Number, please.

It is probably difficult to comprehend, in today's environment, that there was a time before cell phones, before mobile bag phones, before touchtone phones, before dial phones. I grew up in the era before dial phones. Our phone number was 7J and we were on a party line. When the phone rang, you had to count the number of rings to know if it was your phone that was being called. When you picked up the receiver you had to make sure no one was already talking. If they were, you were supposed to hang up. If the operator answered, you could tell her what number you wanted her to call. For some reason I was scared to death of the telephone and didn't want to use it.

Grammy and Grampa

I never knew of my grandparents on my father's side. His father was a candymaker and whenever we would get boxed chocolates my father could tell you what was inside each one from the swirls on top. That's the only thing I know about them.

My mother's parents , however, were a big part of my childhood. I knew that they had come from County Kerry in Ireland. It was only a few years ago that I learned that my grandmother was sent here to help take care of the children of a relative. The story is that when she got off the train my grandfather was with the relatives that were there to meet her. Just like in the storybooks they said it was love at first sight. He knew that he was going to marry her. They never knew each other in Ireland. It was destiny, Marie and Eugene. They had Mary, Rita, Eugenia, Pauline (my mother), Eleanor, Gail and Joe. There were also one or two others who had died presumably at birth, but no one ever talked about that. They lived in a big house in Belmont and my grandfather was a streetcar conductor. Grampa had a huge garden that took up most of the back yard. When he wasn't working in the garden, he would often sit in this ornately carved chair and read books in gaelic while smoking his pipe. He had this impressive full head of white hair till the day he died.

Every day my grandmother would wave goodbye to Grampa, from the porch, as he went off to work. She kept us in gales of laughter telling about the next door neighbor who thought they were better than every one else. The woman would stand on the porch and in a very loud voice, which my grandmother would imitate, she would shout out "don't forget the Ballown" to her husband as he went off to work. You have to get the sense of this Julia Child voice. I can hear it to this day. I guess she thought balogna was what rich people ate and that was how rich people talked.

Grammy loved life and loved people who were "gay". To Grammy gay meant happy. She would have been mortified if someone had told her otherwise. She would not have understood it as the lifestyle that the word conotates today.

Injun-uity

There were stairs from the kitchen that went down to the cellar. It was huge with three distinct areas. One part was like a garage with a big sliding barn-like door. One part had the lawn furniture stored in it and a big upright piano. No one played the piano. Where did it come from? Why was it there? Maybe it was from the previous owners. The rest of the cellar had my father's workbenches and tools. I had a blackboard and would "play school" there. I was going to be a teacher. I also used to play with my Injun Joe cards there. They came in the Shredded Wheat boxes which was the only cereal my father would eat. I, on the other hand, ate Ranger Joe's. Injun Joe, Ranger Joe, who knows? It turns out that the cards were a ploy by Nabisco to get children to eat what was considered an adult cereal and Shredded Wheat as the sponsor for a radio program. I never fell for the cereal part but faithfully collected those "injun-uity" cards. They had all kinds of indian lore and crafts. I didn't remember, but read, that at first Injun Joe's horse didn't have a name and they ran a contest where you could submit a name along with a boxtop. They named him Fury. And so there was Hopalong Cassidy and his horse Topper, the Lone Ranger with Silver and Tonto with Scout and Gene Autry with Trigger and Dale Evans with Buttermilk and Injun Joe with Fury.

Why don't you go out and play

As you will remember, there were no other children living nearby when I was little with the exception of Tina's visits to her grandmother who lived next door. For the most part I spent my time in the playground of my imagination. I had a Hopalong Cassidy gun and holster set which was black tooled leather with silver studs and "rubies". It had a cap gun that you put a roll of caps in and went around shooting everything. It seems a little strange to me now but in researching the memorabilia there were cowgirl outfits that were Hopalong Cassidy even though he never kissed girls on the screen. I just had the gun and holster set. Sometimes I would take a stone and smash the caps on the sidewalk to make them go off. There would be a loud smacking sound and you could smell the "gunpowder" in the air.

I also had a tin dollhouse. It was a two story colonial that was enclosed on three sides. The back of it was open so that you could move the furniture around. It was painted outside with windows and shutters and a front door and inside each room was painted with windows and walls and rugs and so forth. It was one of my favorite things. For some reason my mother decided it was going to the trash which upset me greatly.

That reminded me that there was a picture of me, a real studio portrait, when I was about four. I was holding my one and only stuffed toy. I don't remember getting it, just having it. This dog was made of loopy white yarn and I named it Rags. The little old lady across the street had a dog that was named Rags and that's who I named it after. At some point in time I guess Rags had had more than his share of love and attention and my mother put him in the washing machine. Needless to say, Rags went to doggie heaven and I was devastated. There was no replacement.

We used to play with marbles; aggies were the big ones. There were solid colors and ones with other colors imbedded in them. You could trade them but I don't think I ever did. How do you play "marbles"? I really don't remember.

Tina and I would play "dress-up" with her Nanna's clothes and shoes. She had fancy hats and furs and jewels. We would have tea parties and make lots of mud pies.

The sidewalk provided playtime for us also. I was not allowed to cross the street and could only go up and down within sight of my house. Still, that was plenty of space for riding my trike or roller skating or playing hopscotch.

I had a doll that had a composite head with a painted face, a cloth body and some kind of rubber arms and legs. It was named "Joey baby" after my uncle Joe. I think it was a Honey Baby doll and so I called it "Joey baby". Don't ask me why this girl doll got a boy's name. I have no idea, except that I do know that I thought the world revolved around my uncle Joe. She had painted hair and sleep eyes that closed when you laid her down. There was some kind of sound thing in her stomach and she would say "waaa" or "mama". She had latex "majic skin" for arms and legs that was stuffed to make it feel more real. Eventually her arms and legs turned brown, because whatever they were stuffed with caused a reaction, while the rest of her stayed pink. Shortly after that she was relegated to the trash bin. Oh, the horror of it. There are no examples of these dolls today because of the decomposition.

The renaissance man

My father not only worked all week, he worked all weekend. He would be up by 6:00 am on Saturday morning raking and cutting grass and puttering in the yard. All along the fence, he grew magnificent roses. Every year there was a parade and one year I was dressed up and had this big hat that was covered in these huge roses that were pale pink and pale yellow with pink tipping. Strangely enough, my mother never did do anything outside and yet later in life was known for her prize winning window boxes while my father, on the other hand, had given up growing things by then.


We had a volunteer fire department and my father was a Lieutenant. They had a pool table in the back of the station and he was known for his skill at playing pool. He said he had played against Minnesota Fats. He and some of the other firemen built several barbecue grills out of 55 gallon drums and had them on the side of the firehouse. Everyone looked forward to the great food they turned out. I imagine they cooked to raise money for the firehouse. Today, people are trying to raise money for that same firehouse to preserve it for posterity along with the GAR hall next door. I'm sure my father would have approved.

One of the other things that occupied his time on the weekends was St. Christine's. He helped to build an addition on the church and he and Father Flynn spent many a Saturday afternoon in the rectory. It was rumored that the Irish whiskey flowed freely. Never the less he and my father would be at 7:00 am mass on Sunday morning.

Carrots and cabbage leaves

I was an only child for my first five years and then my brother came along. It is very strange but I have almost no recollection of him as a baby at all. Someone would probably find some deep seated psychological issue in this. I remember one day my mother was pushing him in the stroller. She had this cashmere coat on and she reached in the pocket and pulled out a petrified piece of carrot. The last time she had worn the coat was when I was teething and she always had carrots for me to gnaw on. I remember the coat and the carrot but not my brother.

I had a music box that was blue with a red cord and you hung it around your neck. It played "pop goes the weasal" and something popped up out of the top of it. For some reason my brother whacked me in the nose with it one day. For years I blamed him for my nose being broken. It wasn't until I grew up that I realized that I had a deviated septum which had nothing whatsoever to do with that toddler tantrum.

There were some pictures of us together as children but even they don't stir any memories of us growing up. We were told that Irish children came "out from under a cabbage leaf". That was the explanation for where we came from and we believed it, at least I did anyway. One of my earliest recollections of my mother is in her bedroom. It had massive mahogany furniture with a four poster bed with pineapples on the tops and a bureau with a large mirror. My mother was not a morning person and was not to be disturbed when she was in bed. My father, on the other hand, had his bedroom on the other side of the house. It had a great big bed and not much else. Needless to say, they never shared the same bed or the same bedroom as far as we knew. So there you have it. We came out from under a cabbage leaf.

Shopping trips to Boston

Every once in awhile my mother would drive into Boston to go shopping. It was an all day event. In the nice weather I would get dropped off at the Boston Public Gardens. There was a fenced in area where all the children stayed while their mothers shopped. It had a set of cubbies and you put your brown bag lunch in one of them. There were playground ladies to look after the children. We played all day and watched the swan boats. Other times I would get dropped off at my grandmother's house in Belmont. Grammy and I would often hide in the pantry and sneak potato chips. My mother never bought potato chips and Grammy took great delight in us hiding what we were doing from my mother.


My mother shopped at Filene's (especially the basement), Jordan Marsh, R.H. Stearns, and Gilchrists. These were the major department stores of the day. They had massive window displays along the streets that were decorated at Christmas with animated holiday scenes. It was an annual event to go "window shopping" on a Sunday before Christmas and then have brunch at the Parker House. There would be crowds of people lining the sidewalks, looking at the windows, as the stores were closed on Sundays then .



My father was the one with the favorite saying in our house at Christmas. He would open his presents and exclaim "oh, my favorite brand...irregular!" Just as he was known for his tailor made suits, my mother was known for her shopping prowess at Filene's basement. Labels on all their marked down items were always stamped "irregular". I grew up wearing clothes that my mother had sewn or the infamous irregular brand. One of the first things I bought when I got my first job was a pair of Papagallo shoes from the Papagallo store, $25.00 on my $65.00 a week salary. My mother was mortified and I was in shoe heaven. Like Carrie and her Manolo's, I had designer shoes in colors to match every outfit. I was determined that "irregular" was not going to be in my vocabulary.

The "woody" and the bread truck and the milkman

Next to our house there was a two story barn with a hay loft. My father had all his tools and the big lawn mower on the lower floor. He refinished the first floor for a two car garage with a stone driveway. I don't remember my father's car at all but my mother had a woody wagon and it was probably a Ford. Her tag number was 26133 and she kept that for many years through many cars. She hit a bread truck one time and even though she used the acceptable seat belt of that era, which was when your mother reached across you with her right arm, I never the less smacked into the round plastic face of the clock on the dashboard. The clock sustained a crack and I sustained the confirmation of my reputation for being "hard headed".

Bread trucks and milk trucks delivered door to door . The milk crate was on your back porch stoop and the milkman would deliver full bottles for however many empty ones were in the crate. Milk came in quart size glass bottles. The cream rose to the top of the milk and my mother would carefully pour the cream out and put it in another container. Cream was for coffee. You would always have to shake the milk a little before you poured it so that any cream left in the bottle would blend with the milk. I have read that you put a card in the window when you wanted bread delivered but I really don't remember that.

The hat, the suit and the shoes

My father was a really sharp dresser. He wore custom made suits and Brooks Brothers shirts and his shoes were from Stacy Adams. The shoes came from Brockton, Mass. which was then known as the shoe capital of the world. Rocky Marciano worked there before he became known for his boxing prowess. Once a year my father would box up a pair and send them back to the factory to be refurbished, resoled and heeled when necessary. He would get them back and always exclaim to us that they were like new. The company didn't charge for this because the shoes were meant to last a lifetime. Every day he would brush his shoes and on Saturday he had a whole routine about polishing his shoes. He had Kiwi tins in oxblood and cordovan, a brush and his "spit and polish" cloth. The combination of colors had to be put on in such a manner that this perfect and individual color was achieved. It was a slow and steady process that he never deviated from, a remnant of his time in the Army where you had to be able to see yourself in the shine of your boots. The ad that is shown here is actually from that time, Life magazine 1950. My father also wore a fedora and I thought he was tremendously handsome.

Off to school

And so it was that I went off to school. Sacred Heart catholic school. We wore uniforms and somewhere there is a picture of me with braids and wearing a red blouse with white polka dots and red panties and a navy blue jumper. I know, the panties part is just too much information but they were RED! Daddy drove me somewhere every morning and from there I rode in this van to school. Since I was the youngest they made me sit on the wheel cover in the back instead of a regular seat. It was a very hard and bumpy ride. Sometimes my parents would go away for the weekend and I would stay overnight at the school in the dorm. I remember that we had cocoa for breakfast and it always had this "scum" floating on top...yuck...and I don't remember us having anything else except macaroni and cheese, but I'm sure we must have. One weekend we went on a field trip in the woods and came upon a fire tower. It had metal steps that went up forever. I was scared to death. Whether or not my fear of heights arrived on that day, I do not know.

Walking to the library

I have been an avid reader since I was four. One of my favorite places, when I was little, was the library. You can google the Clift Rodgers free library in Marshfield Hills and it looks very much the same now as it did then. Remarkably, it is one of only a few self sufficient libraries in the country. There are no computers, no internet connections and no library cards. There was one room with childrens' books. I had to get my mother to give the librarian permission for me to read books in the adult sections of the library because I had read every single childrens book they had. Needless to say, I was quite precocious and was enrolled in first grade at Sacred Heart school in Plymouth at the age of five. None of that pre-k or kindergarten stuff for me.

You can go home again

All this remeniscing about riding up and down in front of my house got me thinking about that house I grew up in. Well, you know how they tell you that everything is on the internet, you just have to know how to find it. So, I typed in Marshfield Hills, Mass. and started looking. There was a house that had sold in June and it looked somewhat like what I remembered. I googled the satellite photo and matched up the roads from memory and this had to be the house. I went back and found another website where the realtor had posted pictures. The kitchen was a modern wonder with skylights and a stainless refridgerator and a Viking stove. The house that had the most modern conveniences of the time now had them again. Then I saw the living room and could not believe my eyes. Where we had wall to wall carpeting you could see a beautiful wood floor. And then I saw the fireplace. The man who had built the kitchen cabinets had made the built in wall surrounding the fireplace. And there it was exactly the same as when I was a little girl over sixty years ago. I remember the top left cabinet held the record player, a concept way before its time. We had very few records but I remember one was Caruso and one was "Little Jimmy Brown" that I still know all the words to. You can see through the doorway into what we called the sunroom. Children didn't go in the living room or the dining room except on special occasions. The sunroom had the television. I grew up with Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger, Howdy Doody and Clarabelle the clown, Kookla, Fran and Ollie and test patterns when there wasn't anything being broadcast. Now there are hundreds of stations and "nothing to watch". For us, sometimes there really wasn't anything to watch except a test pattern. So don't let anyone tell you that you can't go home again. You can, if only in your memories.