Where the Living Was Easy

Houses didn't have "family rooms" when I was a child.  At least I had never heard of such a thing.  In my world you had a living room or a parlor, or sometimes you had both.  In most of our rental houses we just had a living room, and that was the place where everyone gathered in the evenings or on weekends to relax and be a family.  In the houses where we had two such rooms, we invariably chose the smaller and cozier of the two for the daily gathering place.  Now that I have used that word "gathering", I realize that I have often seen that used in country decorating books to describe just the sort of room I am talking about today- the "gathering room."

You see that there was no television set in our living room.  We didn't have a television set until I was in high school.  My dad finally HAD to go buy one during the high school basket tourney time, so he could watch the games happening in Indianapolis.  You do see a radio.  And that was what the family gathered around when we wanted some entertainment other than conversation or games.  I LOVED listening to the radio shows in the evening.  David and I would fix snacks.  We used to make "Hermit" cookies, or Mother's "Never-Fail" fudge, or popcorn.  Then we would lie on the floor and listen to "Jack Armstrong", or "The Shadow" and eat our snacks.  And the whole family listened to "Fibber McGee and Molly", "Gildersleeve,"
or "One Man's Family."  I think that "One Man's Family"  was our favorite, and it was aired on a weekend evening.

I can tell you exactly what the house and street looked like where Gildersleeve lived.  I can describe Molly's living room, and the  jammed closet that would "explode" every time Fibber opened the door.  Strange, though, that the house and closet looked a lot like ours.  And Gildersleeve's street looked a lot like our street.  That was the beauty of radio.  It required that the listener really listen and use his mind to conjure up the sights.  It was a much more creative process than mind-numbing television.  Perhaps we were fortunate to grow up in such a time.  Our granddaughters attended a Waldorf Elementary School.  In Waldorf Schools the teachers use no audio-visual equipment whatsoever.  Everything is done through story-telling and visualization.  Both girls have grown up to be very creative writers and artists.

On the game table you see a Monopoly game.  We did play games like Monopoly.  We also played card games:  mostly Hearts or Canasta.  Mother and Daddy played Bridge.  Alas, I don't seem to have any card-playing sense.  I have never learned to play bridge.  Don likes to play euchre.  I play for awhile, then my mind begins to wander, or I start an annoying conversation (annoying to the card players), and all is lost.
Also, I am a terrible loser.  I HATE to lose.  While Don, on the other hand, is very competitive, but takes losing right in stride.  So, these days, television is pretty much our entertainment of choice.

The throw on the back of the couch would have been crocheted by Grandma Lininger.  Grandma never sat down that she didn't have her crocheting with her.  She made an afghan for every child and grandchild.  I still have mine.  It has been mended and repaired, but I still treasure it.  Often, during the evening, Mother would wrap up in the throw and take a nap on the couch.  Or sometimes I would come home from school in the afternoons and find her under the throw and listening to her radio shows (Soaps.)

When we lived on Meridian Street and I was between the ages of 8 - 11, one of my favorite tricks was to search for coins under the chair cushions, and down in the chair crevasses.  You know that fathers and brothers do not sit up straight when they are relaxing in an easy chair at home.  They slump and lounge, and pocket change has a way of escaping from their pockets.  Glory! Glory!  If I could find enough change, I would run across the street to the drugstore and buy a magazine.  I loved movie, fashion, or home magazines.  I loved magazines that had pretty, colorful pictures.  Then I would read them and cut out all the pretty, colorful pictures.

When Jack came home from the army, he brought with him a German ammunition box.  It was wooden with rope handles and an attached lid.  Mother painted it and put my name and a Pennsylvania Dutch design on the lid.  This was my treasure box.  For years I collected all my favorite magazine pictures and kept them in this treasure box. I also kept my paper dolls in this box.  I liked paper dolls, and I liked making my own clothes for them out of  scrap paper.  And sometimes I cut out the ladies from the Sears catalog, and cut out extra clothes for my Sears paper dolls.

The Hermit cookies I mentioned were from Mother's recipe books.  As I remember them they were soft and chewy, and had raisins and spices in them.  Sometimes they were better than at other times.  If we couldn't find one of the ingredients, we just made them without that ingredient!  The fudge was one Mother had made all her life.  I have seen many Never-Fail fudge recipes, but not like Mother's.The newer recipes call for Marshmallow Fluff and chocolate pieces.  I remember Mother's recipe called for cocoa powder, butter, water, milk, vanilla.  You had to stir and stir.  At eight years old, I could check to see if fudge had reached the "soft ball" stage.  That is, if when you dropped a bit into cold water, did it form a soft ball?  If so, you could take it from the fire, stir, and pour it into a cake pan to set.  I have one of my mother's teen-age diaries, and she talks about going to "fudge parties."  At Christmas she mentions that one of her gifts was a "fudge apron."  Our mother knew her fudge!

Ah, such simple pleasures.  But I do remember it as a mostly happy childhood.  Today's children might find it hard to survive without electronics.  But I recall all that "living" with great fondness.

With a Little Song in our Hearts

I have put a lot into my memory doll house that reminds me of my mother and her interests and talents - definitely her creative and artistic talent.  But my dad had his creative talents also - only his outlet was music.

Daddy worked for General Motors from the time I was six  until he retired some twenty years later.  He worked at Guide Lamp in the office where he wrote applications for states' approval for their head lamps.
It was a good job and he earned a pretty good salary, I guess.  At least our family of seven survived even though our parents had to crawl out of the great financial hole created by the depression.

But my dad's real love was music.  Daddy a a very nice bass singing voice, and his great love was sacred music sung by a choir.  He had grown up the son of a Methodist minister, and he had learned early to love the music of the church.  He did not play the piano.  His sister, my Aunt Alice, had been given the piano lessons, and Daddy had been given violin lessons.  I guess their parents had a small family orchestra in mind. But Daddy used his musical talents to add much- needed extra income to the family treasury.  He directed church choir, a community chorus, and an American Legion male chorus.  Besides this, he gave vocal lessons at home to some of the choirs' more talented singers.

The picture above shows the "music room" in my doll house, really the end of the living room.  At our various rental houses, the piano had to be placed where it would fit.  On Meridian Street we had two living rooms, one that could be shut off by french doors.  On 13th Street, there were two living rooms, but we had to use a folding screen to provide a separate place for lessons.  In those old houses, heating duct work didn't go to the second story.  There were heat register grates cut into the ceilings of the down stairs rooms.  Heat naturally rises, so that is how it traveled upstairs.  These grates also gave ornery children a wonderful birds eye view of the lessons going on down below.  And sometimes the lessons, or rather the singing, was pretty funny.  We were in trouble more than once for giggling overhead!

Daddy's students?  Well, some were better than others.  Like I said, most of them sang in one of Daddy's choirs.  Their voices were fine, but Daddy made them sing "fah lah lah" scales, and always was asking them to breathe deeply.  Sometimes it was pretty funny.  One of his students did become a professional singer.
He wasn't famous, but he sang in night clubs all over the country.  Every time he came back to Anderson to visit his relatives, he would call Daddy and come back for one more lesson.  I think it was mostly a way to keep in touch and thank Daddy for all his help.

A few years ago I attended a West Anderson church.  A gentleman from the choir sang a solo.  After the service he approached me and said that he had taken voice lessons from my dad, and he remembered me as a child.  He spoke so kindly of Daddy.  The soloist also had a lovely bass singing voice.  It was a little like touching my Daddy again.  So sweet!

I remember traveling on some Saturdays with Mother and Daddy to other cities where other American Legion posts sponsored chorus concerts, and Daddy's chorus would perform.  His church choir also did some joint programs with churches in other towns.  Mother and I would go, listen to them practice together, then enjoy a pitch-in church dinner, then stay for the evening program.

But the most memorable program was the one given by the Anderson Community Chorus.  A stage was built at the base of the Japanese Gardens at Shadyside Park.  The chorus sang on risers on that stage accompanied by an orchestra.  All the songs selected to be sung were titled with girls' names.  As the chorus sang, pretty girls in appropriate costumes would walk down through the gardens.  It was a lovely concert, and we were very proud of Daddy so handsome in his tuxedo as he directed the chorus.  Mother let us kids go up and sit at the very top of the high hill where we could wiggle and talk without bothering the audience.
We had so much fun, and I still remember the beautiful scene and the beautiful music.

So was any of his musical talent passed on to his kids?  I guess not so much.  We all sang - in choral club at high school, Clyde sang in a quartet at college, Dan always sang in church choirs, I sang some.  We had voices that were good for a group, but not solo voices.  I took piano lessons, but was not disciplined enough to practice like I should have.  I can read music.  I used to be able to play one song, "Bless This House"  from memory.  I can't even do that now.  Mother could always play one song that she remembered from childhood lessons, too.  Clyde learned to play Claire de Lune, not from music but by ear.  Jack could play the boogie beat.  It wasn't a very impressive family concert.  Daddy had to hire a pianist to accompany his voice lessons.  For years a teenager named Gerry Thornberry came to accompany the lessons.  We all loved to have Gerry come to visit.  She later married and became an English teacher, teaching at Anderson High School.  Her name then was Gerry Casey.

But we all did learn to love music.  Sacred music is still one of my favorites.  All our homes have always been full of the sound of music from one source or another, and several of the grandkids and great grand kids have more than a little musical talent.  So I guess you can say that Daddy's Beat Goes On!

It is in the Dining Room Where Life Is Shared

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then the dining rooms in our houses were the communication centers.  In some of our rental houses we had eat-in kitchens, and in others we just had dining rooms where we ate all our meals.  But the evening meal was always the sit-down-around-the-dining-room-table meal.

We always ate between five-thirty and six, shortly after Daddy arrived home from work.  At our house this meal was always called supper, and it was the big meal of the day, except on Sundays and holidays.  Then the noon meal was called dinner, as in "Thanksgiving dinner", or "Christmas dinner,"  or Sunday dinner.  It was expected that all would show up and sit down together to eat.  Sometimes jobs or classes interfered, but usually everyone showed up and on time.  This was the time of day when news and experiences were shared.  And, with the boys, there were usually a lot of laughs.

We couldn't afford fancy meals, but Mother was a  pretty good and creative cook.  In those days we didn't have freezers and frozen foods, so foods were fresh or canned.  Grandpa and Grandma Lininger had a garden, so we did get fresh or home-canned foods from them.  I especially remember canned green beans and cherries from Grandma Lininger.  I was always amazed as a kid , that Mother could get home at 4:45 or 5:00 from her club meeting, open some cans, and have supper on the table on time.  Although, I was always expected to set the table.

What our meals lacked in special foods, Mother made up for with a pretty table.  As always the artistic side of Mother made her find a pretty table cloth, a pretty centerpiece, and set the table correctly.  I learned early about where to place the napkins, the silverware, the cups and glasses.  I am, even now, a very indifferent cook.  In fact, I cook very little.  But I still like for the table to look pretty for whatever Don fixes or carries in.

Grandma and Grandpa gave Mother the pretty pink and white flowered dishes for on of her birthdays.  And another birthday she received some crystal stemware.  We had nice silverware from when Mother and Daddy were married.  These we saved for Sundays and holidays, and used our every day dishes for the other days.  You will see in the picture above that on the buffet is a crystal punch bowl set.  When I was fifteen I had my first job working at the Star China Shop during the Christmas season.  I bought the fanciest punch bowl set that my wages could buy to give my parents for Christmas.  Looking back now, I know that there were many other things that my parents needed more.  But that punch bowl set has been used for every family party in the history of our family from that Christmas on.  AND I have it in my china cabinet even now.  AND we still use it for every one of our holiday parties.  Grandson Taylor always requests the cranberry punch.

Look again at the picture.  See the greenery on the buffet?  When we brought home a Christmas tree, Daddy always trimmed the lower branches before nailing it onto the stand.  Mother used these branches to decorate the rest of the house, including the top of the buffet.  She also added candles and ornaments or bows.  One Christmas we were eating dinner, when my brother, David, (without pausing from eating) announced in a very calm voice, "The buffet is on fire."

Everyone, but David, jumped up and began pouring water and trying to put out the fire.  But David just went on eating.  After that we were always careful about combining greenery and candles.  We also never let David forget this story.

I think the dining room table in the doll house is quite pretty.  But the dining room suite that I grew up with was pretty --uh, what shall we call it?  It was Sears and Roebuck baroque.  It was several shades of brown stain, with inlaid veneer designs, and lots of carving.  It had big fat ball legs, and heavy antique-looking gold drawer pulls.  The chair seats were some kind of dismal velvet.  It did make a statement!  Mother kept table linens in the bottom two drawers of the buffet.  But the top drawer was the place you could find anything that was missing from the rest of the house.  Look there if you were searching for a bill or receipt, tape, scissors, a nut cracker, your lost report card.  Doesn't every household have such a drawer?

After mother received all the wonderful china and crystal, Grandpa Lininger made her a wooden cabinet for storing her dishes in the dining room.  It had a flat wooden door with no glass panes like most china cabinets.  So Mother used her paints and artistic talents to paint a large floral design on the door.  You can see my version in the doll house.  Grandpa's was a corner cabinet and was brown wood stained.  I do remember coming home from Central Avenue School for lunch and finding Mother , still in her pajamas and robe, painting the flowers on the cabinet door.  She looked up aghast and said, "Is it noon already?"
It is hard to be a mom and a housewife when you are really an artist at heart.

And, of course, I have already and often told the story of the Saturday night when our parents went to bridge club and left us kids home alone.  We were all in our early teens, so this was no scandal.  We decided to set the table with all the fine linens, china, crystal and silver.  Then we cooked our supper - I think it was bacon and a can of peas.  We put on our dress-up clothes and sat down for a good ol' banquet.  Mother and Daddy came home while we were eating.  Thank goodness they had a good laugh, so we weren't in trouble after all!

The Dollhouse Non-kitchen Kitchen

Yes, the kitchen is always the heart of any home.  And of the nine kitchens from my childhood, it seems strange that the one kitchen that is most often recalled to memory was the one that was more of a non-kitchen.  In our many rental homes we had all kinds of kitchens, some quite nice, and some not-so.  But the kitchen in house number seven, the old house on West 13th Street, was the most challenging kitchen of all.

We were forced to move from house six because our lease had run out and the house had been sold to Standard Oil Company.  It was to be torn down so that a  gas station could be built on that corner.  Mother and Daddy were finding it impossible to find another house to rent, when Mr. Hudson told Daddy about a house in their neighborhood on 13th Street.  This house had been built in the early 1900's by a then prominent Anderson attorney.  It was now being lived in by the only surviving daughter, and elderly woman, living alone, and unable to care for the aging house.  She wanted to move to an apartment, but didn't know how to cope with disposing of everything in the house.

Mother and Daddy finally persuaded her to lease the house to them.  She agreed to wallpaper the interior with fresh paper, but asked if she might leave all their "stuff" stored in the basement, the attic, and one large out-building.  So a deal was struck.

However, upon getting occupancy, my folks discovered that the kitchen she had been using was no kitchen at all, merely a back porch with one tiny low mop sink.  With determination, my folks began the task of turning this old back porch into a usable kitchen.  The Canadays, friends who lived right behind us, gave us a nice sink that was in a lower cabinet unit.  They had just removed it from their kitchen that was being renovated.  This was installed on the west wall of the back porch in place of the mop sink.  Linoleum was installed on the wooden floor, the floor that slanted down from the dining room to the back wall.  Anything dropped in that kitchen, immediately rolled down to the north wall.  The stove was placed on the south wall, that being a wall that looked like the exterior of the house.  Mr. Contos, who owned a family grocery at 23rd and Pearl Streets, gave Daddy a metal bread rack that he was no longer using.  This was a long rack made up  of three shelves.  It was metal and we painted it white.  This my folks placed down the center of the kitchen to hold all the food, pans, and dishes for which there was no cabinet space.  You know that old bread rack worked like a miracle, furnishing not only storage, but wonderful work space on top.  I believe that was the early equivalent of the kitchen islands that are so popular today.

The north wall of the kitchen featured a row of windows that began about waist high and went to the ceiling. They looked out over the back yard and there was bead board underneath.  Mother was inspired to paint a white picket fence all along beneath these windows, with hollyhocks painted behind the fence.  She even painted a tiny mouse peeking out from behind the fence right by the back door.  She hid it behind the milk bottle holder where the milk man left the milk each morning.  Yes, can you remember milk in glass bottles delivered to the house by a milk man?  We even had a bread man who delivered Omar bread right to the door.

After that they painted the kitchen a bright color and Mother made fresh white curtains to hang at the windows.  It really was a rather pretty little kitchen.  There were no heat vents in the kitchen, but Mother kept the oven and stove burners going most of the time, so it was not too uncomfortable.

At the east end of the kitchen was a door into a tiny utility room.  There was a pull-up cellar door in that room,  but remember we were not allowed there because the landlady's things were stored in the basement.
Daddy was the only one allowed to enter the basement, and only when there were problems with the furnace.
But, believe  me, no one minded staying out of that cellar!

Mother's wringer washer was housed in this utility room along with baskets of unironed clothes waiting to be ironed.  On wash day  Mother had to pull the washer into the kitchen, along with rinse tubs, to be filled at the sink.  What a job!  Then the clothes had to be hung outside on the clothes lines.  And remember that Daddy wore white shirts to work each day, and there were shirts for four boys, too.  I remember Mother would actually try to hang them so that the colors looked pretty side by side, and the clothes pins matched the shirts.  She was always the artist first.

Let me refer you to my blog from November 15, 2010, titled "Yet Another of My Mother's Stories."  This was a story that she entered into a contest sponsored by the Arthur Godfrey radio show.  It had to do with a housewife who had a regular story column in the local newspaper, and her stories were inspired by the sounds that the washer agitator made.  She swore that the washer talked to her.  By the way, Mother did not win the contest, but the story is quite charming anyway.

On the "bread rack" counter you see a blue enamel roaster.  For some reason my mother always called this the "quarter roaster."  I suppose that is what it cost when they bought it early in their marriage.  On Sunday mornings Mother would put a beef pot roast into the quarter roaster and surround it with potatoes, carrots, and onions.  This would go into the oven on a low temperature and cook all the time we were in church. I must confess that my dreams of the pot roast lunch most often stole my attention away from the sermon.

It hasn't been until lately as I have been recalling all these old memories, that I began wondering why a prominent attorney  who built what must have been a lovely home in the early 1900's, did not build a proper kitchen in his house.  Then I recalled that when we toured Thomas Edison's winter home in fort Myers, Florida, the tour guide showed us the kitchen which was in a separate building from the main house.  He said that Edison, like a lot of wealthy people, did not like the cooking odors inside the house.  So now I am wondering if the large outbuilding on our property might have been the original kitchen.  Hmmmm!  Just a thought.

We did survive the non-kitchen kitchen.  We had many fine meals living in that house.  In fact, for two years while we lived there, Mother served lunches to about fourteen or fifteen school students every school day.  Central Junior High School was right across the street from our house.  The schools in those days did not serve lunches at school.  Students had to bring their lunches from home, or walk downtown and buy their lunches.  Many mothers were uncomfortable with these options.  Mother offered to serve lunch to  some of her friends' children for a nominal fee.  Every noon we would show up and lunch would at our assigned places.  Mother used card tables in our family room for seating.  There would be a mimeographed paper at each place for that child to select his lunch choices for the next day.  As best I recall, we had two choices of soup        (tomato or chicken noodle, I think), two choices of sandwiches (hot dog or peanut butter), and a choice of either fruit cup or ice cream cup , with milk or orange drink.

Mother even did some bartering.  One of the student's mothers was a single parent and a beautician.  During those two years, I would walk to Park Place on some Saturday mornings and get my hair cut, or sometimes just washed and set.  This was in exchange for her daughter's lunches.  For two years I had pretty good hair!  Although I hated the long walk.

I had gone to Central Avenue School before we moved there, so I did not know any friends at Central Junior High.  It was all a bit of a trial for me:  living in that old house with no paint on the outside, having few friends, having to help Mother finish getting everything on the tables at lunch, and having all those kids invading our house at noon.  I felt a bit of a freak - but I survived.  In fact we all not only survived - we thrived with our non-kitchen kitchen.

The New and Improved Interior

This is the overall view of the doll house after the completed redecorating.  I removed all the old wallpaper.
This was quite a job, even in a doll house.  I would hate to do that job in a REAL house.  It took a lot of soaking and scraping.  But I do like the new, clean, fresh colors.

Don repainted the outside and all the wood trim.  We removed all the old electrical wiring because it was exposed and really ruined the look of the inside walls.  Also, the old, old lamps were no longer functional.
So we replaced the lighting with new, battery powered ceiling lights.  They work and the rooms have a nice glow.  They are just one touch on and one touch off.

The windows all had curtains and some had valances.  I have washed and ironed all of them, but I am really liking the bare windows.  What do you think?   For now I am planning to enjoy the stripped down look.

Tomorrow I will begin with the heart of  the home, the kitchen.  The thought of our various kitchens spur so many memories.  I suppose that is the way with most families, because that is the time of day and the place where families gather.

So, til tomorrow.........

Introducing the Dollhouse Series

When I retired from teaching in 1995, I found a little book about collecting and creating miniatures, miniatures rooms, and doll houses.  I found the book at the library book sale and it started my head spinning. I have always, since childhood, been fascinated by pretty rooms be they in magazine pictures, real life, or in doll houses.  I remember helping my good friend, Judy, create a room for her art class when we were in college.  I loved it!  However, little free time, family life, and teaching never allowed me the luxury of hobby times.

So with those retirement hours and my new little book, I began looking about at sales and hobby stores for miniatures I could create.  The first Christmas I created three small room box houses for my grandchildren, each of them based on a different children's book.  I loved them.  The little ones were interested in their new presents for a little bit.

I, however, just couldn't stop collecting little pieces wherever I found them:   hobby shops, yard sales, thrift stores, I even found a miniature wholesaler who had twice a year warehouse sales!  I couldn't stop myself !
I had great fun making personalized room boxes for everyone.  The rooms included their own miniaturized pictures, their hobbies, their interests.  I had people order them as gifts.   But the day did come where everyone I was related to, and those who were friends had had enough!  I was forbidden to make one more doll house or room for the grandchildren.  My two granddaughters had a room in their house that they called "Doll- landia", and those tiny people living therein lived quite the soap opera lives created inside the girls' heads.  They each created a new room box house every year when they visited in the summers.

Five years ago we moved and I was "encouraged" by husband to clean out the craft room and its many shelves, so that we did not have to move all of it.  So I did a great cleaning and organizing that left us with shelves in our new storage shed and garage.  Shortly after we moved, I had to have eye surgery to control my worsening glaucoma, so husband was certain that miniature-making wasn't a good hobby.  So I did have a sale and cleared out much of my miniature supply.

At about this time there was an ad in our local paper that someone wanted to sell their hand -constructed doll house.  Of course, I had to go see it.  And it was lovely.  The lady had made it herself in the 1960's.  She was now in her late 80's, and felt that she had to downsize her living space, so she wanted to sell her
large doll house.  She had wired it for electricity and made most of the furniture.   I fell in love.  Of course, I bought it.  We kept it lit as sort of a night light in the craft room-office, and I moved things about, added to it, subtracted from it.

But then, when my mother-in-law needed care and had to move to our house, we changed the office into her bedroom.  So, what were we to do with this large doll house?  I solved the problem by packing all the furniture away in storage, taking off the detachable roof, and using the doll house as a very unique bedside table.  The front of the house opened as double doors, and I simply used the inside to store my reading materials.  I rather liked it.

But with my recent writings about childhood memories, I decided to redo the doll house as sort of a composite of all the rental houses in which we had ever lived.  And that was quite a few.  When I was born, my parents were trying to recover from the depression.  I was the youngest of five children, and money was not plentiful.  During my years from birth to getting married, I lived in nine different rental homes.

I must say that none of the nine houses looked anything like the doll house.  It is much grander looking.  After all, our family had five children and a stinky dog.  It wasn't easy to find a rental.  And we were a happy family, but there was never enough money!  The doll house has four levels, and we never had more than two.
They do not make doll house furniture as ugly as some of ours.  My dad sold furniture during my first five years of life, and much of ours must have been Sears and Roebuck rejects.  But what I have included in my childhood memory doll house are some of the objects that remind me of my childbood and all our daily activities.

Above you see the picture of the outside of my childbood- memory doll house.  I plan future entries where I will introduce you to each room inside, and let the reader in on some of my childhood stories.  Many of the stories are a repeat of earlier blog entries, but in a shorter form.  I hope the reader enjoys.