Two keepsakes related to the recent 60th anniversary of D-Day have emerged from our family files and stir further reflection.

The first is a dinner menu from Longwood Towers in Brookline, where my father-in-law, Roger Keane, was general manager from 1928 to 1963. That imposing chateau-like structure served in those days as a full-service hotel as well as a long-term residence.

The dining room’s bill of fare for Tuesday, June 6, 1944 bore the heading “D-Day,” indicating that both Roger and the printing company had reacted quickly to breaking events.

The menu featured: Broiled Eastern Salmon, New Peas; Fried Smelts, Corn Relish; Yankee Pot Roast; Creamed Chicken Short-Cake; Ham and Eggs, Country Style; Broiled Spring Lamb Chop; Half Young Chicken Broiled to order.”

Austere items like smelts and ham and eggs may have been designed to please the New England palate; more probably, though, they reflected an effort to cope with the restrictions of wartime rationing.

The prices for the complete dinners featuring the dishes listed above ranged from $1.50 to $1.80. If you preferred the so-called Plate Dinner, it would cost you 25 cents less, in all instances. With a nice touch, the Shredded Cabbage and Carrot Salad, was bestowed the anticipated title “Victory Dressing.”

Desserts included Hot Apple Pie, Peach Ice Cream, and Orange Layer Cake. The menu on this patriotic occasion ended with Demi Tasse, perhaps as an unconscious tribute to the land where allied forces were even then establishing an heroic beachhead.

That evening on the east coast of the United States was not yet the time for festive and celebrative moods. Maybe the serving of wine would thus have been inappropriate but, in any event, there was no wine list on the tables and patrons were almost never observed ordering bottles or even glasses of bubbly or flatter vintages. That amenity would have to await the aftermath of WWII.

In fine print just below notice of the Massachusetts Old Age Tax 5% came assurance of the prices being in accordance with regulations of the O. P. A. –  –  the office of wartime price controls, administered then by the now 96-year-old John Kenneth Galbraith.

The second of our keepsakes is a pocket-sized French Phrase Book, marked Restricted, and dated September 28, 1943. It was issued by the War Department and intended for use by military personnel who would come into France and other countries where the 52 million French speakers lived.

Most of the linguistic entries in the paperback’s 117 pages are actually single words or brief phrases. They largely envision situations in which American soldiers would be arriving as invaders, though friendly ones allied with European governments in exile.

Each English entry is followed by a transliteration that gives an idea of how to pronounce the French word or phrase. “I am hungry,” for instance, is described as “jay FANG.” “Get a bandage” is rendered as “ah-lay shayr-shay ung pahnss-MAHNG.”

Whether any native French speaker would understand these renderings is a question that lies outside the phrase book’s scope. However, the unknown War Department author hedges his bets: “If the person you are speaking to knows how to read, you can point to the question in French and ask him to point to the answer.”

It would be interesting to discover adventures that allied soldiers had with this simple language guide. No word came down from my wife’s uncle Paul Berrigan who was a colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers and landed in Normandy two days after June 6, 1944. Doubtless this bridge-building West Pointer constructed linguistic bridges to French speakers but we have few details.

Other families surely could extract more dramatic trophies from their attics than our menu and phrase book. That they were saved suggests, however, the value put on them by family members. Looking over them has brought me the pleasure of recalling world-reshaping events from my teenage years.

On the front cover of the little book a name jumps out at me: G. C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, the person who must have authorized many publications at that time. But his name also evokes the great plan that would reconstruct Europe once the war was over.

The menu brings back a simpler time when we could count our salaries and expenditures on our hands. The same prices charged by distinguished restaurants back then must now be multiplied by a factor of 15 or 20, if not more. It’s all relative, of course, but the simpler arithmetic does point to a less complicated time, even with a monstrous war raging across much of the world.

As I never tire of repeating, change is one of the large factors that make later life so adventurous internally. We current elders have lived through and will continue to live through astonishing changes that often leave us reeling, sometimes with dismay, often with heady excitement.

Richard Griffin