Finally, I get to tell you about the best room in the house. Well, anyway, it was my very favorite! You have to realize that I never had a bedroom of my own until I was 11 years old. So, no wonder I liked it so much when I finally did get my very own space. Up until then I had just had a cot in an available corner someplace.
The house on 13th Street was large enough that it had four very nice upstairs bedrooms. Our landlady had put fresh new wallpaper on all the walls, and my room had pink flowers. The Canadays, the friends who lived behind us and gave us the kitchen sink, also gave me their only daughter's bedroom furniture. She had gotten married that summer and they were turning her room into an office. They gave me a twin bed with a pretty rose sateen bedspread, and a long dressing table with the same rose sateen skirt. There was a large mirror over the dressing table. Oh, I became such a princess.
My room had two nice windows that looked out into the tall green trees outdoors. They were perfect windows for a daydreamer. Grandma and Grandpa had found a section of school chalkboard someplace, and I had that in my room. One of my favorite pass times was to used colored chalk and cover the board with a huge picture, or write some long story on the chalkboard.
See the box propped up at the end of the bed? That is the box that Jack brought home and Mother painted for me. Inside you will find all my favorite pictures and paper dolls. On the wall you see a wall shelf that Grandpa Lininger made. Grandma and Grandpa had had a fishing cottage at Riverwood, so that Grandpa could go fishing. When they sold the cottage they gave us the shelf. Mother let me hang it in my bedroom and on it I placed the doll tea set that had been my mothers. I still have some pieces of that china tea set.
I also had my Storybook Doll collection. That sounds impressive. But I don't think I ever managed to collect more than three of them. I have no idea what ever happened to those dolls. Our daughter, Cheryl, still has the shelf in her kitchen.
On the dressing table you see a blue perfume bottle. Several years before on my sixth birthday, about midday Mother realized that she had forgotten and had no presents for her precious daughter. As I remember it she called Daddy at work and then baked a cake for supper. My sixth birthday was in 1942, and we had no car, nor was there much gasoline available if you had one. Daddy rode the city bus to work, and it required that he transfer to another bus downtown. Daddy must have gotten off the bus on his way home and shopped for my present at a drugstore downtown. When, after blowing out the candles after supper, I opened my present, it was an aqua blue hobnail bottle of cologne!. It was probably a totally inappropriate gift for a six year old, but I adored it! I felt so grown up, and my daddy had picked it out!
That was seventy years ago and I still have my aqua blue hobnail bottle (no cologne).
You see a doll house in the picture above. Let me tell you the story of my FIRST doll house. My Grandma Green always came to stay with us for three or four months each year. Grandma had very limited eyesight, and had to walk with a walker (hmmm? I think I may be related to her.) I am thinking now that she must have had such patience. Since she couldn't climb stairs, she always had to sleep on a sofa bed or some awkward place. But she was always sweet about everything. Grandma spent her day reading and writing letters to every relative she had. First thing in the morning she read the newspaper from cover to cover ---I mean Every Word! Grandma saw a classified ad about a doll house for sale, and talked Daddy into going to see it. It must have been about my 8th birthday, because Daddy bought the doll house.
Let me tell you, this was a doll house and a half. It was about five feet long and five feet tall with Southern colonial pillars on the porch. The biggest problem was that where we lived on Meridian St. at that time, our house was very crowded, and I had no bedroom. So this monster of a doll house sat in the basement. The next problem was that doll house furniture built to that scale did not exist, and no one in our house had the time nor the money to build any furniture. I am very sad to say that I can't remember what happened to my Monster Doll House #1. It certainly didn't make the move to the next house. But I think it did spark that interest in me that has never gone away - only now I try to keep it in scale.
I remember the open windows in the summertime, listening to the summer night sounds. I remember watching the neighborhood comings and goings. I remember a lot of daydreams happening in that room.
I remember having the German measles during sixth grade, and having to stay in bed in the darkened room.
I was so sick. I remember my mother coming in and washing my itchy skin and powdering it. She made me feel so much better. I remember a bat got into the house one night and was flying up and down the hallway.
I stayed under the covers until Daddy caught it and put it outside.
It was a long time coming, but I am so thankful that I finally had a room of my own.
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