From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-From The “Growing Up Absurd In Olde Saco” Series “Franny LeBlanc Makes Do”

Click on the headline to line to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing their classic To Each His Own.

Lyrics: To Each His Own:

A rose must remain with the sun and the rain
Or its lovely promise won't come true
To each his own, to each his own
And my own is you

What good is a song if the words just don't belong?
And a dream must be a dream for two
No good alone, to each his own
For me there's you

If a flame is to grow, there must be a glow
To open each door there's a key
I need you, I know, I can't let you go
Your touch means too much to me

Two lips must insist on two more to be kissed
Or they'll never know what love can do
To each his own, I've found my own
One and only you

If a flame is to grow, there must be a glow
And to open each door there's gotta be a key
I need you, I know, I can't let you go
'Cause honey, your touch means too much to me

Two lips must insist on two more to be kissed
Or they'll never know what love can do
To each his own, I've found my own
One and only you

************
She, Francine Lorraine LeBlanc, Franny Leclerc she to everybody in Old Saco, that is up in Maine, thank you, ever since she could remember, before she traded in her name in for LeBlanc on that blessed June 1945 day when she and Jimmy swept, while he was on weekend Army leave, into Ste. Brigitte’s to take their vows, was in no hurry, a conscious no hurry, to get down to the Olde Saco Housing Authority offices before they closed on that frost-fighting November 1947 afternoon. Conscious reason number one surprise baby Jacques Louis LeBlanc had had her up half the night with colic, or some other one year old childhood disorder that she could not figure out. Conscious reason number two was that one planned baby Jean Laurent LeBlanc, a mere three months old, had had her up with his screaming for the other half of that night. Conscious reason number three though was the potential stopper, rather more the real reason that she was out of sorts that day. She was heading to those offices to line up with many other young mothers and wives of ex-servicemen in order to sign up for the public-assisted housing that the city of Olde Saco was planning to provide for returning veterans pushed out of the local single family housing market by the post-war crush demand.

The city, under pressure from many appreciative locals and not just those with servicemen, was trying to give retuning servicemen and their starter families a leg up, a way station was the way it was put, on their way to some nice single family home a few years ahead in the Ocean View section or maybe out in Dunesville. But Franny didn’t see it that way. She didn’t see it that way at all as she had been freely telling one and all, family and friends, for days (although conspicuously not the other young mothers and wives lined up with her that November afternoon).

See Franny had started out life with her own family in the now long gone Acre “projects” (really just paper and wind shacks little better than Hooverville cardboard boxes put up in a rush and taken down as quickly) back in the early 1930s when Meme and Papa Leclerc had come back down from the old country up in Quebec around Quebec City where they had been looking for work but there was no work. They had planned to work again in the Olde Saco textile mills but there wasn’t any work in those booming Depression days and so the Leclerc family had had to go on the public dole, including that cardboard shack housing over in the Acre. There had been no lack of embarrassment from school friends and family about their reduced circumstances and Franny had been ashamed to bring anyone over for fear that she would be laughed right out of school, pretty as she was. So Franny had had enough of that kind of tar paper housing with its silent whispers and fearful hatreds although it had only been for a couple of years until the mills started up again and the family just before the war moved over to Ocean View like all the other F-Cs into the extended Leclerc family.

It wasn’t fair though; she fumed, and fumed again every time she thought about it. Here her Jimmy had practically single-handedly saved the world from Hitler and she still had to stand in line for public housing. It just wasn’t right. (By the way that Hitler reference was her take, not Jimmy’s. Jimmy, if he said anything about it and like a like a lot of guys in town he usually didn’t say much, said he just did his “bit” and left it at that. It was the women, the home front “slackers,” and the rear echelon soldiers who wanted to talk endlessly about their sacrifices.)

What really wasn’t right though had more personal sources. Some personal that she was more than willing to announce to one and all (although usually carefully skirting the issue when one of her “targets” was present, or within earshot). It wasn’t right that her best friend from high school, Lilly Genet, a girl who barely graduated and who had done nothing to help the war effort by volunteering at the War Ration Board like she had) was right then moving with some heathen husband from Portland (meaning non F-C) over to the new Dunesville housing tract. Into a house complete with dishwasher and the new washer and dryer combinations. And silly Margot Deauville, who didn’t even finish high school, had been “knocked” up, but had met a forgiving proper F-C, Jean La Croix, was moving there too. It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault the MacAdams Textile Mills, where he worked before the war and had returned right after the war, had started short-shifting as it planned to head south for cheaper labor. It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault that they had had to seek refuge with her parents, two babies and all, in her small former girlhood room. It just wasn’t fair, that’s all.

But the personal frustrations, or better the hurts, that Franny could express to no one, not family or friends, no one, was that her dreams for her and Jimmy and their little family might not work out, might not work out at all. When Jimmy and Franny had met over at the Old Orchard Ballroom near the beach that stardust September 1939 night when Benny Goodman had held sway for two be-bop nights only he had swept her off her feet with his moonlight-sized dreams, his simmering desire for her, and his steady ways which she appreciated after those hated rationed 1930s years. She stuck to him like glue and when war came, well war came and she promised, no vowed is better, to wait, to wait on Jimmy’s dreams.

Jimmy had promised her the moon, and while she was realistic enough to know that half the stuff he said was just stuff, just stuff guys say to girls when they want something, the other half should have come out okay. And she would have accepted that. Accepted that gladly. But something was gnawing at her that day, something that even playing “their song,”’ the Inkspots' To Each His Own, that had gotten her by many a war-torn evening had not worked its magic as it usually did. Yah, something was gnawing at her that day and standing in line with other young mothers with their own dreams, and their own half-dream surrender acceptances didn’t help. It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair

After what seemed like an eternity in line and then at the red-faced desk of Marvis Dubois, a girl she went to Olde Saco High with, she had her paper-work processed and her application, due to Jimmy’s war record, was approved right then. They would be moving into their “apartment” (four small rooms and an alcove, jointed together with three other such apartments to make one unit and each of the fifty units made “the projects”) sometime in early 1948. That night, alone because Jimmy was working second shift just to keep his job at the mill, Franny, the babies fed and put to sleep, went over the record player, a wedding gift from her parents, and once again put on To Each His Own. She listened intently to the words this time and this time they brought back the old time fervor for Jimmy and for his mad dreams. Yes, they would make it through somehow.

[Life was not kind to the LeBlanc family, despite the fervent Jimmy dreams, and the Franny half-acceptances. Another unplanned child came in early 1949 to add to the woes. Jimmy lost his job at the mill when it closed in the early 1950s and the company headed south. He decided (pushed along by Franny and her parents) that he couldn’t take his young family down there and rejected the proffered job offer from the mill owners. The economy of the town dried up after the closings however and whatever you might have heard about the golden age of America in the 1950s there were no working class jobs in the area to see him through so he was reduced to odd job catch- as- catch- can jobs as they came along. Worst, worst for a proud war decorated 1950s F-C man (or, hell, any man in go-go times America) Franny had to go to work serving them off the arm, working mother’s hours, over at Jimmy Jakes’ Diner on Atlantic Avenue, the one that catered to the senior citizens and summer time touristas. It was many, many years and many sorrows before the family escaped “the projects” for a little shack of a single family house over in the Atlantic section of town, adjacent to the Acre. Franny stopped playing To Each His Own in the early 1950s and Jimmy did not say anything about it.-JLB]