A few years ago my cousin Adelle, Alice and Burt's daughter, sent me some of Grandma Green's photos when she was clearing out items from he Mother and Dad's estate. Among those items was this letter that I had written to my Grandma and Aunt in 1943 when I was 7 years old. Imagine how touched I was that my grandmother had kept that little letter all the rest of her life!
that my maternal grandmother had saved. It had been my mother's when she was a child. The idea was that
they would find someone to restore this doll because she was not in very good condition. And Grandma Green and Aunt Alice had sent a pretty blue taffeta dress and a slip for my doll to wear.
You see both grandmothers were trying to help make my birthday special, when there was very little money to be had. Our family had just moved back to Anderson from Marion, Indiana, the year before. My dad had quit his job selling furniture at the Sears store in Marion, because he had been able to get a job at the Guide Lamp plant in Anderson. Everyone was trying to recover from the great Depression of the 1930's and the United States was in World War II. We were renting a small two bedroom house on Main Street, and there were seven in our family. We slept two boys in each of the two bedrooms, and Mother and Daddy made the dining room into their bedroom. I slept on a cot in the corner of their room.
We had no car for two reasons: there was no money to replace the car that no longer ran, and gasoline was rationed because of the war. My dad took the city bus to work - one bus to downtown, and then a transfer to another that went to the factory. I can remember that Mother would walk downtown to the post office every week to send a one dollar money order back to a doctor in Marion. The doctor had operated on my brother, Dan, when he had a ruptured appendix. The total bill for that surgery was $40.00. Can you imagine that? And the doctor came to the house every day during Dan's recuperation to check on him.
And he borrowed a different car from other doctor's at the hospital because he found out the boys liked cars, and did it to entertain my brothers!
I don't know how Mother managed to have a birthday party for me. But, I am sure she baked a cake, probably had lemonade. And I'm sure she made a very pretty table, and we played some games. Mother could make a special party out of almost nothing. I am sorry to say that I have no memory of this 7th birthday party, or any of the presents mentioned in my thank you letter....other than the doll and the dress and slip. I know I never received the three doll houses I mentioned in the letter....I never had a doll house until years later. It must have been some kind of paper doll container. I would almost think that I made up the whole party, except my mother would have never allowed me to tell such an untrue tale.
But I do remember that doll that had been my mother's when she was a child. She was or had been a beauty. She had a china head with a hand painted face. Her hair was well worn by the time she became mine, and her wooden body was in bad condition. Mother and Grandma planned to find a doll repair person to work on her, but, sadly that never happened. I loved her anyway. I remember that I took her to school with me the next year, and my teacher, Miss Bronnenberg, let her sit in a desk all day just like she was another student. I was so proud! And she always wore that blue taffeta dress and pretty slip that my other grandmother and aunt had sent her. I have no pictures of her, but she must have been in this buggy.
However, even though I have forgotten the party, I do have one very important memory about that day when I turned seven years old. Evidently my mother had told my dad that morning how sad she was that there was no present from them for my birthday. When he came home that evening from work, he gave me a package and wished me happy birthday. In the sack was a most inappropriate gift for a seven year old girl.
In it was a beautiful aqua blue hobnail glass bottle of cologne! Oh! How I loved that bottle of cologne! I am sure that he stopped at the drug store downtown when he was transferring from one bus to another and bought that present! Now I wonder what he sacrificed in order to find that money for a gift!
I don't know what ever happened to the doll. I think she just gradually deteriorated beyond repair. I don't have any memory of the children at my party, or the presents I received. But today, almost 72 years after that birthday, sitting on my dresser on a tray covered with linen embroidered by my mother, stands the beautiful aqua blue hobnail cologne bottle carried home by my dad on my 7th birthday!
