#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

#4 Polly: Our Mother

25/07/2013 by Lesley

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.

#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.

#9 Polly: Josephine’s wedding

20/07/2013 by Lesley

When I was seven, in 1926, my oldest sister, Josephine had a big wedding in a Temple in Detroit. Josephine, I am told, had beautiful blonde hair and was very pretty and vivacious. After high school she had attended a business school. Before the wedding there was a large outdoor party and our front yard was strung with Japanese Lanterns and a chicken dinner was served.

Mother’s parents had Immigrated by that time and were living with us. Grandfather was in charge of making sure the chickens were killed and prepared according to the Kosher rules, since Father’s butcher shop was not Kosher. My cousin, Lillian Greenhut and I were flower girls at the wedding. Frieda, Bertha, Gretchen and the groom’s sister were Bridesmaids and each of them were paired off with a tuxedo garbed gentleman Usher. Popular music was played. Lillian and I danced the Charleston. After the wedding, Josephine and her new husband, Sam Kazdan, left for California.

Fritzie is 3rd from the right in the rear. Polly is the little girl in the front (unless that is Lillian). I believe my Aunt Bertha is the one on the far left in the rear. Gretchen is 3rd from the left in the rear. Please anyone, let me know who any of the other people are.
Either Polly was wrong about Josephine’s hair being blond, or this is not really Josephine’s wedding picture, but it looks like my aunt Josephine.

#10 Polly: The Fire

19/07/2013 by Lesley

One October evening Dad came home and announced that we would be going to Temple after supper. It was Succoth, a Jewish harvest festival, and there would be a special ceremony and treats for the children. The synagogue was about 15 miles from our house, which resulted in our not going there very often. But when Dad decided to go, we went.

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

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

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

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

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

#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.

#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……………..

#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.