Mother’s role was MOTHER. She always did what needed to be done. For the most part she was living the life she expected to live.
My mother was very much a loving, generous, caring person who was simply limited by her lack of education, but, strong in meeting human challenges. Continue reading
When I was 5 1/2 years old, probably in 1924, the family moved to the country so that my mother, who grew up on a farm in Hungary, could have a garden, that subsidized the budget for food. My father bought a ten acre plot which had a large house with an apple orchard in the front yard and was located on Southfield Road and 8 1/2 Mil Road just over the Oakland County line.
Our Southfield house was a two story brick structure with a large screened in porch in the front and on the left side. The porch was wide enough for double beds which the family took advantage of in the summer time. In the winter, the porch space was used as a “freezer”; barrels of smoked goose and corned beef would be stored there. Vegetables from the garden were stored in the cellar. A ton of sand would be poured through a basement window (just like the coal was poured through the window of the coal bin). And before the ground froze, the root vegetables and celery were picked and “planted” in the sand. That way we had semi-fresh vegetables for the Sunday chicken soup. The carrots sprouted leaves, as did the turnips, parsnips, and celery.
My cousins, Fred, Leonard, and Lillian Greenhut, and Harry Blau, would spend many summers with us full time. Not having any brothers, this was a very natural way for me, and my two younger sisters, to have contact with boys. (The four older girls were away, either at jobs or were married already).
Probably one of Fritzie’s class pictures. She is in the middle row, 3rd from the left.
I can remember that everyday when we sisters came home from school there was a fresh round loaf of rye bread with jam for us to snack on. Continue reading
One October evening Dad came home and announced that we would be going to Temple after supper. It was Succoth, a Jewish harvest festival, and there would be a special ceremony and treats for the children. The synagogue was about 15 miles from our house, which resulted in our not going there very often. But when Dad decided to go, we went.
On the way home, we noticed a bright light as we neared eight mile road. Continue reading
Rustic Culture in a Canadian Province
When I was 17 and after high school, Gretchen and I planned to spend the summer and the winter of ~1925 with her parents in Allenford, Ontario. I think we had already spent time there before. Gretchen drove us up in her new red Chrysler Roadster that her father had given her for graduation. Those were the years when the roadster was a very popular car and she always had to drive it barefoot.
Allenford is a little town south of Owen Sound and north of Port Huron, Ontario, Canada, about 5 miles from the Canadian edge of lake Huron; which means that we were close enough to lake Huron to have beach picnics sometimes. This was more than just an ordinary picnic. We would buy fresh fish right from the fishing boats and have a “fish boil” with new potatoes in a big kettle over a big hot fire.
Aunt Gretchen and Mr. Haveman had gone there earlier in the spring and were working on the remodeling of an old farm house and added a big huge barn and garage that had room for 4 cars and 3 horses. It was so spectacular that people came from all over the neighborhood to see it. The farm house had 4 bedrooms, a large remodeled kitchen. And if you can imagine, in those days, remodeled and it still only had a wood burning cook stove. We kept that big stove clean and polished shiny black.
Gretchen and I were both paid $4.00 per week to share the duties of maid and cook. We took turns with the maid’s duties which were house cleaning, making beds, etc. One of our cook’s duties was learning how to use the big wood cooking stove. The Haveman’s hired a groom to take care of the 3 horses. He lived in the huge garage/barn and he took his meals in the house, that we cooked for him. He took care of the horses and kept them and the garage clean. With the money that we earned, we bought ourselves shoes and stockings and little gifts when they were needed.
There must have also been some kind of ice box or cooler in the kitchen, because Mr. Haveman would spend part of the winter storing ice for it. The farm was very close to a little lake, Chesley Lake where there was a natural cave to keep the ice in. Mr. Haveman would take his ice cutter and when the lake was frozen just right he’d cut these big uniform blocks of ice and store them just down the road in the ice house he had on the edge of the lake. He’d cut and store enough ice in there to last us the whole hot summer.
The family did a great deal of riding. Even I had a few rides. One of the horses was very tall and I think Mr. Havemann rode him most of the time. He stood 17 hands high and that was considered a really tall horse.
Mr. Havemann was a marvelous cook and the village butcher was a personal friend of his and supplied him with very excellent cuts of meat, so he was able to teach us how they should be cooked. The village baker was also an excellent baker and during the summer when we took our lunch to the baseball games, we roasted a whole calves liver and sliced it for sandwiches using the baker’s fresh bread. Cooking it in the wood burning stove was exactly right for these cuts of meat and we really learned how to cook them.
I don’t remember just when it was that Gretchen and I got in her car and drove to Toronto. Probably early on in the summer before we got so socially involved. Gretchen decided we were going, we got in the car and she drove all the way without her shoes on. We must have stayed about two days seeing the sights. When we got there, she went into a hotel and later I went in to visit her, sort of, and just never left. So that’s how we only had to pay for one.
1925 postcard of the King Edward Hotel between Victoria and Leader, Toronto, Canada (maybe it was this one?)
THE ACCIDENT:
That December in Allenford, the groom was given a vacation and when he left, the Havemans discovered that he had been mistreating the horses. And particularly the tall one; the one that Mr. Haveman rode.
One day, Aunt Gretchen decided that she would feed the horses. She went out to feed them and the tall horse got very excited. She was a different person than the groom and she tried to calm him down. She had food for him, but he turned and kicked her in the stomach and that did it. I wasn’t there, I didn’t see it. All I know is that he kicked her in the stomach, bad, and next I knew she was being carried into the house. I was probably in the kitchen cooking. I don’t even remember if they brought her into he house, before they put her on the sled.
I don’t know who got her out of the barn, but they had a friend nearby who was a doctor. He examined her and said she had to go to the hospital immediately, she was bleeding internally. And by the time she got to the hospital peritonitis had set in. When the intestines are punctured, the poison comes out. So she had all this punctured intestine leaking poison insider her and she didn’t survive. She died three days later. Oh, how heartbreaking it all was.
Gretchen and I had to stay at home all that time and do our house work and chores and wait and worry and imagine. When they put her in the sled and took her to the hospital, they must have used the same technique as the hockey sleigh driver to get the ambulance sleigh through as fast as possible.
About a day later they came and told us how serious it was, and then another two days later they came and told us that she had died. There were no telephones. I didn’t see her again until she was laid out in a coffin back in Detroit just before the funeral.
They took her body back to Detroit. I think to a funeral home, but I’m not sure and she was prepared for burial. We were told to go to Detroit for her burial. I don’t remember how we got to Detroit. Gretchen had her Chrysler roadster. That must be how we got there.
I was so completely devastated. I sat beside her coffin in their living room all night crying. What else could I do. I just sat there in the familiar surroundings and cried all night. I felt very badly about her death. She was great fun and we had a wonderful time together. She treated me as if I were her second daughter and I felt about her as if she were my second mother. And now she wouldn’t be there to help me grow up. She wouldn’t be there to help me become a fashion designer. My mentor had died. I would have to do it all by myself. With so many odds against me.
She was laid to rest in a cemetery in Detroit. I went to the funeral, I don’t remember it at all. Gretchen and I went back to their Detroit house. Her grand parents had already passed away so it was just her and her father. So we three stayed there. My father wanted me to come home. I couldn’t leave right away. It was a big house with just Gretchen and her father and she did the cooking. I finally went home. But I didn’t stay there very long. Gretchen and her father needed me. Gretchen was very disturbed by what happened to her mother and she didn’t want to stay alone.
AFTER THE ACCIDENT:
These were the famous years, the 1920’s “Prohibition”.
It was in full force in both Canada and the United States. And you could be put in jail if you were found to be making alcoholic beverages or selling them. Mr. Havemann was really a Brew Master of good German beer by profession, not your big time hoodlum, but not the kind of thing to be making in those years. And during this time of Prohibition he was eventually caught and put in Leavenworth prison where he stayed until prohibition was over.
He was caught right after the funeral for Aunt Gretchen. Gretchen decided she wanted to be in Allenford living at the farm. But her father didn’t want us living in the farmhouse way out in the country in the winter time. He felt it was unsafe because of the fact that we had no transportation to get through all the winter snow.
So until the snow melted in the spring we went into Allenford to live with a widow named Mrs. Baker. It was a pleasant place to live; warm and close to all the young people. Mrs. Baker would heat sand bags in the oven to heat our beds, on the very coldest winter nights.
While we lived with Mrs. Baker we could join the young people in their winter activities. Mostly we went to hockey games and square dances. We also sledded on flat shovels and pots and pans. One of the boys had a harmonica and played square dance music at the top of the hill and we would dance in the moonlight.
And those are my memories of Allenford, Ontario and my first friend Gretchen and most of all her mother.
The Staff Social Scene at Mt. Washington Hotel
The waitresses weren’t allowed to date any of the hotel guests. If you did you were dismissed. But after 9:00 pm we could date each other. Continue reading
