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.