My first home

The city could be a fun place to live when you’re a little girl.  Our house was dark brown and it had a small yard with a detached garage.  My mom and I would go out the kitchen door and into the yard because we had a rope back there that was the equivalent of the automatic clothes dryer.  Even though they may be a bit scratchy, I still love the smell of sheets that have been dried on a clothesline.  I had a sandbox in the yard where I played while my mother hung the clothes.  

I don’t know why I remember this, but Thursdays were trash collection day.  As far as I was concerned people in the city had pretty terrific trash.  I found dirty, smelly, old dolls as well as broken doll houses and I would drag them home.  I suspect that a few of the neighbors may have actually had a drinking problem but the colored and weird shaped bottles they threw out were very pretty.  I could only pick through trash on my own side of the street since my mom wouldn’t let me cross the street.  

But periodically my mom would help me cross the street so I could play with the kids who lived in the house across the street.  We could walk down to the bottom of the street where there was a cobbler shop with a bubblegum machine out front, and shake it to see if any gum would fall out.  We kids usually got along fine but I had a sensitive streak and didn’t really like getting so dirty that I found it uncomfortable.  The kids knew that, so if they didn’t want to play with me anymore, they would threaten to draw on my face with crayons like they did their baby sister.  Back then parents didn’t worry if the kids were outside by themselves without supervision.   I often stood on the curb crying and screaming for quite awhile before my mother came to cross me back to my side of the street.

As I got a little older I got more freedom and was able to go on my own to the variety store.  There was one at the bottom of the street, almost across from the cobbler.  To get to the other you had to walk up to the top of the street and go left.  I considered these the “candy store” because I wasn’t interested in anything else.  I could actually get penny candy for a penny and candy bars were a nickel back them.  But what did I know about money.

With my new freedom came responsibility such as the time my mother gave me a quarter and sent me to the store to buy bread for supper.  My question to her was not what kind of bread she wanted but rather “can I get some candy?”  She told me I could only buy candy if I had money left over after buying the bread.  The first store had run out of bread so I bought a candy bar and headed on up the street to the other store where I found a loaf of bread cost 21 cents.  Bet you already noticed that my nickel candy bar left me a little short so I bought some more candy and went home with no bread and candy on my breath.  I suspect my mother had bought bread herself at some time, so nothing I said would convince her that she had not given me enough money and that I bought the candy only after I found that out.  I ended up being told to sit on the 3rd step in the front hall because I was not getting any supper.  My mom stood her ground but my dad snuck me some crackers because  I’m sure that even with all the candy I had eaten, I might have starved to death.

My family attended a Glendale Baptist Church where my parents had spent much of their youth and had numerous friends there who grew up with them.  Those friends had kids the same age as me.  Among these children was a boy my age who everyone referred to as my boyfriend.  We would frequently chase each other around the church and get into things when the adults were boring us.  My father and this boys parents sang in the choir so we often spent Sunday afternoons having lunch at their house.

In some of my parents paperwork I found a dog license from October 1952 registering a black mongrel terrier named Pepper.  I do remember having a dog for a short time but then one day the dog was gone.  My parents gave me that age old story about having to take the dog to a farm because it would be much happier there than living in the city.

I lived on Reed Avenue until age 5 until shortly after I started kindergarten.  We could walk to school but often the lady across the street would drive us.  I don’t remember much of kindergarten other than those pictures I drew for my parents on manila paper.  I was no artist but I was proud of my art work so I never wanted to fold the paper and ruin it with creases.  One particularly windy day my art work began to rip.  I became quite upset but none of the kids would stand in front of me to block the wind.  For some reason my ripped picture made them laugh which made me cry or vice versa.  By the time the neighbor arrived to drive us home I refused to get in the car because I was so upset.  The neighbor drove slowly beside me until I realized my picture wouldn’t make it home if I didn’t get in that car.

Shortly after this event, but not related I'm sure, my parents sold their home and decided to move.  I became a kindergarten drop out. 

1949 + a few

I’ve often wondered when it is that children become aware of things that they will put into long term memory.  Some things just don’t make an impression and some do.  I don’t remember ever having my diapers changed although it obviously must have taken place because no one ever told me that I was so smart that I was born “potty trained.”

I was born in 1949.  Truman was president and my father had returned from WWII only a few years earlier.  Television was a technology that had been developing but in the U.S. they were just becoming available for people to have in their homes.  Older friends and relatives spoke about how, for entertainment, they sat around listening to the radio at night.  However, by the time I was able to remember, we owned a TV.  It was very small, the picture was in black and white, and it was sometimes hard to see the picture through all that white fuzziness that looked like falling snow.  Still, I think my mother must have been one of the first parents to utilize the TV as a babysitter so that she could get things done around the house.  I remember straddling the arm of the sofa and riding along with “The Lone Ranger,” a radio turned TV show  and “The Cisco Kid” with his sidekick Poncho, a 1950's western.  

We lived at 29 Reed Avenue in a city just outside of Boston, MA until I was 5 years old.  I remember the house fairly well.  It was a dark brown cottage/bungalow that was much like a house I bought later on.  A stairway faced you as you walked in the front door and to the right was a room we called the “parlor” where the sofa and chairs were covered with plastic.  This was a more formal area for company or when I was able to sneak in and bang on the piano.  No one actually played the piano.  The room behind the “parlor” was what we used as a living room and that was where that TV and my trusty red naugahyde steed were located.  

The next room back was the kitchen.  We weren’t high enough up the social ladder to have a dining room and so always ate in the kitchen.  I sat in a high chair and the only meal I remember eating was breakfast.  Breakfast made a big impression on me because of the toast.  You see, I had 2 piece pajamas that snapped at the waist and had feet and a flap in the back.  Unfortunately, whenever I ate toast the crumbs would manage to slip down into the crevices between the snaps and I found myself sitting on crumbs.  No matter how fast I jumped down from my chair and dropped the flap, the crumbs would always beat me and slide down to the feet of my pajamas.  For me there was nothing worse than walking on toast crumbs and getting them stuck between my toes.  After breakfast I don’t think my mother had a problem convincing me to change out of my pj’s and into my play clothes.

If you walked in the front door and up the stairs, at the top, you would be facing the door to the bathroom.  This room held significance for me because it was where I would watch my father shave.  It held significance for my mother because it was where she was forced to call for help getting the door off the hinges when I locked myself in and cut my own hair.  You see, my father was the agent for a female vocalist who I knew only as Lorraine.  I loved her somewhat unusual, short, boy type haircut.  My hair was fine and extremely curly, so I felt that a makeover hairdo just like Lorraine’s was in order.

There were 3 bedrooms upstairs but the one at the other end of the hall, although furnished, was unused.  My father had purchased the house when he returned from WWII in 1946 and he and his mother lived there before he got married to my mother.  By the time I was born, my paternal grandmother, Cassie, had died and this had been her bedroom.

My bedroom went off of the hallway and my parents bedroom was actually off of mine.  I got used to hearing my father snore.  I don’t remember my bed but I do remember the toy box that was at the foot of my bed.  Th toy box was covered in blue and white vinyl with pictures of cowboys on top.  (What was with the 1950's fixation on cowboys?)  I remember taking all the toys out, getting into the box and closing the cover to hide from my mother.  My toys were all over the floor around the toy box but I was so smart that I never seemed able to figure out how my mother always knew where to find me when she finished making the beds.

In general Reed Avenue was a happy place for me.  My maternal grandmother didn’t live with us then so I didn’t, at the time, know of her dislike for my father.  My paternal grandmother was dead and I had not been told that she disliked my mother.  So it was just me and my mom and dad and that worked for me.  

I get started

There was a time when people played games with each other in the flesh rather than online.  At night they read by candlelight because there was no prime time TV.  And transportation was by 2 feet or 4.

My life actually spans a period of time that has been a wild ride with respect to a lot of things like technology.  There was always a TV in our home but I spent the first 2/3s of my life never having used a computer.  But I have had the privilege of watching many of these things unfold.  And, I have also been blessed by personally knowing and loving a number of generations of people.  Some gave me a sense of the past while others give me a sense of the future.  I needed only to listen to their stories.  Their stories were not always told in a neat package so I have had to fit some of the pieces together depending on time and place.  I can't say unequivocally that everything is 100% correct, but I believe it.

My daughter once gave me a blank book called "A mother's legacy."  My brother once asked me to write down stories that I had been told by my great-grandmother.  And my nieces were always asking me to tell them what their dad was like when he was a kid.  I'm sure they just want to make sure I don't take this stuff with me when I kick the bucket.  I'll obviously try to be sensitive to everyone, although the dead relatives probably don't much care.

So, this is especially for my family.  Let me know how you like it.