More Childhood Memories

Driving down Lincoln Avenue in Chicago at Catalpa Avenue, I looked up to re-live in a complete instant picture, part of my childhood past, which I am now trying to put into words for you.

At that corner of Lincoln and Catalpa, sits a three story building, shops on the first floor, apartments on the second and third.

My Auntie Esther, in her forties and divorced, lived in one of those second floor apartments with her teenaged children Sheila and Normie and her mother, my grandmother, Sarah.

Max, Sarah's husband had been long dead and Sarah fragile and barely mobil since her accident in the car. Grandma was getting out of the back seat when Auntie Anne pulled away from the curb without looking to make sure Grandma was fully out of the car.

My father never forgave Anne's what he called "Her Carelessness," causing Grandma's broken hip and following life decline. He was always retelling the story every time we visited either Anne, Esther, or Grandma; although Anne lived in California with her husband, my father's brother, Ben, so we didn't hear that version too often.

I remember visiting Esther and Grandma in their typical Chicago apartment: starting in the living room overlooking the street, with a bedroom off to the side; past the front hall entrance, large enough to greet your guests and hang their coats in a closet, and also a place for the telephone table; with a hall continuing past a bathroom and separate bedroom on the left, and into the dining room, width of the apartment, which opened to the kitchen, with an additional bedroom tucked in at the back right before you got to the back porch. Can you picture that? I still can.

Sheila and I would sit at the kitchen table and practice our Spanish, which we were both studying in school. My sister and Sheila would go off to Sheila's bedroom to do whatever while my cousin Normie and I would look at his comic books and other treasures that he kept under cover in his bedroom.

Esther had a bedroom, and Grandma, at her own insistence slept on the sofa in the living room, which with her "stuff" scattered around was really her bedroom. I remember that she loved to sit by the windows for hours on end and watch the cars and people traveling and walking down the busy Lincoln Avenue.

She spoke in what they called "Broken English," which meant she really spoke Yiddish with a few English words thrown in, just enough for us kids to understand as the adults all spoke Yiddish when they were with her.

Often they would tell a joke or off-color story in Yiddish thinking the children wouldn't understand, the important word being "thinking," because we did and had to stifle our giggles so as not to give ourselves away.

Grandma always smelled just a little bit like fish if only because she loved to have fish at least for breakfast and lunch and sometimes for dinner. She ate it with her fingers to make sure all the bones were found. From Grandma I learned to love having onion with my canned salmon and spreading bone marrow from the home made soup bones on rye bread.

Esther smoked up a storm as did both of my parents, if I remember correctly. They talked a lot and discussed things. I don't really have many memories of what the adults did as my cousins and I involved ourselves in our own activities.

I do remember loving my Auntie Esther (all of my Aunts were called Auntie.) She was a Jewish, strong, crude kind of Auntie Mame to me (if you know that movie. Mame, however, was as oppositely rich and sophisticated as Esther was poor and common.)

Skip to my remembering living on Anslie Avenue at 9 years old, and not going to my Grandma's funeral as my parents felt I was too young to experience such things. Skip to me being just a few months away from being 70 years old.

That is some 61 years later and my driving down Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, looking up as I passed Catalpa Avenue to re-live part of my childhood past. Does seeing it take place in my mind mean it is still going on, there on the second floor?

Christmas Day Past

(Published Previously)

At noon Christmas Day, we would arrive at Grandma’s house feeling like we had just left a few hours before from celebrating Christmas Eve. The dining room table would be redecorated with a different table cloth, a different set of dishes, fresh flowers, and little aging holiday decorations sprinkled around the table top. The turkey would have been in the oven since early morning and would be ready to go at noon. No easy feat considering Grandma’s age and the previous night’s festivities which lasted until two or three in the morning, although Frieda, Clara, and Frieda’s lesbian daugher, Marge, (although no one ever talked about Marge's life) were always a great help.

Besides the amazing array of food she presented for her Christmas afternoon dinner, what remains most in my mind is the after meal nap that all the men took in the living room while slouched on the maroon mohair sofa or in their maroon mohair chairs, and the sounds from the kitchen of the women laughing while cleaning up from dinner. There are at least two “famous” stories that came out of those memories.

The first story has to do with washing the dishes after dinner. One sister brought the scraped dishes in from the dinning room, one sister did the washing, one sister did the drying, and Marge put the clean dishes back on the dinning room table, ready to be put away in the breakfront. As I am writing this I can see Grandma’s kitchen as if it still existed and a tear or two well up.

This particular story deals with the year that the sisters and Marge were so involved in their stories, punctuated with so much laughter, that the dishes made three rounds of being brought in from the dinning room, washed, dried, put back on the dining room table ready to be put away, and unknowingly being brought back into the kitchen to be washed, dried, and put back again.

If  you think the women were laughing and having a good time before, you can imagine how much laughter there was when they realized what had happened.

The second story deals with the traditional Christmas Date Nut Pudding which was Grandma’s specialty. It was served fresh out of the oven with a warm carmel sauce. Imagine the most delicious tastes, for the most traditional holiday, made by the most nurturing Grandma, and helped by the most loving sisters and Marge. That was Grandma’s Date Nut Pudding. Warm, sweet, delicious. 

This particular story takes place over several years, as Grandma and her sisters got older. One year they forgot to make the carmel sauce for the Date Nut Pudding. The next year they forgot to add the nuts to the Date Nut Pudding. Finally, one year, they forgot to put the dates in the Date Nut Pudding.

The Christmas Miracle, I guess, is that each year they were careful not to make the previous year’s mistake and each year with the new mess up, they were so tickled that they laughed all the way through cleaning up from dinner.

I think it was the year they forgot the dates that they laughed so long and so hard that they ended up washing and drying the same dishes three times.

I miss those Christmases. 

Christmas Eve Past

(Published Previously)

Despite the carols, shopping, gift wrapping, and cookie baking, the Christmas Season never really began for me until Christmas Eve with Grandma Anna Kleinhoffer. She was Bob, my first partner’s grandmother and she was part of my life for 13 years before she died.

Bob and I would drive up from Chicago through the early evening snow. We would look forward to arriving at Grandma’s house, which was just down the block from Bob’s parents Robert and Dorothy in Joliet, Illinois.We never knew if Dorothy would join the festivities or if she would raise a big “stink,” not wanting to go to her mother-in-law’s, and if she would go with us or mope the rest of that Christmas when Robert went to his Mother’s Christmas Eve without her.

When we arrived at Grandma’s at ten o’clock, the 88 year old matriarch would have had her artificial tree assembled and decorated and the rest of the house scattered with aging decorations and other holiday memories. The desk in the dining room would be heaped with candy, cookies, and popcorn balls and the dining room table clothed and set. The ham would be in the oven and all the side dishes ready on the side board.

Dressed in her finest, wearing her Christmas apron, she would embrace each of us in turn and pass out her wet kisses. Next came kisses from her sisters Frieda and Clara and Frieda’s lesbian daugher, Marge, (although no one ever talked about Marge's life.) 

Shortly after our arrival (Bob, his dad, me, and sometimes Dorothy) we would sit down to eat. More food then you might want to eat so late at night but none-the-less delicious and tradition laden. The meal was in preparation for attending midnight mass at Grandma’s church which was right across the street from her house.

After mass (fun for a Jewish boy) we would come back to the house for a glass of wine and dessert. By two or three in the morning, we would rush home to Robert and Dorothy’s so we could get some rest before the big Christmas Day meal at noon.

Childhood Memories

I wrote this series of "memories" of my childhood on April 12, 1984 when I was 39 years old. I have reproduced it here with a little bit of editing.

When I was young we lived in a four room apartment. The halls were dark and musty and I played on the stairs with my yellow dump truck. One day I left it there and never saw it again.

My Aunt Annette and Uncle Sherwin lived in the next entrance. After dinner with my family I would go over to visit them and have my second dinner. Unless my Aunt mentioned it, I don't think my mom and dad ever knew that I was having two dinners.

Grandpa H would rest in the darkened bedroom while shadows played with the blinds.

Grandma L would send me to the store to buy olives and pencils.

Grandma H always smelled like fish and liked to eat boiled bone marrow on rye bread.

Sometimes Grandma and Grandpa H would walk to our apartment from theirs (10 miles) and wait on the back porch until we got home.

We would take Grandma and Grandpa H for a ride in the car to a drive-in that sold accordion french fries and had a larger than life size hot dog dressed like Tarzan on the roof. My father had installed the drive up order boxes for the drive-in so they treated him like a celebrity. The place was called, "Super Dog."

Once and a while I would take ten cents from my mother's purse without telling her. In addition to my allowance, I used it to buy penny candy.

Mr. Hartell and his wife lived next door. She gave me yellow raisins. One Thanksgiving my mom brought her turkey dinner in bed because she wasn't feeling well. She died shortly after that and I missed visiting with her.

Mr. Hartell died not long after. We hadn't seen him for a week and a bad smell was coming from his apartment. My dad called the fire department. The strong box filled with money that Mr. Hartell had shown my father was gone after the firemen took the body away.

When we would visit my Grandma and Grandpa H, I would help my grandma pick onions from their victory garden which was in the empty lot next to their shoe repair shop. They lived behind the shop.

Through the curtain that separated the shop from my Grandparent H's living space, there was a humped style wooden clock sitting on a table just to the right. When the clock was running, a little window just below the "12" changed from white to red to white etc.

In Grandparent H's living space, Grandpa would set up saw horsed and boards to make a table for the family to celebrate Passover. There would be benches for sitting. Grandma H covered the table in a lace cloth she made and we were warned not to mess it up. Since the holiday services usually took two hours, Grandma would slip each child an egg so we wouldn't be hungry. The children usually got the giggles during the service and Grandpa H always got angry with us.

Grandma L would watch television and repeat that the characters said.

My parents would tai to Grandpa and Grandma H in Yiddish when they didn't want me and my sister to understand. We usually did and had to keep from giggling.

My mom used to make Christmas Press Cookies using the ironing board because there was very little counter space in the kitchen. In the middle of the kitchen a cord hug down from the light. At the end of the cord was the on-off switch and a plug. This is also where mom would plug in the iron. In those days most ceiling lights didn't have wall switches.

Once I locked myself in the bathroom. When my father finally got me out, my parents were so happy to see me that they yelled at me.

Mr. Goldstein owned the little "mom and pop" grocer store at the end of the block. She always called me "dark eyes" and gave me licorice.

My mother would set large pots full of water on the back porch and my sister and I would play "beach." The bricks on the porch wall were so old that they would crumble when you scraped your finger nail across them. We would pretend the brick dust was sand at the beach.

My parents slept on a sofa bed in the living room and my sister and I slept in the one bedroom. I slept in my crib until I was six because the family couldn't afford to by me a bed. I sucked my thumb until I was nine.

In those days, I don't know if it was because we didn't have a lot of money or if it was just that way, but my family had only one fan. It was a floor fan and sat in the middle of the living room while we watched T.V. We would take turns sitting on it to be the most cool. At bedtime, my parents kept the fan for themselves and the kids had to deal with the heat.

Before bedtime my sister and I would check under the bed for Boogie Men and make sure the closet was closed for the same reason.

Once my father brought home a short Christmas Tree from work. We put it in a pail, propped it up with coconuts from Florida, and decorated it with art projects my sister and I had made in school and which my mother had saved.

When I was sick, I would play with my cars on the window sill and watch people on the street below. When I was older my mom and dad still slept on the sofa bed, my sister got the bedroom and I had a "cot" under the window in the dining room.

I remember a dish I painted in school as a Mother's Day gift. It was a pretty flower in pink and blue and my mother kept it on display in the dish cabinet in the dinning room.

Sometimes when my mom and dad were out, I would stand on a chair and explore the things kept in the dish cabinet. I thing some of them were supposed to be kept secret. I never told.

My friend Ronnie and I would sit on the stairs in the hall of his building and he would let me look at the things in his cigar box which included bits and pieces of shiny broken jewelry that his mother gave to him.

I remember waiting with my uncle for my aunt to come home with the new baby. I watched out the window until I say them coming up the walk with my mom and dad. They let me hold the baby.

Once a little boy was hit by a street car near the street where we lived. I couldn't understand why his shoes got knocked off but my father said so. I was afraid to ask for any more information.

When Grandma H died, I stayed home and cried instead of going to the funeral. My mom didn't think it would be good for me to go.

Great Grandma L lived in an apartment hotel. When we went to visit the halls smelled like moth balls. She would give us milk and home made poppy seed cookies. The nice round cookies she would give to her lady friends when they played cards. She saved the bits and broken pieces and middles and ends for us. We were always afraid of her so we carefully behaved.

Once my dad brought home a dog he found a work. We called the dog Lucky.

Sometime after Lucky had died, my dad found another dog at work. It was a collie and we called it Red because of the color of his coat.

I always had turtles and fish for pets. When the fish died we flushed them down the toilet. When the turtles died, my father gave me one of his watch cases to use as a coffin and we buried the turtle in the patch of dirt on the first floor under our porch. I made a little cross from popsicle sticks. One year they paved the patch of dirt with black top so the turtle bones are probably still there.