Grandpa's Real Story

My little brother and me, around 1947.


I was born in 1943. For the first seven months of my life my
mother and father and I lived in a big building on Westgate Avenue in the University City loop. The building was so big that twelve different families lived in apartments in that building. I don't have any memories of what that apartment was like. Hardly anyone can remember things from when they were small babies.

When I was seven months old, my father had to go into the army, and my mother and I went to live with her parents, my grandparents, in their house on Stanford Avenue in University City. I do have some memories of this house, and I've been back to look at it since. It is still there and looks nice. What I remember most is that my grandparents had a wooden coffee table that was covered with a sheet of clear glass, to keep the wood from getting scratched. I liked to play with it by picking up one end of the table so it tilted, and my grandmother let me do it. On at
least two occasions I accidentally tilted it too far so the glass slid off and broke.

When I was seventeen months old, my father came back, and we moved to a kind of house called a duplex at 7208 Dartmouth Avenue in University City. One family lived on the first floor of the house and a different family lived on the second floor. There were two front doors. One led into the first floor, and the other led directly to a staircase that went up to the
second floor. At the top of the stairs was another door that had to be opened before you went into the actual second floor. We lived in this house until I was nine years old. First we lived on the second floor, and then we moved to the first floor. Our part of the house had three
bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. There was also a basement that was shared by both families.

When I was very young, it was hard to buy toys, and at first I had only three toys. The one I liked best was some boxes that fit inside each other.

My brother Ken was born when I was two years and nine months old. I still remember the day when he was brought home from the hospital. I hadn't known before I saw him that my mother was going to have a baby. He cried a lot and didn't do much when he was a small baby. For some of the time we lived on Dartmouth my brother and I slept in separate bedrooms, and our parents slept in the other bedroom. And for some of the time Ken and I slept in the same bedroom, and one bedroom was used as a playroom. We kept our toys there. Even if we had the toys spread out all over the floor, it didn't make a mess in the rest of the house.

There were a lot of children living on Dartmouth. To play with other children, all we had to do was go outside. Some other children would be there for us to play with. There was a vacant lot next to our house where we children could play the kind of games where we ran around. We didn't know who owned that vacant lot, but it didn't matter. No one told us not to play there. I've been back since that time to look at the house, and there are now two houses on what used to be the vacant lot. Apparently it was really a double size lot, but I didn't know that as a child.

All of the houses on Dartmouth had concrete steps in front of them. The land that the houses actually stood on was higher than the street, and the front lawns had hills leading from the street up to the houses. The steps were so people could walk to the front door without having to walk on the lawns. Some of the games we children played were on these steps. One was
called stepball. We used a small ball that would bounce when you threw it at the steps. There were special rules about who threw it and who would try to catch it after it bounced, but I don't remember the rules. We knew that if the ball bounced too far and went into the street, we just had to stay on the sidewalk and watch it. There might be a car coming, and it would have been dangerous to chase the ball into the street. Another game we played was called teacher. The different children would be sitting on some of the steps. The one sitting on the top step was called Teacher, and the idea was to get to be Teacher. You could challenge the kid sitting on the step above yours, and that kid would hold out two closed hands with a pebble in one hand. You had to guess which hand held the pebble. If you guessed right, you could move up one step, but if you guessed wrong, you had to go down to the bottom.

Helping around the House

There are a lot of chores that need to be done to keep a house and yard neat and to feed a family. So when I was little, my brother and sister and I had chores to do.
When my brother was very little, sometimes my sister and I would keep an I on him while my mother was busy in the house. We had a friend down the street who had 7 younger sisters and brothers. She spent all her spare time helping with babies. We had a much easier time, with only one little brother to take care of.
We would take Arny for a walk in his stroller or keep an eye on him while he played in his play-pen. Sometimes we didn't do a very good job. One time we decided it would be fun to tie his stroller to the back of our bicycle and give him a ride down the driveway. Fortunately my mother noticed us before we really did it. The stroller could have tipped over and he would have been hurt.
In the house, one of our chores was to dust the dining room table. The table was made of dark wood and showed every spec of dust. It needed to be dusted every day. It was hard to get all the dust off, and as soon as we were done, it started to get dusty again. In my house now, I have mostly light colored wood, because even when it's dusty, it's hard to see the dust.
We also would help to sweep the kitchen floor or the front porch. I don't think we helped with the vacuum cleaner, but we used the broom.
We also helped with the dishes. My sister dried the dishes and I dried the silverware.
When Mommy baked cake or cookies, sometimes we would grease the pans--there was no Teflon then. Sometimes we would sift flour and baking powder with the flour sifter. I would rather have helped more with mixing up the batter or dough. I did learn to crack eggs and separate them. We never cracked the eggs directly into the bowl, for fear of getting egg shells in the food, or discovering that an egg was bloody or rotten when it was too late to get rid of it.
We also had to clean our rooms sometimes. I don't think I was very neat about it. But we knew to throw our clothes down the clothes chute, not just to leave them on the floor.
Outside, we would help with raking leaves in the fall, so that Daddy could burn them up. In summer, we would pick up sticks or pull a few weeds.
We also would help to wash the car. We would wash the wheels, or wipe the car with a chamois.
Our Mom and Dad worked hard around the house and didn't expect us to do very much. Sometimes when I got to be a teenager, I would offer to help with washing the dishes. Mom would say "You'll have plenty of dishes to wash when you have your own house, so let me do these now and you can keep your hands smooth and nice". But now I have a dishwasher, and besides, Grandpa does a lot of the dishwashing so I don't have to wash many dishes at all.

Leaves and Seeds

It's getting to be autumn here in the midwest. Seeing the leaves begin to turn and the seedpods hanging from vines makes me think of the many plants that we enjoyed playing with when we were children.
Perhaps the most fun were milkweed pods. In the spring and summer these are green pods. If you break or squeeze them, white liquid comes out. It isn't really milk, and you can't drink it (you would get sick), but it looks like milk. Then later in the summer, the pods dry out and are filled with seeds and soft, furry fuzz. If you open them up and blow, the seeds with their fuzz blow away to plant new milkweeds for the next spring. If you don't do it, the wind will blow them away.

Another interesting plant is sedum. We didn't know what it was called, but we loved playing with it. The leaves are very thick and smooth. If you break one off and carefully squeeze it all over--without breaking through anywhere--you can blow it up like a balloon!!! It isn't easy and often the leaves break, but when you blow one up and it pops, it is really satisfying.

Catalpa trees have a seed pod that is long and green. We used to call catalpas "lady cigar trees". I don't think we ever actually tried to smoke one, since we weren't allowed to play with matches, but we would pretend to smoke them.

Acorns are also fun to play with. They are poisonous, so you mustn't ever put them in your mouth. We would try to find as many as we could. The little caps come off the end to make cups for fairies or dolls. Or you can plant one (like squirrels do) so a new oak tree will grow. My mother told us a saying "Great oaks from little acorns grow". That means that a little child can grow up to be an important inventor or scientist or writer or teacher or anything else. But it also means that a big oak tree can grow in your back yard just from an acorn. We had one in our yard when I was little that my father transplanted after it sprouted. We have one in our yard now, that started out just an acorn about 15 years ago, and has turned into a big tree.

We also enjoyed gathering the seeds from hollyhocks and trying to plant them the next spring. They come in little round seedpods, neatly arranged in a circle. I don't think we ever succeeded in getting one to grow, but it was fun to take them out of the pods. Great-Grandpa Clarence wouldn't like it if we planted them on his farm in Kansas, but it's ok to plant them in the city.

And of course, in the fall, one of the most fun things to do is to rake up a pile of leaves and jump into it. When we were little, we would help rake, and jump, and then Daddy would burn the leaves. Now we aren't allowed to burn leaves in the city--it makes too much smoke and is too dangerous--but we still rake up big piles of leaves and it is still fun to jump in them.
Here is a picture of Miriam in the leaves when she was 2 years old.

The Weather

In St Louis, there is a saying that "If you don't like the weather, just wait and it will change". This is also true in some other places, but St Louis weather is probably more changeable than most.
In the summer, it's pretty consistently hot and humid, but during Fall, Winter, and Spring there are more variations.
In the fall or spring, a cold front can come through and temperatures may drop from 70 F to 35 F in a few hours. I can remember a battle with my mother because she said I had to wear my sweater back to school after lunch on a lovely October day. She won, but I thought it was dumb to wear a sweater when I was so warm,. She was worried about me being cold later in the afternoon.
In January or February we would also get occasional beautiful days. With no leaves on the trees and a few piles of snow around, even I was more skeptical about what might happen later in the day. One time I remember snow at the end of March, falling on the blooming daffodils. This picture of a snowcovered daffodil is from Zenxx on Flickr.
I also remember the first year I knew that Spring arrives on March 21. I didn't realize that that is just the date of the equinox, when day and night are equal lengths. I thought it meant that we would have leaves on the trees and lots of flowers. That year had not been a really warm one. I was very disappointed when I looked out that morning and the branches were still bare.
Once during a lovely warm spell in late March, my friends and I planned a picnic for Spring Break in April. Unfortunately, by then winter temperatures had returned and we ate the picnic indoors, and then went out in to the picnic park for a very cold hike.
Another picnic I remember was a summer picnic. We were all set to go, when it started to rain and wouldn't stop. We were all disappointed. But my mom put the paper tablecloth on the floor and we had an indoor picnic. She even drew ants on the tablecloth, so we would feel like we were outside!
When a very warm day would come out of season, especially if it was a humid day, we would worry about "tornado weather". St. Louis has had bad tornadoes in September, in January, February, and May. They usually happen when a cold front comes through and hits moist, warm air.
There was a tornado when I was 12 years old, in September, that reminded my parents of one 30 years earlier, that hit the high school my mother had attended. We drove around the area where the storm had hit. You could see buildings that had lost an entire wall. We knew to go down in the basement if the sky got black or the siren sounded or the radio said a storm was coming.

Being Sick

Today I have a cold and am losing my voice. So it seems a good time to write about staying healthy and about being sick when I was a child. I was fortunate that I never was very sick.

The first thing I remember is that we took cod liver oil every day. (Real fish oil). It was supposed to contain lots of vitamins and be good for you . Even though it sounds nasty, I liked it when I was very little. It came in a bottle and had a dropper. Mommy would squeeze the top of the dropper in the bottle till it held a few drops, and then put it over our mouths and let go so that the cod liver oil went into our mouths. When my brother was born, the doctor prescribed a different kind of cod liver oil because he was a baby. To avoid having to have two different kinds of oil, Mommy gave me the new kind too. P.U. I didn't like it at all!

I also remember that even when I didn't feel like drinking milk, I had to have 3 glasses every day because milk would make me healthy. I didn't like it very much, but now I think Mommy was right--my bones are stronger than they would have been if I hadn't drunk my milk.

One time Doctor L. came to our house because somoeone was sick. He gave us lollipops because we were good. My brother ran around with his lollipop and got it stuck in his throat. The doctor pulled it out again!

When I was 6 years old, I got scarlet fever. I didn't feel sick at all, but it is a contagious disease, so I wasn't allowed to play with anyone except Bonnie, who lived nearby and had just had scarlet fever herself. I think the health department even put a sign on our door that said "Quarantine". When I was almost well, the skin on my hands and feet started peeling off. That was something that happened after scarlet fever--it wasn't dangerous but it was icky. I missed the last week of kindergarten because of the scarlet fever.

When we first moved to our house, Dr. B., the son of the next-door neighbors was just starting his practice as a pediatrician. We became his patients. He would come to our house if we were sick. I don't think he charged very much money at all. But one time I said to him "Doctors are expensive, like plumbers". My parents were embarrassed but Dr. B. wasn't mad at me.

Sometimes when we were sick, Dr. B's mother would tell my mother what to do for us. If we had sore throats, she said we could have ice cream, and if we had stomach aches we could have Seven-Up. These were supposed to make us feel better. The trouble was that if you have a sore throat, even ice cream makes it feel worse, and if you have a tummy ache, soft drinks just make it ache more. So you were allowed to have things that you would like if you were healthy because you were sick, but because you were sick you didn't want them. What a waste!

Now children get shots so they don't get chicken pox or measles or mumps. We got sick with all of those. Chicken pox make little nasty sores all over you, and they itch a lot but you aren't allowed to scratch. We were quite miserable.

I remember having measles and feeling ok, Someetimes measles hurt people's eyes. For that reason, when you had measles, you weren't allowed to read or do any close work, and you weren't supposed to be in bright light. So, feeling good and having time off from school, you had to lie around in a dark room without anything to do. Very boring!!!

You would only get mumps once in your life. Your jaws would get VERY puffed up and hurt a lot. And then sometimes even though you had had your one-time mumps, you would get something called "swollen glands" --they weren't mumps and didn't last as long, but felt and looked just the same.

Another very bad contagious disease was called polio. People who got it sometimes couldn't walk or breathe on their own. So of course, all the mothers and fathers worried that their children would catch it. People were more likely to catch it in the summer, and our parents were afraid we might catch it at the swimming pool. So even when it was very hot they didn't want us to go swimming. When I was 9 or 10 years old, some very wonderful doctors named Dr. Salk and Dr. Sabin invented vaccinations for polio. We all got vaccinated and so did everyone else in the United States. Now everyone gets vaccinated when they are little babies, and no one has to worry about polio anymore.


Children still get strep throat and ear infections and coughs and tummy aches. But fortunately most of the bad diseases are now prevented. It is still important to wash your hands carefully when you are sick and not sneeze or cough on other people, but we can all feel happy that most of the sicknesses don't happen any more.

Holidays

Holidays are always fun. When I was little, my favorite holidays were Halloween and Thanksgiving and Purim and Valentine's Day and Passover and 4th of July. They all had parts that were especially nice.
Before Halloween we would get pumpkins and carve faces in them. We would take Esmerelda out of the closet and hang her on the front door. She was a cardboard skeleton, with joints -- her arms and legs would move. We would buy candy to give out to trick-or-treaters. Sometimes we would bake Halloween cookies or cake.
On Halloween we would go home from school at lunch time to put on our costumes. For lunch we would have open-faced peanut butter sandwiches cut out in circles with a pumpkin face made out of raisins and apples.

Sometimes Mom would make our costumes, witches or ghosts or animals. One year I got to wear my ballet tutu. It was purple. It had a sleeveless leotard and a net skirt. I really loved it. Unfortunately the day of Halloween was cold, so I had to wear a coat over the costume. I hated that, because it wasn't as beautiful when covered up. The picture above shows my sister and her friend on Halloween when I was too little to go out trick-or-treating. Mae says she was a "fun witch" with a pointy hat. The picture below shows Miriam and Alice in tutus a lot like I remember mine.

In our costumes, we would walk back to school for the parade and Halloween party. Everyone would line up, class by class, even the teachers, and walk around in the schoolyard to show off our costumes. Then we would go back to our classroom to have a Halloween party. We would have cake or cupcakes and something to drink.
After school, we would come home for a quick dinner. Sometimes Mommy would make butterscotch pudding with a pumpkin face made of chocolate chips. As soon as we ate, we would put our costumes back on and go out trick-or-treating. When we were very little, Daddy would take us out, while Mommy stayed home to give candy to the kids who came to our house. When we got older, we could go with our friends. We would go up and down the block, stopping at the houses that had lights on. We would go up and ring their bells. The neighbors would open the door and we would say "Trick-or-Treat". Most of them would invite us in and ask us to show them our tricks. We would sing a song or say a poem or tell a joke. Then they would give us some candy. One year when my sister was in eighth grade, she recited the Gettysburg Address. That wasn't really fair, since she had to learn it for school anyway. But Mr. H. gave her a quarter, which was a big treat. One year on soon after Halloween my friends and I were walking home from school. A man was in his yard and asked us if we wanted some candy. We knew we weren't supposed to take candy from strangers, so we said "No thank you" and went home and told our mothers. Because he might be a bad man, the police went and talked to him. But he wasn't a bad man, just a man who had candy left from Halloween.

At Thanksgiving, we had turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce (from a can--it came out with rings around it in a very well-shaped cylinder). Sometimes my aunt made candied sweet potatoes, but I didn't like the sticky marshmallows on them. We would have apple and pumpkin pie for dessert. I always liked the apple and didn't want the pumpkin pie. That was fine--at Thanksgiving no one made me eat the things I didn't like and there were lots of things I did like. Usually we had Thanksgiving at one of my aunts' houses, but sometimes we had it at our house.

Valentine's day and Purim come close to the same time, Valentine's day on February 14, and Purim sometimes in February and sometimes in March.

For Purim we always had hamantashen, little triangle shaped cookies with prune filling. They always were my favorite cookie, and they still are. They are made in the shape of the hat of a man named Haman. The Rabbi at our Sunday School didn't like Purim, because it celebrates a holiday of vengeance. Haman was a bad person who wanted to hurt all the Jewish people. But Queen Esther and her Uncle Mordecai told King Ahashuerus about Haman's evil plot, and instead of hurting the Jews, Haman got hurt himself. We were afraid Rabbi Isserman would make us stop eating hamantashen, but fortunately my mother liked baking them. So we always got our treats.
These pictures are Mae's hamantashen and Lara's hamantashen.



For Valentine's Day we always got a bag of Valentines and addressed them for everyone in the class. In our school, we weren't allowed to just give Valentines to our friends, because then new kids or quiet kids might not get any Valentines, and they would feel bad. Of course, any one of us might be the kid who didn't get any or many, and then we would be the one who felt bad. So we all gave about 30 Valentines and got 30 Valentines in return. Often my mother, who was an artist, would make the big box that everyone in the class put their Valentines into. She would decorate it beautifully with lacy hearts and red paper. She would put a slot in the top. We would all go to the front of the classroom to put the Valentines into the slot, and then the teacher would take them out and distribute them to each person. I was so proud that my mother made the box. We would also have a school party on Valentine's Day, with cake. At home, Mommy would make heart shaped cookies or a heart shaped cake with pink icing. We would always make more Valentines at home, too. We learned to cut out hearts and make our own lacy doilies.

By Passover, Spring was coming and we would have new clothes for the holiday. We liked matzohs and charoses a lot. Charoses is made out of apples and nuts (but you can leave out the nuts if you are allergic) and sweet red wine and raisins. During the Passover ceremony you put a little horseradish and a little charoses on a matzoh. The bitter horseradish makes the sweet charoses taste wonderful. During the ceremony grown-ups get to drink 4 glasses of wine. Children get 4 little tastes. We really liked getting to drink a grown-up drink. Our parents didn't drink wine very often, and didn't have any real wine glasses. They had little shot-glasses that hold one ounce, so no one got a lot to drink.

The last favorite holiday was Independence Day, the 4th of July. We would go up to the Washington University campus where the fireworks display was held on the football field. I always loved the noise and the bright lights of the fireworks. My little brother was scared of them at first, but then he got to like them too. For a while we got tickets and sat inside the stadium. But then we found out that you could bring a blanket and sit on the grass. The fireworks went up very high, and then seemed to come down all around us in the field. That was even more exciting than sitting in the seats. But one time, I found out the hard way that they really DID come down all around us. I put my hand down and got burned on a little piece that hadn't gone out yet. Since then, I make sure never to sit too close.

Shortcuts

When I was little, my friends and I didn't think there was anything wrong with cutting through other people's backyards. We did it all the time. In fourth grade, to get to school, my friend Bernard walked past the house next door to his, down the driveway, through to my back yard and up my driveway. Then he and I walked up to the driveway between our friends Jay and Joe's house. Jay and Joe walked with us too. Jay had two yappy chihuahau dogs. I usually ignored their yapping, but one time one of them nipped me! They are teeny, tiny dosgs, but very aggressive. I learned after that to avoid dogs in their own backyard. They know they are in their own territory, and don't like you in it. But I didn't stop taking the shortcut--just took it more carefully. We would cut through Joe's backyard into Janey's backyard, and she would go with us too. We all walked together the rest of the way to school. Those shortcuts saved us a LOT of time. We could never have all walked together if we had had to stay on official sidewalks.
When I got a little older, my dad put a fence up so I couldn't cut through my own backyard. By then, Bernard walked a different way. When I went to junior high, I had to go in the opposite direction to school, so I walked through Alan and Carol's backyard where there was no fence. Or sometimes, I walked down to the end of the block and cut through on a path by the River des Peres (See Mae's blog) or up to the top of the block and cut through Lewis Park. These were also shortcuts, though on public paths, not through anyone's backyard. Any of these routes was shorter than walking up to Delmar.
If I did walk on Delmar, though, there were a couple of public walks that I led between houses down to quieter streets. One was called Varsity Walk. I can't remember what the other was called. I always thought it was fun to walk down the stairs between people's houses. You could see into their backyards or glance into their dining rooms.
I still like shortcuts. In San Francisco you can walk down some very nice paths from up in the hills to Fisherman's Wharf. In Berkeley, in the hills, there are some very nice walks that go between the houses. It is fun to see the sides and backyards of the very elegant houses. Here is a picture of Rose Walk, in Berkeley, picture by Karen Kemp on the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association website.

Our Front Porch

In the spring, summer and fall, the front porch was my favorite place. It was as big as the living room. On a hot day, it was usually cooler than in the house. On one wall there was a fountain. The water didn't come out of the fountain man's mouth any more, but it was still exciting to have our own fountain. The floor of the porch was a dull pink color. I think the ceiling was green. There were two lights in the ceiling, yellow bug lights. One summer we went on vacation. When we came back we found that my father's uncle, who lived near by, had painted the porch as a surprise for us. It was a different kind of surprise than he expected--the new paint on the floor was a much brighter red, and dirt stuck to it in an unpleasant way. My mother was not happy, but was too polite to say anything except "Thank you".

The porch was a place for our family to sit and talk or read a book, and also a place to entertain guests. Sometimes I would come home from school to find my mother sitting on the front porch, visiting with one of my aunts, or with a neighbor or friend. There were a few visitors that I would rather not have seen--especially the ones who would kiss me with a big lipstick kiss, leaving a mark on my cheek that was hard to get off. But mostly it was fun to have visitors, especially if Mommy was serving cookies and lemonade.

There were two nice metal rocking chairs on the porch, one red and one green, with white rockers. There was also a very comfortable reclining chair. One time my mother's friend was sitting on the reclining chair, but she wasn't reclining. I wanted to lean back, so I asked her if I could have the chair, since she wasn't using its most pleasant feature. I didn't understand that it wasn't polite to ask someone to move from her chair. My mother explained it to me, and then I was embarrassed.

One time while Mommy, our neighbor and my sister and I were sitting on the porch, two little neighbor girls, about 3 and 4 years old, quietly went into the house and up to our bedroom. By the time someone realized they were missing and went to find them, they had found my sister's nail polish and used it to paint the hardwood floor. Mae was NOT happy.

The porch had a low brick wall around it. You could sit on the wall if all the chairs were occupied. But, even better, you could jump off the wall, over the sticker bushes, to the ground around the porch. It sounds scary now, but at the time it was a lot of fun. You could also climb UP the wall back onto the porch.

Another fun activity on the porch was bouncing a ball on the floor. You could also bounce it off the ceiling. (We also bounced balls on the ceiling in the sunroom attached to the porch, but got in trouble one time because the ball had a raised star on it, which was sort of dirty and left big star marks on the ceiling). We also played step ball on the porch steps. There were four of them, the perfect number. You got a different number of points for different kinds of bounces and catches. You would throw the ball at the steps and catch it on the return. You got 5 points if you caught the ball on one bounce. You got 10 points if you got it on a fly. You got 100 points if it bounced off the point of the step and you caught it on the fly, or 500 if it bounced off the point of the top step and you caught it.

I used to play a game called "Shoe Kick". I played by myself. I would stand in the yard and kick off my shoe to see how high it would go. One time I did it too well. My shoe went really high and landed on the roof of the porch. My Daddy had to go out on the roof through the window and get my shoe back. I wasn't allowed to play "Shoe Kick" after that.

Now I am not a little girl any more. I am a pretty old Grandma. But guess what my favorite place is in the spring, summer and fall? I don't have a front porch, but I have a wonderful deck on the side of my house, and that is my favorite place. I like to sit on my reclining chair and read a book, or visit with my friends. I wish my family all lived near me so they could sit there with me.

Thanks to Mae for these pictures from her Blog. You can see the front porch very clearly on the left side of the house.