I guess when you are a kid you think everybody grows up doing the same things your family does. But later in life you realize every family is different and what was the norm in your life may be genuinely unique from many others.
I grew up in Milwaukee. We lived on the north side of Milwaukee near 39th and Villard st. It was a neighborhood of young families and elderly people but few little girls to play with, so all my first friends were boys. Ronnie and Markie were my best friends . Markie lived next door to us and was a bit younger than me. I remember one funny story about him running around naked in the front yard when his parents had trouble controlling this strong willed only child in the family! Ronnie lived on the corner of my block and had a big family of brothers and sisters. He often walked right in our house and helped himself to a snack in the kitchen even if i was not home or available to play- this made my mom crazy!!
I also spent time playing with my oldest brother Gary (who is five years older than me) and his friends. In the 50's it was common to play "war" so we played in the large open field behind our house. We would use my dad's army surplus pup-tent and funny looking helmets and play guns. I got to play the part of the army nurse and offered poison berries( which i picked from the field) to the soldiers- of course they never really ate them! I had a neat white plastic nurse kit and red and blue cape i got for a birthday present so was all costumed up for the job. We also played war in the large construction hole in the field that was dug for a potential church that never got finished( at least while we lived there). I also remember showing up in the field when Gary played baseball with his friends, and lifting my dress to show my underpants for attention! Yikes!! Gary hated this and was very embarrassed i recall. I do believe I was a spoiled "only girl" child syndrome that liked attention!! (Although as a redeeming quality to perhaps make up for my attention getting behaviors of early childhood, i do also remember being a very quiet , shy child and youth all through grade school and even through high school- thank goodness!!)
We also had "ash boxes" behind each house on our block in our drivable alley. This is where we would put the coal ashes from our coal furnaces but i used it in an odd way. I liked to play that i was riding a pretend horse and when i was done playing i pretended to deposit it in the ash box!? Odd but just a kids way of using what was available for pretend play. I remember my dad building us a big snow pile in the backyard every winter where we could use our sleds- that was neat. We also had a little rectangular green rubber wading pool with four little red metal seats on each corner. I remember one sunny summer day running in the house to put on my swimsuit only to come back to my pool to see it filled with the crayfish my brother Gary caught at a local park pond. He had put them in the pool to make me crazy. I can still hear him laughing with his boyhood friend, Brian Satler ,while i stood crying and pitching a fit!!
I also have a memory of standing on a chair in the backyard in a pretty new dress my Aunt Arlene gave me for Christmas (a pretty brown dress with lacy apron, my cousin Kim got one too) and my dad taking a photo of me next to his rose bushes, which were his pride and joy of gardening( we have this photo somewhere in my parent's photo albums). We also had a "rosin" plant at the end of the block and Ronnie and I would climb the fence or comb its fence edges to look for these pieces of clear yellow- gold rocks, we called them our "treasure" as if real gold. They also had a great asphalt parking lot we used to roller skate on( lots of clip- on roller skating in my neighborhood- cheap available childhood fun you just put them on over your tennis shoes).
The oddest memory of living on 39th st, involved our neighbors to the left of us( Markie lived on the right). I usually remember the Zeidler's(their last name) as a couple that would re-paint their house on huge ladders each summer in their bathing suits i may add ( they were very tan). But, one summer the Zeidler's decided to build a "fall out shelter" in their small backyard. It was the 50's and the scare of a nuclear war was very real to people.We even had air-raid drills at school where we would crouch down and curl up as if in a ball in the hallways to practice every month . The two of them hand dug a huge hole in their backyard( almost the size of a garage foundation) and it was right over the fence where i would play in my backyard ,so i saw it take shape every day i played in the yard. Well , I began to have a re-occurring nightmare/dream that a nuclear bomb exploded and i would run into my mom's bedroom holding my breath and wake her up as i was afraid to breathe. She told me when i was older that she used to have to plunge me into a cold bath to startle me to get me to breathe. This was Dr. Lees' idea, our doctor that made house calls back then when we were ill and who mom consulted as didn't quite know what to do to stop this nightmare of mine. How vivid is that for a childhood fear!! I guess when you are young and see adults intensely acting out their fears you inherit them as well. I am happy to say this technique, although i do not remember the cold baths just the dream itself ,worked after a while to my moms benefit of a good night sleep i am sure!!
On 39th st. I shared a bedroom with bunk beds with my brother Dale and remember frequently crying out to mom at bedtime that Dale was keeping me awake(as he would roll his head and "hum" to get himself to sleep every night and it drove me crazy! ). Mom would always call back and say "just wait awhile he will be asleep in just a few minutes" and he always was! Moms just know these things- i think it was the first thing I learned to be patient with in life. Dale was a very quiet, sweet child, whose best friend was a little girl named Diane( funny how I remember all these odd details of childhood). It's funny as i do not remember playing with Dale much although he was closer to me in age, only two years older.We were very close when we grew a little bit older though- even looked like "twins" with our German freckles ! I do remember sitting under the table when my mom held pack meetings for Dale's cubscout troop, as my mom was a pack leader. I was a bit of a pest looking for attention again i believe- pesty little sister i guess.
We lived in a 2 flat house and my grandparents( mom's step dad and mom) lived upstairs- typical of German families in my Milwaukee neighborhood.I lived on 39th street until i entered grade school(we moved away at age 7). We had an excellent German bakery a few blocks away from our house that my dad would buy danish donuts and crullers at every Saturday morning and how my parents always ordered one of their famous "Vienna Torte" cakes for our birthdays every year. I also remember shopping for penny candy on the way home from school at this local tiny corner grocery store that had a whole display window of 1-5 cent treats. Some of my favorites were: dots( colored candy spots on paper strips) , candy wax lips and mustaches, wafer flying saucers with little candies inside, and candy lipstick - it was a treasure chest for a kid in the 50's.
My youngest memory of school ,was my last teacher in this neighborhood before we moved- her name was Mrs. Hazeltene, my second grade teacher. She used about one fourth of her classroom to display a large wood cage for guinea pigs, for which we brought food from home( lettuce carrots etc...) to feed them every week. It was so nice for kids who didn't have pets at home( like us). I think she was responsible for my love of animals from little on.I find this funny as an only early school memory, for as an adult I am a certified pre-kp, 1-3 teacher and have no memories of kindergarten or first grade? My mom was a stay at home mom until i entered KP, she worked out of our home as a tax accountant with her own business- very ahead of her time for the 50's. My dad was a truck driver for REA Express since 18 yrs old and thus we needed a second income so mom worked too.
I also remember the "rag man". He would come down our street with a horse drawn wagon yelling "rags ,rags" and i guess neighbors would give him or buy from him old pieces of cloth( I don't remember seeing this part though). This sounds like a scene from "fiddler on the roof "but i remember it clearly. Also the ice cream man with his musical bicycle cart that we ran to with our quarters to buy an ice cream treat on a hot summer day.We also has street cars back then that we would occasionally take with my mom downtown to see the museum and to walk a bit on a Saturday. That was an adventure for sure.
We also took weekend trips to my Aunt Jan's farm just outside Madison, Wisconsin in a little town called Rio. It seemed like forever to drive there( when will we get there dad?!) but in reality was only 2 hrs away. We would play in her big farm yard watching her chickens fly in and out of the barn ( Aunt Jan was always afraid for me as she thought the chickens would attack me and my eyes- a vivid childhood fear i recall). She also had a big slumped back horse named "Duke" that we would get rides on. Her friendly big red-brown dog was named "Chipper", but got run over by a car (as she liked to chase cars on the main road in front of her house). The only thing i didn't like about Rio ,was that my Aunt Jan"s house has an unfinished porch on the second level with a door that led to no where. I was always afraid i would sleep walk and walk right out that door and fall two stories down-yikes!...funny hey? In winter we got a sleigh ride with a real sleigh pulled by horses( i still have the horse bells up at our " island" house- a remembrance kept from Rio). My dad would bring home a few old wood wagon wheels to decorate the yard( i also have these up at the "island" as well).
My Aunt Fern and Uncle Bob from California would drive to Milwaukee every summer with their tiny air steam trailer to visit us. Aunt Fern was my mom's only sister. We kids always looked froward to their visit each summer as when they came, we had two weeks filled with family "field trips" of sorts to parks and beaches and that family reunion picnic at Lake Park- yeah for family gatherings!
I guess when reading back over this story of living on 39th street in Milwaukee it sounds like i had a charmed childhood- protected from any bad things in the world and family trauma. Perhaps you never really appreciate things like this in your childhood until you recall them in detail years later. I know now that not everybody had a childhood like this. I was blessed for sure and wanted to share these details with my girls for them to understand the differences of growing up in the 50's ,from their growing up in the 80's. I think our mind preserves what we want it to, but these are strong clear memories for me even at age 56! Living on thirty- ninth street holds many fun childhood memories for me!
No comments:
Post a Comment