Granny's Memories (Part 2)

Ethel and Her Sisters

My grandmother, Ethel, was the youngest of nine children.  With an older brother and seven older sisters, she never lacked for attention.  She admitted that she was indulged by her sisters, who would bring home toys for her and sew and crochet clothes for her dolls.  Her favorite toy was a wicker doll buggy.  

Ethel with her Wicker Doll Buggy

In the summers, the family traveled to visit her father’s relatives on their Door County farm.  There, she got to do things that she couldn’t do in the city like riding a horse and picking berries in the woods. 

Door County

Ethel with Mother

She spoke of her childhood as a happy time.  There were lots of children to play with in the neighborhood.  She took piano lessons and went to school in Englewood, and to Sunday mass at the local Catholic Church. 

School Picture

First Communion

But children grew up quickly in those days.  As soon as they finished school, Ethel and her sisters and brother went to work.  The sisters held a variety of jobs:  milliner, dressmaker, Dictaphone operator, forelady in a factory,and a stenographer in a florist’s shop.  Peter, the family’s only son, was a salesman in a department store and then later a draftsman. 

While in school, Ethel had studied typing and Pittman shorthand, and by 1930, she was eighteen years old and already working as a typist for Commercial Clearing House, a company that printed law reports. 

 In a letter, she reminisced about an exciting adventure she had getting home from work one day:

“I remember one really big snowstorm we had when I was at work in an office in downtown Chicago.  It had been snowing all day, and we worked until 5 o’clock when I boarded a streetcar for home.  It was about a 45-minute ride to our house but about half way home, the streetcar stopped and couldn’t go any further.  The ice and snow was in the tracks and the streetcars were lined up for blocks.  This was a bad part of the city to be left stranded in because there was nothing but factories around. 

Everyone in the streetcar just sat and waited, thinking we would get going, but it got so cold they started to get off and walk, so that’s what I did, not knowing how far I’d get in that blowing snow and freezing cold, but I was lucky.  We hadn’t walked very far when a truck came long and the driver asked another girl and I if we wanted a ride, and we gladly accepted.  My mother always told me not to accept rides from strangers, but this was an emergency, and I wanted to get home that night.  He didn’t take us very far, but left us off at a drug store where we could at least phone our parents. 

By this time, it was about 10 p.m., and my mother was worried sick.  When she heard my voice, she said, “Thank God, you’re all right!”  My brother was married and lived next door with his family, and he had a car with chains on the tires, so my mother said, “Wait right there, and Pete will come and get you.”  When he pulled up to that drug store, I was never as happy to see anyone as I was to see him.  It was about 11 p.m. when we get home that night, and home never looked so good.  What should have been a 45 minute ride, turned out to be a six-hour ordeal.” 

While working in the typing pool at Commercial Clearing House, which she always called CCH, she was introduced to a young linotype operator, (a linotype machine set type for the printing process).  His name was Chet, and from the first, she thought he was incredibly handsome.  They began dating, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Ethel & Chester

 

  

My Motherhood Memories



           Each person's memories are unique, colored by emotions and viewed through the prism that is his or her own perspective.  A family experiences many of the same events in life, and yet each member of that family takes away vastly different memories.  It took many years (and more than a few heated debates) for me to realize that.  So as I embark on this exercise of looking backward, I share with you the only memories that I can - my own.  

            When my daughters were young, we didn't have a lot of extra money, but we still managed to have a comfortable life.  We had just bought a home, and their father and I had agreed that I would give up my job in order to be a stay-at-home mom, and although it may have been an easier financial decision in the 1970s and 80s than it is today, it still meant some sacrifice.

Melissa's Favorite Meal

          For a few years, we had only one car.  A meal at a restaurant was a rare occurrence.  Paychecks came once every two weeks, and sometimes by the end of the second week, the pantry shelves were getting bare. 

          I can recall on more than one occasion when the cousins came for lunch, we served macaroni and cheese and hot dogs.  I believe they all grew up thinking it was all Auntie knew how to cook, but it was one of the meals we could afford (and thankfully, Melissa's favorite). 



Mandy with Christmas Dress, Baby Doll and Cradle



I remember once, on the day before payday, my sister called to inform me that she was stopping by with out-of-town relatives . . . in half an hour . . .  for lunch.  If only I'd had a box of macaroni on the shelf that day!  What was left in the refrigerator? A loaf of white bread and a pound of bacon.  I wish I could report that it turned out well.  Alas, BLTs for everyone, minus the lettuce and tomatoes, of course, and more relatives wondering about my culinary skills. 

           The 1970s and 80s were an era of do-it-yourself, back-to-basics, and recycling.  We weren't ashamed to accept hand-me-down clothes, and for only a few dollars, I could buy fabric and sew items to fill out the girls' wardrobes:  flannel pajamas, sunbonnets, dresses, jumpers and pants. We also saved money by making some of the girls' Christmas gifts.  One year I sewed them red corduroy Christmas jumpers, baby dolls with quilts and their dad made each doll a cradle.  

      

 

The Evil Rose Bush



    Having only one car was sometimes a bother, I'll admit, but it also meant lots of time spent at home.  That gave me time to plant a garden, with herbs and vegetables and flowers.  I was so proud of the rose bush that I finally trained to climb on the chain link fence next to our sidewalk.  It never failed to bloom, with dozens and dozens of fragrant red roses each year.  But what do the girls remember?  Falling into the thorns while they learned to ride their bicycles along that sidewalk. 

 



Melissa Swinging in Front of the Vegetable Garden



            With time spent at home, I could learn to bake my own bread and cook meals from scratch.  Is that a saying that's even used anymore?  Cooking from scratch?  Anyway, it's a good feeling to be able to look at what's left in the freezer and the staples in the pantry and make a meal out of what you find.  No special ingredients, no fancy recipes.  I may not have realized it at the time, but these were all methods through which I could express my creativity, and they gave me a great deal of satisfaction, as well as the skills to ensure that I could throw together a tasty meal at a moment's notice (and finally be rid of the reputation as a failure in the kitchen).



    



At the Zoo



In the Pool





            Needless to say, travel was more of a luxury than we could afford while the girls were small.  Instead, we put up a swimming pool and spent our vacations together in the backyard.  As warm weather approached each year, I would put together a box filled with inexpensive but fun things to do on the long summer days:  sidewalk chalk, playing cards, jump ropes, bubbles, crayons and Play-Doh.   

          There were play-dates with friends, birthday parties, Fourth of July parades, fishing derbies.  There were outings to the zoo, Santa's Village, Great America.   And books, of course, lots of books and craft projects.  The girls never lacked for things to do, and I'd like to think that the types of entertainment we provided helped them to develop into the independent young women with bright and creative minds that they are today.  



Mandy Reading









Granny's Memories (Part I)

She was born in 1912, the same year the Titanic went down, and if she'd have lived, she would have been 100 this November. She was the ninth child (and eighth daughter) of John Paul and Christina. With so many older sisters, how could she have been anything but indulged? She described her childhood as a happy one, living in the house that her father,(a carpenter) built on Sangamon Street in the south-side Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, which was then a thriving community. 

The House on Sangamon Street

The family was doing well.  There was a player piano in the parlor and a Tiffany-style light with a stained-glass fruit design over the dining room table.  Her mother kept a beautiful flower garden and a chicken coop in the backyard - but let's have her tell the story from a letter she wrote to me in 1978 for my eldest daughter Melissa's first Christmas:

Ethel in the Chicken Coop

"Mother had chickens she kept in the backyard in a chicken coop my father built (which later was given up for a garage Father built for his brand new, shiny, black Model T ford) so we always had very fresh eggs for breakfast. Milk would be delivered to our doorstep in glass bottles by the milkman and, in the winter, if it wasn't brought in the house soon enough, it would freeze and pop up out of the bottle with the cap sitting on the top. It was not homogenized in those days so the cream would always be on top, and we would either shake it up to mix the cream with the milk or pour the cream off the top for our coffee, which my mother usually did. There was always butter on the table, too. No one knew about cholesterol in those days, so our diet was rich in eggs, meat, cream and butter."

Father's Model T

"I remember every Saturday night, the familiar smell of home-baked goodies would fill the house. Mother would make a big batch of yeast dough. Sometimes she would make bread and coffee cake: one with cinnamon and sugar and one with apples, cinnamon and sugar on top, and sometimes she would make bread and doughnuts rolled in granulated sugar. They were the best raised doughnuts I ever tasted. On Sunday morning, we would have a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs and homemade bread dipped in hot bacon grease (mmmm, was that ever good) and homemade coffee cake or doughnuts."

Mother & Ethel

"I remember when we would gather around our player piano and sing songs. I always got to pump the pedals and sometimes I would pretend I was playing the piano myself by running my fingers up and down the keyboard. I did take piano lessons for about six years and could play pretty well. My father would love to sit back in his easy chair, smoke his corn cob pipe and have me play all my pieces for him. I also played marches in school for the kids to march to: in the morning, at recess, and going home."

 "These are the memories that stand out in my mind of when I was a little girl. I also have wonderful memories of when our three little girls were little, but that's a whole other story . . ."

Ethel's Family

Remembrances for My Daughters

Over the past few weeks, I've attempted to create a blog. I've had more than my share of false starts. I created a page, a title, chose color and graphics, only to realize that I had nothing unique to impart, nothing to say that hadn't already been said before. Our world has been inundated by people with opinions and clever points-of-view. We've reached a saturation point. That's my opinion, at least. I decided that I don't want to waste what's left of my life on repetitious musing. The fact is that the people who love me are likely the only ones who will genuinely care to hear about life from my perspective, and so I've decided to write a memory blog for my children . . . and for their children, too.
 

Near the end of her life, it occurred to me that I didn't know nearly enough about my grandmother. When someone is so much a part of your life, you don't realize how much you don't know about them. She was living in Arizona, and when she came to visit for the summer, I would ask her questions about her past. What was her childhood like? How did her family celebrate the holidays? What kind of house did she grow up in?

We pored over old family photographs, and I asked her to identify the faces. On some days, she couldn't remember at all, but then a day or two later, she'd give a name without hesitation. That's how it is with memories. They're not like photograph albums that you can just pull off the shelf whenever you like. Sometimes they're there. Sometimes they're not. That's why they call them "fleeting".


I didn't learn nearly enough from her, and then it was too late. What I wouldn't give to have her back again to share more of her stories and to tell her what I've been able to discover about the history of her family, things that she never knew but that I was able to piece together using the memories she shared with me and the genealogical information available now on the Internet.

In our busy lives, the important things like memories often get lost. So documenting our family stories for my girls seems a worthwhile use of blog space.  I can't promise that there will always be timely posts because sometimes life intrudes upon the best-laid plans, and I can't promise that there will be total recall because my brain doesn't seem to work that way.  What I can promise is that I will do my best to eventually document all the stories and pictures and memories that I've managed to collect and every now and again send you these postcards from the past.