Category Archives: Work

#2 Polly: The Politzer Daughters

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My parents met at that Boschan / Politzer enclave in New York City. I do not know the story of how they decided to marry.

But, they were married in New York City on March 3,1907.  After they were married, they produced a daughter every year for four years.  My four older sisters were born in New York City. 


Josephine was born in 1907, Frieda in 1908, Bertha in 1909, and Gertrude in 1910.They lived in a walk-up New York City flat.  My dad, having completed an apprenticeship as a butcher in Vienna, worked in a meat packing plant, going to work early in the morning and putting in a long day.  This was also not an easy life for Mother managing four babies, with the laundry four flights down.

The Girl’s first language was German (Hungarian being the private language between the parents).  English was “picked up” from the environment by the parents until the children started school.  Then, I am told, the children began to insist that English be spoken.  By the time I came along, 9 years after Gertrude, I heard German spoken when adult relatives got together, but English was the prevalent language.


Having grown up on a large farm my mother was not happy with “city life”.…..The family moved from New York City first to Flint, Michigan, and later, to Detroit, where I was born when Gertrude, their youngest was nine years old.  (I learned much later that a birth control devise, a gold ball, had to be removed because it was creating a health problem for my mother.)  Maxine was born three years after me.  Viola was born fifteen months after that.

and still not all Seven Daughters
Polly is in the picture they are holding…..

#4 Polly: Our Mother

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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.

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

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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. Gretchen Haveman

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.

# 11 Polly: The Butcher Shop & Advancing a woman’s education

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…..after leaving Flint for Detroit, MI, Dad bought a Meat Packing Plant, hoping a son would arrive to take over the business, but when that didn’t happen, he opted for a retail butcher shop as a means of livelihood, which was located near where we lived.

I (Polly) worked at our father’s butcher shop from the age of 8 years old, probably in 1927 or 28, both inside and outside running errands, and continued through high school. I worked there all day Saturday and was in charge of the financial issues during my high school years.

College?

In the summer of 1937, I was accepted at Antioch College and gleefully showed the notification to Mother and Dad.  It required a financial statement and a signature confirming that financial obligations would be covered, which amounted to about $400 per year, at that time.  Dad’s unbelievable reply was, “What do you want to go to College for?  You’ll just get married.”  I tried to explain how important it was to me to further my education.  I had graduated Magna Cum Laude from high school, a member of the Honor Society.  I was determined to do something more with my life than marry a Jewish boy and become a “hausfrau”.  Here was an opportunity to broaden my horizons and meet a variety of people and have a number of job experiences (through the special Antioch college work-study program), which would allow me to earn some of the needed money.  Anyway, I felt that I had already earned part of the cost by working at the butcher shop all those years and I had spoken to Dad before about my expectations of going to college.  But Dad concluded the discussion by saying he couldn’t afford it!

I just blew apart!  I attacked him with my fists and pummeled as hard as I could, screaming that “It isn’t fair!  You know that I have been working for this for a long time.”  Mother stepped in and pulled me off, to stop the hitting.  I was beside myself!  I threw myself on the ground and just sobbed.  I was devastated.

When we all cooled off and could talk; probably the next day or so, Dad came up with a compromise.  I was to go to work for a year; put away some savings, and apply again the next year.  Meantime, Dad would also put money away for my college expenses.  I agreed.  I got a job as a stock clerk at Himmelhoch’s Department Store and enrolled in a required English class at Wayne State University night school.  My pay on the job was $14 a week which did not allow for much savings.  Actually, it paid off in the long run, because when I applied again at Antioch for the following year, they offered me a scholarship and gave me advanced academic and work-study credit for my year of work.

My older sister Bertha had a similar experience.  She graduated from high school and wanted to go to college, but Dad said he couldn’t afford it.  According to Bertha, Dad had contributed money to his brother Morris, so that Morris’s sons (Edward and Rudolf Politzer) could go to the University of Michigan.

It was clear, Dad thought that higher education was wasted on girls.

Polly

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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’

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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……………….

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

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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…….

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Josef Albers…………

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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……..