan and Frances Louisa Tracy Morgan. Failing to diversify, the double whammy of U.S. involvement in the war and Prohibition afterward bankrupt the Elsinores.
Josie had been a guest at a party thrown at the Annes' home, it was not specifically a celebration of the new airline, but it was treated in that way by the several guests who were involved in the venture. Composer Cole Porter was there as was novelist Mercedes de Acosta and her lover film actress Alla Nazminova, she introduced her to Tallulah Bankhead, a Broadway actress whose father, grandfather and uncle were Representatives and Senators.
Josie now recalled seeing Madge at the party, not as a guest but as a manager of the serving staff. In the short time remaining before her departure they talked about catering and how the logistics of planning a big party were similar to and different from running a successful airline. Josie invited Madge to "try air travel out," and a date was set two days hence. Madge flew with Josie to Tampa in the morning and then caught the returning flight back in the afternoon.
On Sunday they picnicked in Orange Park and Josie remarked that they were crossing 'Kingsley Avenue.'
"Zephaniah Kingsley was my great, great, grandfather," Madge said.
"Oh," said Josie, wondering what else to say. Being from 'up north,' she had read about "the peculiar institution of slavery." She remembered reading the diary of Mary Chestnut in school.
"Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattos one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody's household, but those in her own."
"Let's take a drive," Madge said after they had finished eating."
They drove to a splendid hotel at the foot of Kingsley Avenue.
"Four generations ago, just before the turn of the last century, my great-great-grandfather Zephaniah, a white Quaker planter originally from South Carolina came to Orange Park, it was called bosque de laurel then, as an Empresario. He purchased my namesake at an auction in Cuba. Back then, Florida was a part of Spain, and Havana was the capital. He was obviously interested in her sexually, but he didn't just buy her and rape her, well at least not any more than any other man didn't just marry a gal back then and take her home and rape her. She was of the Wolof tribe in Senegal.
"I know all of this because he preserved the history and taught his children to pass it down. Zephaniah married her in a Wolof ceremony in Havana before he brought her to Florida. He built a big house exactly where that hotel sits now, and he named it 'Ma'am Anna's House,' she ran it and the plantation. He freed her on her 18th birthday, and although he was a polygamist and he took other women, other enslaved black women as concubines, she was always first to him.
"Although he had three others, she was the only one he married. He was white but he respected her traditions, it was a Wolof ceremony not a Spanish one. He held slaves, but he freed his concubines and his nine mixed-race children. He educated his slaves and did not meddle in their personal affairs, that is something that bosses don't even refrain from today. He let them have side businesses, save and buy their own freedom. After the United States took Florida, he had to flee to Haiti because of his writings promoting the genetic mixing of races as a way to make all of humankind better. It was all a really, really complicated situation."
"So is that what happened here?" Josie asked, "Did he leave in 1819?"
"No," said Madge, "It's more complicated than that."
