Category Archives: Country

#4 Polly: Our Mother

by

0

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 limited by her lack of education, but, strong in meeting human challenges.

My mother’s schooling stopped at the third grade.  She was deft with her hands, experienced in sewing, crocheting, and knitting, and loved gardening.  She was a husky, healthy woman who responded happily to Hungarian and Austrian music.  We had a victrola and player piano in our house, and she often couldn’t stop her feet from keeping time when the “Old Country” music was played.  She was also skilled in the art of making strudel.  She could stretch that fragile dough across our entire three leaf dining room table and create the flakiest strudel I have ever eaten.

Our “country place” was a magnet for the other relatives, of which there were many in the Detroit area, to arrive either late on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, to spend the weekend.  In the summer, the porch was used by relatives who would arrive with additional mattresses and sleeping gear on Saturday night, after they closed their shops, in order to spend Sunday in the country.

The Aunts would busy themselves cooking and baking for the Sunday Dinner, while the husbands played cards.  We children played ball, climbed trees, went for walks in the woods, picked berries, and, occasionally, raided the trunk in the basement to create costumes, and put on skits to entertain the grownups.

Mother looked forward to these social times because she had no social life other than these.  She never learned to drive.  We had very few neighbors out in the country.  My mother always felt inadequate, but she always kept herself busy with household and family chores, did a little reading, and a lot of canning of the produce from her big garden.

It was while I was in high school that Mother seemed to go into a deep depression: I would come home from school and she appeared to have done nothing all day.  The breakfast dishes would still be on the table.  I tried my best to clean the house and put things in order.  Some days I would find her weeping, but she would make no explanation.  Dad seemed as mystified as anyone.  Mother finally came out of it. (Menopause?)

In the 1950’s she bore the throes of two bouts of colon cancer, but, coupled with diabetes, it was too much and she died at the age of 75, in 1959.

#5 Polly: Living in the Country

by

0

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, MI, 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).

#6 Fritzie: Growing up

by

0

There is a darker yelllow where Frieda is sitting.

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.  I think my mother would get the rye bread fresh from the bakery every day.  One thing I remember very clearly, when I was 12, that on Saturdays we sisters spent the day cleaning at home while my mother and Aunt Gretchen went to matinees at the Bonstelle Playhouse or any other matinees playing in town.  They had a wonderful time together.  My mother loved to go and she dressed up like a Lady and really was a Lady going out. 

Between Josephine and I, we got all the work done with the other girls helping.  My sister Bertha never wanted to do house work.  I can remember Josephine, who was the oldest, would get real mad at her.   Gretchen was usually deep in dance lessons, when all this was going on.

I don’t remember much about when we were young.  In general, we went to school, and did things together. 

One thing I do remember, was when I learned to write long hand, a second time, very prettily. There were glass doors at our school and one day I put my hand on the glass and it went straight through! I had to have my wrist fixed up and when it all recovered, there was this lump on the inside of my wrist. So, for the rest of my life, people would ask me why I had that lump there. I had to learn to write all over again from the beginning. (You will note in a few places in this story, Frieda’s hand writing that was very very fine.)

The two families would get together for picnics on a regular basis.  Either in our back yard or theirs.  Gretchen didn’t take part in the eating on these occasions in order to keep her ballet figure.  She watched her weight very closely even at an early age, because of her dancing.

It was Gretchen who chose me to go out to dinner with them early on. We were close friends, Gretchen and I.  She shared her feelings and dreams with me and I with her.  But it was different than now-a-days.  We didn’t have a lot of time to converse and share our secrets when we were growing up.  Gretchen was more the out going one and I tagged along.  Since she was a year younger than I, we didn’t go to the same classes in school and I don’t remember going back and forth to school with her.   She had lots of home work to do after school; piano lessons from her mother and ballet practice.  I eventually had three younger sisters to take care of after school and other duties.  I went to watch her in ballet class some times, but I just wanted to watch.  So we were both very busy with our own things growing up.

Gretchen was very preoccupied with her dancing.  She took ballet lessons.  And she was very good at it.  She went to Olga Fricker’s Ballet School and eventually, by the time we were teenagers, became one of the principle dancers and a soloist in the Concert Group of Miss Fricker’s Dancing school which was connected to the Bonstelle Playhouse in Detroit.  When I was twenty I got a job making costumes for Miss Fricker’s ballet company.  That’s when I took lessons there, too, so that I could understand more about how to make the costumes.

Gretchen

Gretchen’s mother used to make costumes for her.  The one that I remember particularly, that I had a picture of, was a butterfly costume with wings – a white satin butterfly.  During World War I, Aunt Gretchen sold liberty Bonds and to do this she would set up entertainment programs for people to watch.  She would plan the whole thing and she would have Gretchen perform solo dances in her butterfly costume.

Eventually both families moved away from Gratiot Avenue.  The Haveman’s moved to the north side of town and we moved to Southfield Road in a house on 10 acres of land where wild strawberries grew in the woods.  I can remember on Sundays when maybe 25 of our relatives would come out to our house to pick wild strawberries in the woods and stay for dinner.  I can still see them now, maybe 20 aunts and cousins would sit in a row in the kitchen against the wall watching me washing the dishes singing “I’m forever blowing bubbles.  Pretty bubbles in the air……”  I was always washing the dishes.  My sister Josephine was always on a date.  My immediate younger sister Bertha was always studying and I was always washing the dishes or taking care of my three younger sisters.

I went to Northern High school.  At the time, we lived 5 1/2 miles from the nearest public bus stop.  So my father bought a car and gave each of us, who were old enough, a chance to learn to drive it.  Then he decided that I would be the regular driver.  So it was my job, every morning, to drive us to the bus stop and park the car there and catch the bus to school.

Frieda’s Highschool graduation picture
years later…………………

#10 Polly: The Fire

by

0

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.  By the time we reached our driveway, we already realized the glare was our house, engulfed in flames!  Dad dropped us off across the street and raced back to eight mile road where the Wayne county fire station was located.  He said that he plunked down a hundred dollar bill and asked them to come with their equipment and save our house.  He was told that he lived in Oakland County and would have to be serviced from Birmingham which was fifteen miles away.  They would make the call.  He returned, and we all watched the flames devour the inside of our brick house. 

After what seemed to be a long time, we heard the sirens approaching from the north.  As the fire truck made the approach to our driveway, it got stuck too far away from the house for the hoses to reach.  The firemen piled out of the truck and began breaking the windows and smashing the glass front door – helping the flames burn even hotter.  We soon saw that their efforts were worse than hopeless and watched the two upper floors collapse into the basement.  I think I was sent to a neighbor’s to phone Aunt Regina to ask them to come and get us and to bring some blankets because Dad said he would not leave the premises and Mother was determined to stay with him.  The firemen poked around the exterior for a while and then had to tend to the problem of their truck and left the smoldering remains.  Aunt Regina and her husband took we three children to their house.

Dad was concerned about the safe which, undoubtedly, had fallen into the basement along with the contents of the house.  Somehow, Mother and Dad hunkered down somewhere where they could keep warm and also keep watch.  Dad’s premonitions proved to be correct; some time during the night they heard noises.  Dad had armed himself and before long several of the “firemen” appeared, presumably to loot.  Dad threatened them with his weapon and they took off.

With nothing but the clothes on our backs, Dad found a house for us to rent near the butcher shop and Maxine, Viola, and I could walk to school while our house on Southfield rd. was being rebuilt.

The Rebuilt Southfield house

This story is rather interesting.
In the years before “the Depression of 1929” there was a great deal of Anti-immigration 
sentiment which had increased after World War I (1918) and continued to increase. Economic concerns combined with ethnic prejudice ended America’s “open door” immigration policy in the 1920s.
I wonder if the fire at my grandparent’s house was part of this Anti-immigration sentiment of that period, even though they had already been in this country for a decade.

#12 Fritzie: Allenford, Ontario……..after highschool

by

0

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.

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.

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.

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 horses.  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?)

#14 Fritzie: The Accident, that changed so much.

by

0

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.

#17 Fritzie: socializing among the staff

by

0

The Staff Social Scene at Mt. Washington Hotel

The waitresses were not allowed to date any of the hotel guests.  If you did you were dismissed.  But after 9:00 pm we could date each other.

At 10 pm when our work was finished, we didn’t fall asleep exhausted.  No! we would go out.  For long walks to see the Aurora Borealis or lots of times a bunch of us would hop into a car and go out for drives into town for ice cream.  And we’d sing all the way, songs like “the Yellow Rose of Texas” and “You are my Sunshine”.

One of the things we girls loved to do was skinny dip in the hotel pool.  It was very close to the hotel and we had to be very quiet about it.  No guys were allowed to participate and of course we never talked about it to them.

There was one young man.  He was probably one of the bell-hops.  His name was George and George loved the mountains and trees and stars and the Northern Lights – the Aurora Borealis!  He loved to go for long walks.  We used to start out and walk toward where ever the Northern Lights were going to be.  George was, of course, a college student and he didn’t know that I was probably 10 years older than he was.  I can’t say we had a lot to talk about together, but we had a good time walking together.  One night we discovered that to get there – we had to walk all night – and when we got back – we where exhausted.  We got a couple hours sleep and went back to work.  Luckily for me, breakfast wasn’t served too early that morning; not until about 10:00 am that day.

All the time I was out dating the boys and going on drives into town with the gang, Polly, as I remember it, was in her room painting pictures.  On one of the few trips she did take with us into town, she ran into a salesman selling Windsor Newton oil paint sets.  She still has the one that he gave her.  (I wonder if she has any of her paintings still from that summer)

One of the cute waitresses did find a date among the guests.  He was young and wealthy.  The rest of us used to pass all sorts of rumors about their clandestine dates.  Boy, was that a conversation piece for a long time.    All the rest of us wondered for weeks if she was going to get fired.  After a while they just up and eloped and got married.

End of summer departure delayed……

During our last week at the Mt. Washington, about a dozen of us waitresses stayed to close the kitchen and that was a fun job.  We learned a great deal about what it takes to run a kitchen in a resort hotel and Mr. Grey guided us all the way. 

One of the other girls, Eve Marie, and I had discovered that we both wanted to go to New York City after we were finished and try looking for work there.

After we were all finished closing the kitchen, we went for a last hike in Bretton Woods and I jumped over a dead log and sprained my ankle when I landed.   My departure was delayed a week, but I didn’t mind very much.  My doctor was charming and I had a view of the gorgeous Bretton Woods.