#3 Fritzie: The early years in Detroit with the Haveman family

26/07/2013 by Lesley

When the families first met………

This story really starts in Detroit, Michigan where my family moved in 1913. We lived on Gratiot Avenue (pronounced “grashet”). We lived on the north side of the street at one end and the Hans Haveman family lived on the other end of the same block. We were already a family of 4 daughters and the Havemans had only one child, Gretchen. She was named after her mother. So there were two Gretchen Haveman’s in that family. We called her mother, Aunt Gretchen.

Not that I was any more aware than any other child of what one’s friend’s fathers did for a living, but eventually I did know that Mr. Haveman was a brewmaster of the old world German tradition and he worked for one of the big beer breweries in Detroit.

I can remember that the Havemans celebrated Christmas. They had a Christmas Tree. Mrs. Haveman played the piano, and even though we were Jewish they invited us to come over, the whole family, on Christmas Eve. We girls would sing Christmas Carols with Gretchen while her mother played the piano. Aunt Gretchen wanted to hear our young voices singing all together. She enjoyed this very much and we had a wonderful time. There was usually a Christmas Punch and Christmas cookies served. It was a regular party.

**Ida & Charles Politzer on the left side of the stairs, Aunt Gretchen & Mr. Havemann on the right side of the stairs. Mother’s parents in the middle and the children in the back.**

I was chosen because I was the closest in age to Gretchen, and not too gregarious. She’s a year younger than I am. I was nine years old and she was eight at the time. And they would take us out to dinner with them. I enjoyed that. And when they went on a day trip they took me with them, too. So I became Gretchen’s companion and this lasted all through grammar school and high school until the end of our time in Allenford, Ontario in 1925.

The Haveman’s belonged to a club, and we always went to this club for dinner. It was usually just the four of us, but once a French woman went out with us. And she ordered Chestnut puree. That’s where I first learned about Chestnut puree that you put on cakes and things for deserts. I liked the puree very much, it was delicious. I suppose that’s where I got my taste for chestnuts.

Aunt Gretchen

#6 Fritzie: Growing up

23/07/2013 by Lesley

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’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.

#7 Polly: Frieda the absent sister

22/07/2013 by Lesley

My older sister Frieda (later Fritzie) did not live at our house when I was growing up. She had been almost adopted by family friends, the Havemans, as a companion for their only daughter. The father, Hans Haveman, had a brewery. They lived on the same street in Detroit as Mother and Dad, when we were growing up. Aunt Gretchen (Mrs. Haveman), was Mother’s best friend. When we moved to the country, they moved into a lovely home in northern Detroit and also had a home in Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, where they kept horses. Frieda lived with the Havemans during high school. She would visit us when the Havemans visited. Mr. Haveman occasionally hunted pheasant on our property, and, occasionally, I was allowed to spend the night at “Aunt Gretchen’s” house when they returned home from a visit.

#8 Fritzie: My Early Influences – How I got my Professional Name

21/07/2013 by Lesley

My mother was of course the one who taught me how to sew, so she was very important in my beginnings. When my sisters and I needed a new dress, I helped her make them or I made them myself by the time I was 12 years old.

Mother made our winter coats and during World War I, she made my sister Josephine and I military style coats out of Astrakhan (a fake fur material). And we had military caps to go with the coats; the kind that fold flat and can be slipped into a coat pocket. During this time my Uncle Alex who was going to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor took Jo and I to our first Football game all dressed up in our Astrakhan military coats and caps. I think it was Michigan playing St. Louis.

Mrs. Haveman was another one of the earliest influences on my life. Years later when I began to sew and make clothes for Josephine and I, and the other sisters, Mrs. Haveman, Aunt Gretchen said to me, “You’re very good at that. You really ought to make that your profession, designing and making clothes.” And she said, “When you get old enough to do this, I will help you.” And that was very important to me. Because I felt that my own mother couldn’t help me make it my profession. It was Aunt Gretchen who suggested that my professional fashion designer name be “Madame Fritzie”.

One year Aunt Gretchen gave us 3 or 4 coats that she didn’t need any more; one for each of us. I don’t remember what Josephine or Bert’s looked like, but mine was very elegant – brown with an edge of fur going down the front and all around the bottom edge, around the back.

But Aunt Gretchen gave me the feeling that she could give me the tools to start me in business and that was something my mother couldn’t do. By that time I was one of seven daughters and my mother didn’t have time to learn very much about the business world. For one thing she never bought clothes in a store. Mrs. Haveman did and she knew what was needed in the way of clothes that were to be sold in stores. She had a sense of how fashions changed.

So early on, I developed a great affection for Aunt Gretchen and to some extent became her confidant, someone that she could talk to. Her parents, Gretchen’s grandparents, lived with them. Aunt Gretchen was often depressed about the association with her parents. All she got was complaints about how she didn’t do this and she didn’t do that and that wasn’t right and this wasn’t right. And she would tell me about all this. I don’t know why. I must have been older than 12, or she wouldn’t have talked to me about it. Whenever there was an argument, she’d tell me about it. I was sorry for her, and happy to listen. But there was nothing I could really do to help her.

Anyhow, by the time I was 15 or 16, I realized that Aunt Gretchen wasn’t very happy with her husband, either. I didn’t have anything specific to base this on, just a feeling. And besides I could see how much she enjoyed the attentions of my Uncle Louie. Uncle Louie was very handsome and a real womanizer. They had a very good time together. He was younger. Mr. Haveman was a big heavy set man and older than she was; a real German Prussian type. Anyway, she had a marvelous time with Uncle Louie. So what could I know, at 15.

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

17/07/2013 by Lesley

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?)**

#13 Fritzie: Socializing with the young people in Allenford in 1925

16/07/2013 by Lesley

Gretchen and I wanted to get to know the young people in town, so we took the road around Chesley Lake and walked to the presbyterian church in Allenford on Sunday mornings. The choir master greeted us very kindly and we were recruited for the church choir. Eventually, however, the choir master discovered that I did not have a voice and asked me not to sing, but to mouth the words with no sound, so I could remain in the choir. I did not mind as long as I could stay in the choir.

At first, when we got to Allenford, we were considered stuck-up city girls, but the young people soon learned to like us, and we liked them a lot, and we were allowed to join the group. In Allenford, there was a big group of teenagers that did everything together as a group. There wasn’t so much dating in those days.

We went to all the baseball games in Allenford. This is one of the things everyone did together. Aunt Gretchen and the two of us always wore the same dresses. She wore a white polka dotted dress with a pink background. Gretchen’s dress was blue with white polka dots and mine was violet with white polka dots. They were our baseball dresses each with a sash to match. I had made them all.

The baseball games in Allenford were very important because it looked like the team had a chance at winning the Canadian Farm Baseball Championship award. And that was important to us, because Gretchen’s father had told the team that if they won, he would sponsor the Championship dance to celebrate their victory. It was to be given in their big barn and he would pay for the band and everything.

By this time, Gretchen was dating both the Pitcher, Norman Wayne and the Catcher, Percival Noble, who when he grew up became a member of the Canadian Parliament. I was dating, Garnett E. Montgomery, the Postmaster’s son. He delivered mail, too, by horse and buggy in the afternoon and often invited me to join him for the ride and each time I went with him, he presented me with a bouquet of sweet peas. They grew in his mother’s garden.

We wore the same dresses, which I had made, to the baseball games and the square dance socials. And each girl had to bake a pie. Gretchen baked mine and her’s. They were always butterscotch pies with whipped cream topping and everyone knew that they were the best. Then at the social the boys had to buy the pies and they would get the girl to eat it with them. Usually there was a “box supper” that went with the pie.

You can imagine how excited Gretchen and I were when the boys won the Baseball Championship and we actually had the big dance in the big barn. Gretchen and I helped Aunt Gretchen make all the food for the big occasion. We made fried chicken, potato salad, vegetables and cakes. That was the first time I ever made mayonnaise from scratch.

It got cold in October and November and the lake was frozen. On Sunday we walked to town across the lake and we loved it. Some days it was very cold, like 35F below zero (-37.22 °C), but we did it so we could get a ride home after church and sometimes we were invited for dinner by some of the girls and boys or we invited them home to our house. It worked out very well.

And in the winter time we went with the gang to all the hockey games with the hockey team. They used a big sled. In Allenford in the 1920’s the only form of transportation in the winter was by sleigh. We went in a big sled that had straw on the floor and had enough room in it for the hockey players and all the young people of Allenford; the cheering squad! We always kept on the main roads since the side roads were pretty narrow and our sled was so big. To make sure that we got to the games on time, the driver would sometimes pretend that we were a “funeral sleigh”. He’d tell us all to be real quiet, and cut out the teenage ruckus and then he’d signal the other sleigh that we were a funeral sleigh and they’d let us go right through. We were never late for a game!

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

15/07/2013 by Lesley

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.

#15 Polly: Fritzie’s many Influences on me & dresses she made for me

14/07/2013 by Lesley

Many, Many Artistic endeavors……….

**The signature confuses me. I always thought that my mother made the linoleum cut. For sure she held on to this all these years…….**

Around the time I started high school, my older sister Frieda, who was already called Fritzie most of the time, began working for Olga Fricker at her School of Ballet, as the costume designer. Fritizie lived in her studio on the top floor of the school which was a three story building on Cass Avenue near Wayne University. Fritzie and I had become better acquainted with each other and were then very good friends: I found in her someone I could talk to and she was very supportive. I let her know how lonely I was living in the “boonies”, at home.. She made arrangements with Olga Fricker to let me join an after school ballet class and pay for it by being responsible for keeping Olga’s office clean.

I enjoyed the ballet classes; I worked hard and made enough progress to be in a recital. Most thrilling of all, I was included in the group that auditioned to be extras on stage with the Corp de Ballet Russe for a performance of “Petrushka” starring Balanchine. And I was one of those chosen!

Then, at Christmas time, after I had advanced to dancing “on toe” I was included in a group that was booked at a downtown theater to perform an “interval” where a Shirley Temple movie “The Littlest Colonel” was being featured. This was two weeks of “showbiz”; three performances a day! full of grease paint! costumes! music! and waiting……… I think I saw the Shirley Temple movie twenty times.

(dancing in “The Littlest Colonel”)

I also began to take voice lessons, learning excerpts from Shakespeare, etc. I was a stagestruck kid. My bedroom was plastered with pictures of Lunt and Fontaine.

When recital time came around and Fritzie became very busy in the costume department, I became her go-fer and all around assistant: standing in for the “dummy” (Mannequin, dress form) while patterns were fitted; going to the fabric store to match materials and thread and trimmings; putting together a hurried snack at any time of the day or night when the pressure was on. Many times I just spent the night at the studio and would catch the bus to school in the morning. And Fritzie rewarded me by taking me to plays, such as “the Women” by Clare Boothe Luce, which raised questions about sex and society for me. And Fritzie was there to answer my questions. I had never been able to talk about my personal questions with my mother. She was very shy, unable to cope with subjects like sex or personal hygiene. And personal discussions never seemed to be appropriate during the time I spent with Bertha, one of my other older sisters. Sometimes Bertha would take me with her to her Art Class at Wayne and I “felt big” when she did. Somehow, my relationship with Fritzie was more like being an equal rather than being the “little sister”.

At the beginning of my sophomore year, Fritzie presented me with a special gift: two lovely raspberry red outfits. One was a long sleeved wool crepe, a rather, dressy dress. The other, a sporty pin whale corduroy shirt dress. I was delighted. My wardrobe had always consisted of hand-me-downs or things I had made myself and I was not a faultless seamstress.

Between my junior and senior years of high school, 1936, I applied for a drama Scholarship that was being offered at Northwestern University, and I got it. When I was awarded the scholarship to be a “Cherub” (the name given to the students in this program), Fritzie immediately came forward by putting together my wardrobe. She made a spectacular organdy formal (one of the requisites in the brochure) to be worn at the competition that was to be held at the end of the session. The dress was perfect for the occasion; very feminine; a hyacinth blue organdy penner entirely edged with matching ruffles over a blue taffeta slip.

……….By this time, summer 1937, Fritzie had her own business designing women’s clothes in Gross Pointe, an upscale suburb of Detroit. ……….

It was Fritzie who persuaded me to apply to Antioch College. I had thought I would like to go to a women’s college because that is where my high school friends had applied. Fritzie’s comment was, “Growing up with six sisters, why the hell would you want to go to a girl’s school?”. But she also had an alternative for me to consider. The daughter of her friends, Ralph and Clara Holmes (Ralph was the drama critic on the staff of the Detroit Times) was attending Antioch College in Ohio, and was very enthusiastic about it. It had a unique work-study program and was a small school. Fritzie arranged for me to spend a weekend at the school and financed the trip. I was hooked after that experience and determined to fulfill my part in the bargain I made with Dad and see to it that he kept his part. In the summer of 1939, word came that I had been accepted with advance credit for my courses at Wayne State University and also work credit, with a small stipend toward my tuition.

Fritzie made me a very collegiate blue plaid pleated skirt that I wore for years.

Many times, my aunt Polly would tell us about the prom dresses that my mother made for her. Polly would write to Fritzie and mention the date of the dance, and on the very day of the dance a package would show up with a dress that fit Polly perfectly.

#16 Fritzie: Playing college student in 1940

13/07/2013 by Lesley

I was a working girl in Detroit in 1939. I was a freelance fashion designer making clothes for women in the more affluent Detroit suburbs, including wedding dresses, etc.

Through the work/study program at Antioch College, Polly took a summer job in 1939 at the Mt. Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. When she and I talked about doing something together the following summer, we decided to go work at the hotel again. Then, at the end of the summer when Polly would go back to school, I would have saved some money and would go to New York City to try and find work as a fashion designer in the big city.

I was past student age, so I had to leave out some details when I applied to work at the hotel, because it was really a summer job for college students. But since I look much younger than I am, no one could tell the difference or felt any reason not to believe me.

So in the late spring of 1940, we took off. We had very little money and decided to start our trip by taking the boat from Detroit to Cleveland. We traveled steerage to save money, which meant that we had no warm place to sleep and spent a cold windy night on the deck with nothing to eat. Then we took the bus to New York City and lived on red bananas for a day or so while we were there. We stayed in Antioch House. I visited Valentina, a fashion design house, to see about a job later on. We bought a wind-up victrola at Macy’s department store and two records, one of which was Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto #1. The victrola was our prize possession – which was very heavy and which we had to drag along with us everywhere on our way to Vermont. On the day we arrived, we were met at the train station and immediately taken to the hotel and our rooms on the top floor. My sister Polly and I roomed together. I think the boys stayed in rooms that were part of the golf clubhouse near the golf course.

It was a huge hotel. If you were a hotel guest you entered up a wide stair case in the front that opened onto the second floor into the lobby. The dining room was also on the second floor, a large solarium with windows all around looking toward the mountains. And on this same floor on either side of the entrance stair case were verandas; big wide verandas that curved around the whole building, where we served tea every afternoon at 4:00pm.

As it was 1940 and already World War II, what was wrong with the hotel that year, from our point of view, was that the guests staying there that summer were mostly refugees from Europe with little or no money. So we waitresses weren’t making the tips we might have made some other year and even though the hotel was completely booked there was very little extra money coming in. The hotel management was cutting as many corners as they could.

There were about 50 of us student workers from all over the country, Vasser, Antioch all the big schools; half and half boys and girls. The girls filled the positions of waitresses and the boys were either bell-hops or golf caddies and were also hired to play baseball on a regular schedule to entertain the hotel guests. The bell-hops had to be available to meet the hotel guests at the train station. For recreation the bell-hops could either caddy or play golf with the hotel guests. The waitresses played tennis sometimes.

We would get up in time to be inspected in the dining room by 7:00 am for breakfast. Lunch started at about 11:00 and we would be finished about 2:30 pm. Then 4 of us would be picked to serve tea at 4:00 pm. There was also a special breakfast buffet for the late comers where we waitresses took turns similar to the afternoon tea time. The rest of us were off until 5:00 pm when dinner started and then we would work through until 9 or 10:oo pm each night. We had to clean all the glasses, and the A-1 sauce bottles and the silverware and put it all away before we were finished.

Before each meal, we were lined up by Mr. Grey, the maitre’d who checked our uniforms, etc., and explained to us our duties. He was a very pleasant man, but very strict about protocol. He would check our hands and fingernails and hair and makeup. One of the most important things that I learned from this job, I learned from Mr. Gray about the preparation of the dishes they cooked for the dining room. He would describe to us how they were made so that we could tell the guests when we served them. For example: Fresh Trout from the local mountain streams, Amondine. Saute’d in butter with lemon Juice and toasted Almonds. My sister Polly, can remember the fried breaded eggplant sticks that were served as a side dish.

Sunday nights were “grill nite” and the grill short-order chef was a sight to behold with a bandana around his head and another bandana around his neck and he sweat and swore a blue streak the whole evening long. And when we served steak, A-1 sauce was served with it. I can remember very well that we were required to clean those bottles after they were used each time.

This was the second year of waitressing for my sister Polly. Besides the regular duties of a waitress, Mr. Grey gave her the job of being his secretary as well. She was kept busy all the time with the extra work. (She’d been here the year before and dated a football player from Moonsocket, Mass. He couldn’t come back, as planned, the second year and Polly was so disappointed that she didn’t date anyone else the whole summer.)

We had a mutiny/strike among the student workers. We protested over the fact that the hotel staff were giving us only left overs to eat. So we rebelled. We didn’t eat their food for almost a week. Some of the fellows went out and got hamburgers so we wouldn’t starve. We understood that the hotel was having a hard time and had to use all the food they could-even to feed the college boys and girls, but it was supposed to be good, healthy food. I don’t remember how the strike ended. Eventually we just worked it all out and went on with our work and play.

#17 Fritzie: socializing among the staff

12/07/2013 by Lesley

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.

#18 Fritzie: Fall 1940, Looking for a fashion job in the Big City

11/07/2013 by Lesley

Finally we arrived in the Big City of New York, to look for work…

Eve Marie and I found an apartment in Greenwich Village for a month.

I found a job in a dress shop doing alterations.

Eve Marie’s job hunting escapades were fantastic and exasperating. She was born in Germany originally and this was during World War II and she was considered an enemy alien. She was trying everywhere with no luck.

One time she was supposed to go to an interview in a man’s hotel room and she was suspicious of the set up. So she asked me to wait in the hotel lobby and if she didn’t appear after a certain amount of time, I was supposed to go looking for her. Well the man turned out to be a real gentleman, with a very interesting job to offer her and her qualifications were perfect, except for her alien status and she didn’t get the job.

At the very end, I tried again to find a job at Valentina’s fashion design house and others, but it was summer, 1940 – the war and there was very little going on and since I had no documented experience in fashion design to speak of; no references, no resume, no one was ready to hire me right away.

We had to leave New York City…………………..

We had enough money to keep the apartment for a month, but at the end of the month Eve Marie still hadn’t found a job and we had to go our separate ways.

I went back to Detroit, Michigan and Eve Marie went back to live with her parents in Tampa, Florida.

Years later, when her daughter was already 10 years old, we saw each other again. We were both married by then. We had a good time reminiscing about our Summer at the Mount Washington Hotel and our time in the Big City.

#19 The Early 1940’s; More experience for her resume’

10/07/2013 by Lesley

Fritzie must have gone back to Detroit and continued to work as a fashion designer making clothes for women in the affluent Detroit area.

She was doing at least some freelance work……………..

Fritzie writes on the side there: “Miss Crawford’s dress – Designed and Made by Fritzie“

1942

It appears that as the USA entered WWII, Fritzie was working for various fashion companies in Detroit. A claim from the Michigan Unemployment Compensation Commission shows that she was collecting unemployment compensation after being laid off at; DEM RY & Co., Winkelman Bros. Inc., and Ann Chumery Custom Clothes…..most likely because orders were not coming in and companies had to lay off employees right and left.

Then she started to work in the war effort……………….

#20 From 1943 ….. onward, Charm, Style with Fashion and her own family

07/07/2013 by Lesley

In 1943 Fritzie got married.

The story goes, that this friend of the family who met Polly at Antioch college, Fred Pollak, asked each of the still single girls in the Politzer family to marry him. If I remember he started with Polly, who said no. Then he asked each of the other two younger sisters and they said no. I really do not know how many of them were still single, but finally he asked my mother and my mother said yes.

Fred was one of these guys who had a Clark Gabble look to him and I believe my mother was very very taken with him and very happy to be married to him.

After their wedding they moved to Chicago, Illinois.

From this time forward Fritzie was for the most part a housewife and mother, but continued to make lots of our clothes.

I was born in 1943 and my brothers were born in 1945, Ralph Timothy and in 1948, Victor Alfonse. The family kept moving farther north in the Chicago area and we were mostly raised in the first suburb north of Chicago, Evanston, IL.

Thus begins that part of the exhibition showing my mother’s charm, style and in many cases the clothes that she made for herself and her children as we grew up……………..

#21 1943, during the war years

06/07/2013 by Lesley

Learning from my mother…………

My Mother once told me that she had worked in a hospital for a while, I think during the war effort. She learned the correct way to change the bed sheets in the hospital rooms and showed me how to do it.

It is still possible to learn how to fold a sheet correctly ……………

#22 1950’s….some foreign influence

04/07/2013 by Lesley

Fritzie continued to make clothes for our family thru the 1950’s.

It could have been in the late 1940’s when there was still a baby in the family that Fritzie designed an apron/cape made of a quilted plastic material that went over the shoulder and was used for burping babies. I think there was some attempt on my parent’s part to commercialize the idea, but it never took off.

Mom’s sewing still continued during the ’50’s………..

Fritzie’s earlier dependence upon making a living by sewing, making clothes for her sisters, for other women and, of course, for herself and her children carried with it a stigma in later years, that she later rebelled against in her own way, wanting to have store bought clothes. She often came back from a shopping trip, of any kind, during which she saw many articles of clothing she would have liked to buy, by saying, “I saved $500 today!”

In the 1950’s our family traveled to foreign countries……………………..
the summer of 1954 in Mexico and

in 1956-57, our father took us all to live in Vienna, Austria for a year and a half. His home town.

During our time in Austria, we also traveled to Israel to visit my father’s sister Annie and her family.

Ami and Itzik on the left, Eitan and Ran on the right

Then we were back in Evanston, IL through high school and onward…………..

#23 The 1960’s and 1970’s … business & fashion

02/07/2013 by Lesley

Hats!

Fritzie enjoyed Hats very much. It is clear that she took great pleasure wearing hats and made some of the hats she wore. When she made Ballet costomes, head dresses, must have been part of her work.

The hats and beehives era of the 60’s and 70’s were also the years when we children were finishing high school, going to college and in general leaving the family nucleus.

She found it possible to abandon her sewing more and more, but her flair for fashion was always there. Her charm, elegance and poise were ever with her…………..

For Fritzie it was the time for her to be more and more involved with her husband, his activities and his business. They worked together, they traveled together, they socialized together.

#24 1980’s

30/06/2013 by Lesley

The 1980’s brought grandchildren!

Fritzie grew from age 72 to 82 during the ’80s. The years of physical changes, visiting family, watching children’s families grow, friends, some travel….. We discovered the graves of both her parents and maternal grandparents in the Los Angeles area.

You can click on the individual pictures here to see more of each one.

#25 1990’s

25/06/2013 by Lesley

In the 1990’s, Fritzie spent 7 years living in a senior residence near my middle brother Tim, in the Denver, Colorado area. Tim & his wife, Ruth, took on the day care role and my youngest brother, Victor who lived nearby in Salt Lake City, visited her with his family often. She was very happy to have this time with her sons.

They made sure that she was cared for, took her on outings, were in constant communication with her, were there in cases of emergency and… among other things made sure that she had her sewing machine with her. When she did use it, she still showed a flare for design, color and style.

During this time, **Fritzie made the colorful blouse under her jacket. She always loved bright colors.**

#26 the years 2000

15/06/2013 by Lesley

In 2001, Fritzie, already 93 years old, came to live with me in Israel. The only reason she decided to go, was because she was offered the thrill of taking a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth II cruise ship to get there. Still in evidence, her flare for design, color and style, continued…………………

She had a team of young day-care helpers who she was very happy with. They were totally charmed by her and stayed with her to the end, through a stroke that took most of her, the last 3.5 years of her life.

From Elena, the first to come and help.:
“I am Elena, I was one of Fritzie’s day-care helpers for 7.5 years and to this day my memories of that time and of Fritzie herself, are very good. Usually older people are demanding and moody, while Fritzie was always very calm with a favorable temperament and in a good mood.

Fritzie thanked me for everything I did for her: for the food I prepared for her and for all the help that I administered to her. It was very pleasant to be around her. I am very sorry that in her last years she was in a very difficult health situation and was stuck in her bed most of the time, after the stroke. She was the nicest older person that I ever worked with.

May her memory be blessed.”

(Elena’s words were first written by her in Russian, then translated by her daughter to Hebrew and then translated by me to English.)

I have one last story to tell……………………………………………………………………………

#27 Still Creating at age 95…..Contemplations…. (the punch line)

02/06/2013 by Lesley

At the age of 95, my mother had another opportunity to express her artistic flare and sense of color. She was introduced to the weaving of little rugs and produced quite a number of them with the help of one of her day-care helpers, Svetlana.

From Svetlana: “She was a good woman. Communication with her was pleasant. We all loved her and tried to help her in everyday life. I worked with Fritzie mostly in the evenings. When ever I arrived, I came up to Fritzie and we chose what to do. Sometimes we read the newspapers, sometimes something cooked together (she helped cut), but most evenings we work on the rugs. When we started to work with a new rug, she chose what colors yarn would be used. She was already at the baskets looking at the colors, a few colors. I put them on the table and she chose what we use each time. She liked to work with a rug and often we did that a long time. When it was hard holding out the yarn I helped her.”

Some of the rugs…

Svetlana would arrive as I was leaving to run errands. I have clear memories of Fritzie eagerly going to the baskets that held the colored yarn for these rugs and watched her intently consider which colors to combine. To me, these little rugs are another testament of my mother’s creativity. Where would she have gone if she had landed a job with Valentina in New York City, or ?????, if her life had been a little different………

The color combinations of these little rugs, remind me of some of the early 20th century “modern artists”,

……………..such as Piet Mondrian or…….

Josef Albers…………

I believe that my mother was very happy to have married and had children, but I still wonder what else she might have accomplished in her life. This is no doubt an influence of the culture of my generation. I see the style of Valentina in some of the clothes she made……..

Madame Fritzie

celebrating a woman's creativity

Category Archives: Fritzie