The Christmas We Were Poor

Mine was a fortunate family.  We were not wealthy, but we were better off than many families in the factory town where we lived.  It might have been otherwise; the Commonwealth of Massachusetts did not pay its judges nearly enough to support a family with six children.  Fortunately, my father’s was designated a part-time court.  So while he was paid little for being a judge, he was permitted to practice certain kinds of law on a part-time basis to supplement his income.

But one Christmas, that extra income did not materialize.  My father had been working on a big lawsuit, and the client did not pay.  Both of my parents grew up in financially strapped households; both had also been through the Great Depresssion. They knew how to keep food on the table—I remember lots of canning that year.  But there was virtually no money for Christmas.

I remember no better Christmas than the Christmas we were poor.  Santa enlisted the help of talented force of elves to make it happen.  Mrs. Nettel next door knitted new outfits for all of my dolls, which had been cleaned and fixed up.  The broken doll cradle was under the tree, but much better than before; it had not only been repaired but was shining with a fresh coat of beautiful blue paint and pretty flower decals, thanks to the talents of my big brother Dick.  A dolly high chair had been similarly upgraded. 

These toys were better than new.  They were cherished toys passed down through three sisters that were now new—and distinctly mine.  It seemed like magic, and it made this the most enchanting of Christmases.

Best friends

Debbie and I were born four days apart and lived four houses away from each other. My older sisters played with her older sisters. We were best friends from the beginning.

On Saturday mornings, we walked downtown together. We headed straight for the pet department downstairs at Grant's and endlessly debated which of the fish was most beautiful. Then it was on to the paper dolls or to spend our precious allowance in the candy department there or at Green's Drugstore.

We loved our cats. Hers was Pandora--Pandy--a pretty, soft tuxedo cat who once gave birth to a litter of kittens on the skirt of Debbie's nightgown. Mine was a calico named Chi-Chi, who I found in the woods when she was just a few weeks old and nursed with a doll's bottle. We each had a slider turtle in a plastic dish with a plastic palm tree on our dresser, and we both had a rabbit. Together, we established a cemetery for the occasional dead bird or other critter we would find.

Debbie and I also had matching Suzette dolls. Suzette was a fashion doll like Barbie, but her figure was a bit less improbable. We would make clothes with scraps from Debbie's mother's sewing and enact great dramas. Debbie also had an elaborate set of plastic molded farm figures and structures she loved, and we would set them up on a chilly little enclosed porch at her house to play on rainy days. We had a sleepover every Friday night, alternating homes, and watch our favorite TV shows, which included “The Flintstones” and “77 Sunset Strip” (Kookie couldn't comb his hair enough!).

Another TV show, “The Roaring 20's,” inspired us to learn the Charleston, force our moms to make us flapper dresses, and sing and dance our way through a year or so. My lovely Aunt Marion invited us to give a memorable performance to her “girls night out” group from Dupont at a restaurant I think was named Lanza's. I was always a bit of a ham, but looking back, I am surprised that the shy Debbie was willing to do it.

Each May, Debbie's German grandparents arrived from New Jersey to help out during Memorial Season. Debbie's father owned a monument company—he made gravestones—and every family wanted their loved one's plot marked in time for Memorial Day. Both of her parents worked almost around the clock to make it happen; when they were at home, everyone was expected to be very quiet. But there was an upside. Grandmother Grund made the most amazing potato doughnuts. Grandfather loved to garden and would let us help him prepare the ground and plant seeds. I don't think either of them spoke English, but I always looked forward to their visits.

When I started junior high, Debbie and I went to the same school for the first time. We walked to school together every day, were in the same classes, and made the same friends. But junior high is a cruel time. Our friendship shattered, never to be revived in meaningful fashion.

Making Music

Walking across the yard, the breeze blowing crisp. My corduroys singing jjoop jjoop with every step . . . jjoop jjoop . .  Making up words to accompany this newfound music.  Red corduroys with flannel lining to go with my red orthopedic oxfords and red plaid flannel shirt.  Headed next door to see Mrs. Paul, who is teaching me to knit.  Her house smells like heaven, always, like cookies fresh from the oven.  I head home . . . jjoop jjoop . . . singing about the peanut butter cookies in my pocket.

Leaves, Glorious Leaves!

Trash removal has come a long way since the 1950s.  We had never heard of trash bags. As I recall, each household was allowed to put out only two galvanized cans of trash a week—hardly enough the accommodate the waste of a family of eight.  So we segregated stuff that burned, and my brother Dick did away with it in an outdoor incinerator. Food scraps and other garbage went in a pail that sat in a buried can with a heavy steel cover, its contents picked up periodically to use in the making of pig slop—and yes, there were still plenty of farms and pigs around Leominster in those days.  Grass clippings went into a heap to rot.  Not a compost heap, just a heap.

That left the only joyful activity in the trash cycle:  Leaves.  All during the fall, we would rake them from time to time and heap them under a tarp so they wouldn’t blow away. 

Then the great leaf removal weekend came, one of my favorite times of the year.

On the appointed weekend, we would rake all day Saturday, pushing the leaves near the curb.  After church on Sunday, everyone on the block would rake their leaves into the middle of the street, and that’s when the fun began.  Imagine:  an entire block stacked with layer upon glorious layer of leaves!  It was a kids’ paradise.  For an hour or two, we would run through them, throw them, and bury ourselves in them, having a fabulous time while stuffing our shoes, underwear, and orifices with leaf meal. 

Then the fire truck would come.  As it stood at the ready to take care of any mishaps, the masses of leaves were carefully burned, creating beautiful flames and great clouds of perfumed smoke that infused the neighborhood for days.  Air pollution?  We had never heard the term! 

I doubt that I will ever see a mass leaf burn again, and more’s the pity. 

Hong Kong Hell

Mothers of six children aren’t allowed to get sick.  My mother fervently believed this, until the Hong Kong flu hit during the 1968 holiday season.

I brought two girls from Venezuela, Annie and Magaly, home for Christmas.  I think my older brother was then away serving in the Air Force, but my two older sisters were home from college, and my younger brother and sister were still living there.  Every one of them came down with the flu, my mother included, several days before Christmas.  My father and I were the only people not flat on our backs.

So there I was, with seven hacking, dripping, sweating people to take care of.  My father had many sterling qualities, but he was incapable of serving as a nurse; I could only count on him to run to the store to buy massive quantities of canned soup, ginger ale, tissues and aspirin.  Heating that soup, carrying it to seven bedsides several times a day along with the ginger ale and aspirin, picking up the used Kleenex, and maintaining some level of sanitation in the kitchen and bathrooms was about all I could manage.

Jim and Val would have been eleven then.  Both had a tendency to become delirious when they had a fever.  This time, they simultaneously turned into screaming, thrashing terrors.  So I put Valerie in my mother’s bed, ordering mother to keep a wet towel on Valerie’s forehead while I gave Jim a cool bath to get his fever down.  Then I put Jim in her bed while I bathed Val.   My mother probably had one child or another with her for the total of one hour, but she was angry about it for the rest of her life.  In fact, almost everybody was angry with me; I simply couldn’t devote any of them enough attention.  I was a failure as a nurse.

That was the only year I can remember that we didn’t have a party Christmas eve.  We must have called it off.  I do recall that everyone was well enough Christmas day to get out of bed.  My mother even cooked Christmas dinner.  But by early evening, she was sick again.  And now I was sick, too.

I didn’t get a lot of sympathy or a lot of care.  But as sick as I was, I was greatly relieved to resign my nursing duties.

Cross My Heart

I had a sudden growth spurt in sixth grade.  For the first time in my life, for the briefest moment, I was no longer the shortest kid in my class.  Sadly, I have never grown any taller, stalling at just under five feet.  But I did continue to grow in other ways, necessitating a trip a few years later to buy some new bras at the William A. Allen Company, downtown Leominster’s terrific and greatly missed department store.  This is how an innocent shopping trip ended in four years at an all-girls Catholic boarding school.

The nice lady in Allen’s lingerie department measured me and brought me some appropriate selections to try on.  One style was just right, but she only had one in white in my size.  She did have another in black, and she pointed out that a black bra is useful to wear under dark sweaters.  That made sense to me, so home I went with two bras in my Allen’s bag.

The trouble started after I wore the black bra and dropped it into the hamper, where it was discovered by my older sister.  That night, I was called to a conference in the kitchen with my parents and sister.  The offending piece of lingerie was held up by my mother like a rotting fish. 

“What is the meaning of this?” she asked. 

“It’s a bra,” I replied, confused.  I looked toward my father, hoping for relief, but his eyes were averted by intense embarrassment.

“It’s a black bra,” said my sister, accusingly.

Now, I was no angel, but the significance of owning a black bra had never occurred to me.  They didn't buy the story about the lady at Allen's  No amount of stammering and denial helped; they were convinced that I was turning into a loose woman, even if I wasn’t one already.

A few months later, on a Saturday morning, my mother and sister informed me that we were driving to Nashua, New Hampshire, to visit a boarding school.  I had mixed feelings about the place.  On the down side, it was a boarding school, they wore really ugly uniforms, and the teachers were the nuns I thought I had left behind.  But there was one positive thing:  it wasn’t home, and home was getting a little weird.

A few weeks later, I became a freshman at Mt. St. Mary Seminary College Preparatory School for Girls.  All because of a bra.  Cross my heart.

On a Clear Day

Today is much like that day. The sky is crystal clear, the temperature is ideal and feels especially luxurious after a long, hot summer.  Nothing bad could happen on a perfect day like this—unless it was this day, September 11, in 2001.

I had not been in the office long when I spotted a colleague staring at a television screen with her jaw dropped.  “Someone has crashed a plane into the World Trade Center,” she said.  My first thought was of some nut flying a small plane into the building, but it soon became clear that it was an airliner and that this was going to be a disaster of major proportions.  And as an employee of the American Red Cross national headquarters, I was in the disaster business.

I went to my boss’s office and told him to turn on his TV.  When he understood what had happened, he asked me to gather the media relations staff.  As I walked from office to office, I caught a quick glimpse of another TV—just as the second plane struck.  Concern turned to alarm as it became apparent that something awful was happening.

Soon came word that another skyjacked plane was in the sky, and it was headed towards the Capitol, or the White House.  My office was on Red Cross Square, which is across the street from the Ellipse behind the White House; my home and husband were six blocks from the Capitol.

Amazingly—because few people were having any luck with their phones that morning—I reached my husband.  He had just gotten up and was unaware of what was going on, but he could hear sirens all around. We exchanged important, loving words, and then I got back to work.

Rumors flew—there had been an explosion on the National Mall (false); the Smithsonian was burning (false); Washington’s Metro had been gassed (false).  Then word came that the Pentagon had been hit.  Exasperated at the rumors, I rose from my chair, looked out the window, and was horrified to confirm that this was not another story;  I could clearly see the flames and smoke were pouring from the Pentagon, just across the river.

The rest of the day was a flurry of activity, sorrow, anger, and confusion.  There are enough stories to tell one each September 11 for the rest of my life. But finally, I decided to call it a day.  Entering the Metro was an act of courage, but just being alive would take some courage for a while.  I got onto a nearly empty car and spotted a woman who was shaking and softly weeping, clearly terrified.  I sat down next to her, and she took my hand and squeezed it.  And we sat wordlessly, holding onto each other’s hand, until I reached my stop.  As I got up to leave the train, we exchanged a quick hug, two strangers entering a strange new world.

Good guidance

My life changed dramatically in September 1964, when I started seventh grade at May A. Gallagher Junior High.  For the first time, I got to shop for school clothes—no more Catholic school uniform!  Girls still had to wear dresses or skirts, of course.  Under them were knee socks or stockings (held up with garter belts, panty hose being a few years off).

I loved having teachers who were not nuns—especially male teachers (who were admirably tolerant as I addressed them as “Sister” for months).  And for the first time, I was surrounded by boys I had not known since third grade. How can you like a boy you knew in third grade? I almost immediately developed a crush on a boy named Bobby who was to become my first boyfriend. Our romance lasted for only a few months and consisted primarily of holding hands at the Plymouth or the Met during Saturday matinees.

Another first—changing classes, a divine innovation for a kid like me with a limited attention span.  The only drawback was that we were required to pass between classes single-file on the right side of the corridor, no talking.  That rule indirectly led me to a career as a writer.

We had a block-rotation schedule, and I found it easy to forget which class was next.  One day, I turned to the kid behind me to ask and was caught by one of the ever-vigilant teachers and given detention.  My punishment for this major infraction was to write an essay about why I should not talk in the halls.

To say I was not pleased by this assignment is to put it mildly; I was incensed and full of righteous indignation, as only a junior-high-aged kid can be.  So I wrote a sarcastic essay that went something like this:

                The subject of this composition is to be why I should not talk in the halls.  The reason is that there is a rule that says I cannot, one made to establish order.  Whether it is a good rule or not is of no bearing, for I, as a mere student, do not have the right to question to school rules.  I broke the rule because I am an inferior being who could not remember where I needed to go for my next class.  Some day when I am perfect, like all the teachers in this school, who seem to do everything right, never faltering, I pledge to help the cause by reprimanding inferiors such as myself who have the audacity to break such important school rules.

A few days later, I was called to the office of the guidance counselor—I think his name was Mr. Chase.  My heart dropped down to my Weejuns when I saw that he had my essay in his hand.  He asked me what I planned to do with my life.  I replied that I wanted to be a vet like my grandfather and great-grandfather had been (never mind that I had no aptitude for science or math).  Mr. Chase asked me if I had ever considered becoming a creative writer.  “No,” I said, “Why do you ask?”

“I saw the composition you wrote for Mr. Novelli,” he replied.  “It sure looked creative to me.”  He went on to say that he thought I had a real gift for writing that I should work to develop.

I had been writing for pleasure since I was old enough to peck out stories on the electric typewriter in my father’s office, and I had always prayed for essay questions on tests because I knew I could ace them.  But up until that point, it had never occurred to me that I had any special gift.

I won’t claim that I became a writer that day, but Mr. Chase’s observation helped me understand that everyone did not find writing as easy and pleasurable as I did, and that the ability to express myself in writing was something to be grateful for--as was a good guidance counselor.

"Study hard and you can leave this place"

Does anyone appreciate the place where she grows up? Perhaps, but I think hometowns are much like cafeteria lunches (which were the best part of going to St. Leo’s School, by the way): no matter how good, they get old.

Looking back, Leominster was a pretty decent place to grow up. In the 1950s and 1960s of my youth, kids had the run of the town. When I was six years old, I was allowed to walk downtown with my best friend Debbie and partake of the joys of the pet department at W.T. Grant and the soda fountain at Newberry’s. We could also walk to Doyle Field, a large public park with a killer slide and other great playground equipment, to Crossman’s Market, which had an unrivaled selection of penny candy, or to Jim’s Drugstore, which served amazing root beer in frosted mugs. The Rec Center downtown had a huge indoor pool, trampolines, and more. There were lots of woods around to explore, too. We had a level of freedom that would be unthinkable today.

Yet all of us complained, and when we did, my mother always said, “Study hard and you can leave this place.” And we did. Five of the six of us left Leominster; only my younger brother remains. Now that my parents are gone, I rarely get there.

Two of my sisters were thoughtful enough to settle in Sarasota, Florida. I am writing this at the end of a five-day visit to them, and it has been grand. Sarasota is beautiful. I’ve gone for early-morning swims on Siesta Key with my brother-in-law, visited my beautiful niece and her family in their fabulous new home, and talked endlessly with my sisters—mostly about Leominster.

Getting Started

Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
I count three places as home.  For more than 30 years, I have lived in the same neighborhood, Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C.  Before that, I lived and went to college in New Orleans, the place where some of my ancestors got off the boat and near which many of my relatives still live.  But my first home was on Grove Terrace in Leominster, Massachusetts.  This is where I grew up with five brothers and sisters, myriad pets, an array of interesting neighbors, and two devoted if not quite perfect parents.

My father, who lived all 85 years of his life in Leominster, bought the little Cape Cod house on Grove Terrace soon after he finished law school in the early 1930s. It stood on what I believe is the highest spot in town, on top of a big hill, just off a tree-shaded avenue of old Victorians.  The lot was spacious and backed by woods.

My Louisiana-born mother moved into the house after marrying my father in the mid-1940s.  She was a WAC recruiting officer stationed in nearby Fitchburg when they met, a fairly daring role for a girl from Cajun Country.  Daddy was 13 years her senior.  She was a devout Catholic, he a nonpracticing Protestant.  It was a most unlikely romance, but it worked.

Children appeared in rapid succession—Dick, followed by Jolley, and then by Candace, spaced about 18 months apart.  I came onto the scene about three years later, and the little house on Grove Terrace was no longer big enough.  My parents thought about moving but decided on an addition instead, which nearly doubled the size of the house.  Good call; five years later, when my mother was 39 and father was 52, the twins, Jim and Valerie, arrived.

Many of the houses in our neighborhood were populated by older couples or widows; there were some children, but not a huge number.  The Leominster of my childhood was a factory town—to be precise, a plastic manufacturing center that rightly claimed the title of Pioneer Plastic City.  We made all of your Foster Grant sunglasses, as well as many of your plastic toys, flower pots, watering cans, and buttons.  We were the birthplace of the plastic flamingo—no joke!  It was a small, blue-collar city with a large population of Italian and Canadian-French immigrants.  (I thought it a bit odd that both of my parents spoke only English.) And you would be hard put to find a more colorful cast of characters than my homies.

I am always telling Leominster stories.  The purpose of this blog is to put some of them in writing.  I am inspired to finally begin this journey by another Leominster blog called The Boy From Plastic City that my sister recently discovered, written by John Tata.  I do not know John, but he has brought back many memories.  Thanks, John, for getting me started.  I don't know where this will lead, but I know there will be at least one person following me.