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.

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.