When my husband first joined the Marine Corps, along with the purchase of his uniforms, accessories, and sword, which we ate beans to afford, was the requirement to have calling cards. Who even remembers these complicated little pieces of white card stock?
These cards were small pieces of white paper which resembled a business card, and which required a metal plate from which to be printed. On it were placed one’s name, and in the case of my husband, his rank and service. I was designated on my card by my married name, not my first and last name, my only claim to fame being as my husband’s wife. My little metal plate would last me forever as I did not change my status. However, even though there was a box full of the old cards, a new rank meant getting more cards with the new designation printed on them and, sigh, a new expenditure.
Here is the comforting passage which I read in 1965 about these cards in The Marine Corps Wife by Sally Jerome, a Marine wife herself. “The selection of calling cards is important. They should be absolutely correct. Often people see your card before they see you, and if your card is peculiar, they may think you are peculiar also.” To a twenty-year-old newlywed, the thought that other people’s perception of me could be governed by a small white card was terrifying. And the worst was yet to come. There were calls to be made on commanding officers when one arrived at a new base, and then return of calls by these same senior and august people. One had to remember that one’s husband left two cards when making a call, one for the male host and one for his wife, but his life’s companion left them only for the adult women in the house. It was a veritable blizzard of white paper. And then upon leaving a post another blizzard was to be left with the initials PPC penciled, not inked, on the card. This stood for “pour prendre conge” French for ‘take leave.’ I thought at the time that the French had a lot to answer for.
Whatever one may think of the Vietnam War, it had one benefit. The calling card business could not last through the horrors of seven years of jungle conflict. In the face of combat and death, the little pieces of paper fell into oblivion. The last printed cards I remember purchasing were for my husband when he was promoted to captain, and we did not use a single one of them.
Social occasions became more informal involving barbeques in back yards with the children running around with ketchup and mustard on their T-shirts. Couples chatted while comfortably dressed in casual clothes, and no one surreptitiously looked at a watch to see if the proper fifteen minutes for the visit had come and gone. While I know that some of the older members of the military community yearned for the rules and procedures of the old days, the young officers were having a totally different experience. And it was now their military, and their new ways of doing business prevailed.
One last little observation on calling cards. I looked up the word on the internet while writing this, and at first all I could find were sites that talked about cards to use on one’s mobile phone. The white paper is not only gone, but its terminology is gone as well. As I might put in defiant ink on my non-existent calling card today, CLV (C’est La Vie.)