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.
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.
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).
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 pictureyears later…………………
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.
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.
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.
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?)
