Month: February 2016

Chapter 1/ parts 2 and 3

 

We were having a “Pittsburgh winter,” complete with heavy snowfall, icy rain, and cold wind. It was on a bitter late afternoon that I insisted on driving Ardella home. I couldn’t stand it anymore, seeing her on her knees and scrubbing the bathtub, then standing on a high stepstool, washing windows, then finally facing the Pittsburgh night (it was dark by 5:00 PM) to schlep up the Bartlett Street hill to catch her bus.

I told Ardella to gather her things together; I would go out and start the car, warm it up a bit, then drive her home. I told Maggie what I was going to do in a way that would allow none of her comments. She made one anyway.

“Just don’t bring the children with you,” she drawled in the acid tone she used when speaking of the cleaning lady. Turning away, I went downstairs and found Ardella standing, holding her big bag and looking uncomfortable.

“I didn’t ask you to do this for me, Miz Letty,” she said. “I’m used to the cold and I can make my own way.”

I pushed by her. “I hate being called Miz Letty, Ardella. You can call me Mrs. Silverblatt if you want to or just plain Letty. And I don’t want to hear any more about it. I’m driving you home. You can’t live that far away. Where do you live?”

“I live on the Hill. You call it the Hill District. Allequippa Street. You know where that is, don’t you?”

“I do know where it is and this won’t be a problem. All this fuss! Let’s just get in the car and go!”

Silently we got into Maggie’s car and drove the five blocks to Forbes Street. When we got to Fifth Avenue, I told Ardella that I knew I should turn left, progress through the university and hospital district, then drive towards downtown.

“That’s right, Miz Letty,” said Ardella. She continued to look straight ahead, not away from me nor facing me.

I turned on the radio in order to break the crashing silence and we listened to the news on KDKA.

“Boy, this brings me back,” I said heartily. “I remember listening to KDKA when I was younger. Did you ever listen to Rege Cordick in the mornings? Wasn’t he funny?”

Rege Cordick was an immensely zany, immensely popular disc jockey on the 6 AM to 10 AM slot, now retired.

“No, Miz Letty,” said Ardella stonily, again without turning her head. “We never listened to that.”

My spirits sank and I gave up. Could it be that my sister was right, that it was a mistake to get involved even in a minor way with people of color? Could it really be impossible? I had listened a decade ago, enthralled, to Martin Luther King, Jr. give his magnificent speech about having a dream and another one about being on the mountain top and seeing the promised land. Heart-breakingly he confided that he “…might not get there with you.” He was shot and killed several days after delivering that speech.  No dream left, it died with him. I resolved to stay quiet during the rest of this awful ride and also to stay aloof in all future dealings with Ardella. I would give her what she wanted—to be left alone.

We were edging through the hospital and university traffic. Then we left it behind and Ardella told me to get ready to make a right turn. I made that turn into the Hill District where I had never been before. Ardella said in a cold tone that her street was called Allequippa Street. After progressing one block, I noticed that Maggie’s car was lurching to the right somewhat but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention; I thought the lurching had something to do with the awful state of the roads. Pittsburgh potholes, the quantity and depth of them, were a source of humor and aggravation to its citizens. Ardella looked at me, then away, and told me to pull up to the right and stop. The car was lurching seriously and then I knew I was living the white man’s, or in this case the white woman’s nightmare: getting a flat tire in the middle of a black neighborhood at night. At least I wasn’t alone; I had Ardella for protection.

3

I turned off the engine and leaned forward, my head against the steering wheel. Ardella got out of the car and stood back to look. Then she motioned for me to get out.

“All you have is a flat tire, Miz Letty. Do you have a spare?”

Miserable in my complete humiliation, I got out and looked at the flattened tire. I opened the trunk to see that the spare tire was indeed there, but no jack. It didn’t matter—I didn’t and still don’t know how to change a tire. I looked at Ardella.

“Ardella, may I use your phone?”

“Now don’t worry, Miz Letty. My grandson Jerome can change your tire. Come on in and get warm. It’s freezing out here.”

Ardella’s house stood alone on a patch of land; it was medium-sized, neat, and clean. There goes another stereotype shot to hell. I had this image of all houses in black neighborhoods as small, dark, dirty, stinking. Ardella’s living room was carpeted in threadbare gray and all sorts of objects decorated the walls.  There were framed photographs of family groups, of smiling teenagers in graduation caps and gowns, woven wall hangings. A piano, polished to brilliance, took up one corner of the room.

A playpen stood in the middle of the large square room, holding a round-limbed, curly-headed baby dressed in yellow and surrounded by colorful plastic toys.  A young man sat nearby with his feet propped up on a low table. He held a book, and I managed to sneak a look at the book’s cover: Italian Grammar. Upon seeing Ardella the baby let out a scream of delight and sang out “No-no-no.” He put his arms up. Ardella grasped the baby and squeezed him.

“This is one of my grandbabies, Miz Letty. His name is Raphael and we call him Rafie. He sounds like he’s saying ‘no,’ doesn’t he? That’s because Jerome, another one of my grandbabies over there, loves everything that’s Italian and wants Rafie to call me ‘nonna.’ That’s what Italian people call their grandmothers. Miz Letty, this is Jerome, the eldest of my grandbabies. Jerome, meet Miz Letty and get your feet off my table.”

The young man stood up, extended his hand, and smiled. He was of medium height, his hair in a modified Afro, and he wore a long, multi-colored shirt over a pair of blue jeans. He would be about my son Daniel’s age, I thought. He didn’t need an explanation of who I was; obviously his “nonna” had spoken about me.

Jerome looked questioningly at his grandmother.

“Miz Letty drove me home tonight because it’s so cold out, and she got a flat tire. Could you go out there and change her tire, honey? She doesn’t have one of those tire jacks. You can use ours.”

The boy smiled, put his coat on, took my keys, and left. I looked at Ardella. She was smiling at me. This was the first time I ever saw her smile. We heard giggling coming from another room, what was probably the kitchen.

“Let me get you a nice hot cup of coffee, Miz Letty, so you can warm yourself up.”

“I don’t need any coffee, Ardella. I’m putting you out already, getting your grandson to change my tire.”

Ardella swept past me, holding Rafie, ignoring my protests. Three girls, around the ages of nine to eleven, I estimated, sat at the round kitchen table, books and papers scattered before them. They all wore jeans and brightly colored sweatshirts, their hair twisted into braids and pigtails. It looked as if they were doing their homework, and they all jumped up to hug their grandmother.

“These are the other three of my grandbabies, Miz Letty. That’s—(she pointed)—Willie, whose real name is Wilhelmina, Dolores and we call her Dolly, and there’s little Ellen.”

The giggling girls said, one after the other, making me smile, “Pleased to meet you Miz Letty.”

“Well Ardella, you have five beautiful grandchildren. Are their parents still at work?”

“Their parents aren’t around anymore,” Ardella said neutrally. “My son is in jail and my daughter can’t take care of her own. She’s sick, on drugs.”

I gasped. “Oh my God, Ardella, I’m so dreadfully sorry. Please forgive me.”

Ardella gave me a straight look over Rafie’s curly head. “You don’t have to be sorry or ask my forgiveness, Miz Letty. How could you know? When you see the children and I tell you that I’m their grandmother, it’s natural to ask about their parents.”

“I’m still sorry,” I insisted. “Sorry for your losses and the childrens’ as well.”

Ardella pulled out a chair at the kitchen table with her free hand, then got me a cup and saucer from a cupboard and put it down in front of me. She poured out a cup of coffee for me from one of those big, old-fashioned percolators; it was bubbling and filling the kitchen with the scent of coffee which made me feel warm. The little girls sat down and went back to their papers and books.

“Would you like to hold the baby, Miz Letty, while I get dinner started? Usually Jerome starts dinner for me, but I don’t get mad with him if he’s studying and he forgets. I want him to know how important it is to learn. I believe in putting my values into action, you know? Instead of standing and lecturing the child.”

“What do you mean exactly, Ardella?”

“It’s like setting an example. It’s sacrificing my desire to get off my aching feet so that Jerome can see how important it is to learn. The one thing I won’t forgive—(she smiled again)—is forgetting to put up a pot of coffee. If the coffee isn’t ready, if I can’t smell coffee when I walk in that door, I feel cold and tired and very unwelcome in my own home.”

The baby got transferred to me with no protest on his part. It had been a long time since I’d held a baby, and this one was a honey—sweet-smelling, smiley, solidly plump, and curious as well. He pulled his head back so he could study my face and I thought that maybe he had never seen a white person so close up…but at this point I let go, overwhelmed by my getting a flat tire and its consequences and enjoyed the sensual pleasures of the scent of coffee, the giggling, whispering girls in their bright clothing, the feel of Rafie in my arms. Ardella was cooking dinner; simultaneously she fried garlic-smelling sausages in one cast iron skillet and mixed up batter for corn bread. I closed my eyes. I hadn’t been this hungry for weeks.

Jerome came back and told me that the spare tire was on and that I could drive back to Squirrel Hill. I experienced a mercifully short impulse to offer him some money, but I had been changed enough at this point to know that it would be wrong, a sort of insult, to give the boy a tip for doing a job for me. I asked him how he got interested in Italians and the Italian language. He told me that he first learned about them at the community college.

“Italians are good at all the things that make life worth living. They know to cook good, paint the world’s most beautiful pictures, they make statues that are famous, they love their families, and their language sounds so beautiful, you know? They’re really cool.”

Ardella looked at me very briefly and we exchanged eye contact.

I said that I did know and I agreed with him, but through the radar that women share, I sensed that Ardella didn’t like him to be so enthralled with the Italian culture; she would have much preferred him to be admiring of the accomplishments of his own people. He was learning, though, and that was the important thing. He wasn’t hanging out on the streets, dealing drugs, stealing, killing. Besides, she had just told me herself that she overlooked Jerome’s lapses in cooking or cleaning if he was reading and forgot what he was supposed to be doing around the house. His interest in all things Italian was far superior to a shiftless and violent life. Thinking of my own—now fatherless—son, I joined in Ardella’s silent heartfelt prayer for her “grandbabies.”

The car being ready, I suppressed with difficulty a strong desire to ask to stay for dinner. The cornbread had begun to rise and bake, and the combined smells of that plus the sausages cooking brought my appetite back up to full strength. I reluctantly gave Rafie to Jerome, said goodbye to them all, and headed back out go back to Maggie’s, emerging from the warm house into the frozen air.

And what did I find when I went to my car? The engine was running and the car’s heater turned up full blast…Jerome was protecting me from the cold night. What an angel boy, what a beautiful young man this Jerome is. Ardella could have no doubts about him.

 

Chapter 1/Part 1

 

Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank God Almighty We’re Free at Last

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dear Reader: I thought I could make my background more clear if I included a short memoir. This happened in the winter of 1979, a few weeks after Terry’s physical death. Note well that I said “physical.” Only his body was gone, not his spirit. My sister had slipped on the ice, broke her arm in two places, and I took charge of the household. The strangest part of the story is this; when my sister was helpless I shook off my deep depression in order to run the household. When her cast came off in the early spring, I went back down. My sister and brother-in-law had insisted on hiring a cleaning woman who came twice a week that winter to relieve me of the heavy cleaning. Please meet Ardella Grant who came to mean a lot to me.

1

It was on Thursday of that week that our cleaning lady came for the first time. Her name was Ardella Grant. Tall, gray-haired, with skin of medium brown and wearing a flimsy housedress printed with a floral background, she silently took in the décor of Maggie’s living room as I showed her where to find the broom, mop, and other cleaning supplies. She had taken off her tall, black rubber snow boots; under these she wore laced-up black leather walking shoes. Her coat was very heavy and warm, a good coat. I told her what her duties would be, then went up to Maggie’s room and shut the door behind me.

“I won’t be able to stand this,” I said to Maggie. “She doesn’t even have warm clothes to wear. Well, she does have a very nice, warm winter coat and heavy boots. But she’s old, Maggie. She’s got to be in her sixties, and here she is, probably taking two buses at the crack of dawn in order to get here.”

“What can’t you stand about it, Letty?” my sister asked languidly.

I was exasperated. “Everything, Maggie! I don’t want a 60-year-old black woman creaking around this house, trying to get down on her knees to scrub the bathroom floor. I can do all of this myself. I’m going to tell John to call the agency and ask for somebody else, someone younger at least, who—“

“Letty. If you bother John about this, just because your tender liberal conscience is acting up, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“What did you say?”

Maggie regarded me calmly. “You heard me, Letty. And anyway, who are you to go mixing yourself up in the lives of these people? If you were able to persuade John to call and get another person, you probably will end what’s-her-name’s chances of ever getting work through them again. They’ll think she’s too old to work and that will be that, and she needs the money. Obviously.”

“Her name is Ardella Grant and I can’t believe what you just said. You can’t talk to me like that, Maggie. I’m about one second away from packing my bags and leaving you and the children and John and finding another place to live. When I think—“

“Ardella. Sorry, Letty. I truly am sorry. I just meant that John has so much on his mind right now. He needs to feel that everything at home is OK and squared away, that my arm will heal and the kids are alright and meals will be made and the house will be clean. You know.”

“Yes, Maggie, but that’s not what you said. You threatened to never speak to me again if I spoke to John about getting rid of Ardella. Frankly I’m feeling a little overwhelmed and I need to be alone right now.”

I slammed the bedroom door and climbed the steep stairs to my third floor bedroom –once there, I had a good cry. Maggie had always been out-spoken; I was used to that but my emotions were quite close to the surface now and everything that came my way felt more intense. Oh well, I thought wearily, try to ignore her.

This is what writing can be like, at its best and worst moments.

My Mother and I have a Superior Adventure 3

This is a strange story. Strange, yes, but a lot of fun indeed.

After I wrote my book I began planning the second. At this time it is about 2/3 finished and this was in 2006. This tends to happen.

I knew that I would base the second novel in the series–I planned a series of three novels called The Rivers Women Trilogy–on my mother, when she was about 44 years old and my father had died suddenly. Quickly following this decision I had this idea. I wanted something kind of funky and off-beat so I got this picture in my mind of the no-man’s-land that exists between Oakland and the Hill District. I had an image in my mind of a large house, formerly occupied by rich people, then abandoned for years. Some way I would build the story around “my mom” finding this wreck of an old house and feeling drawn to it, then rehabilitating it, then having it be her own and rent out rooms. After that I unfolded my creased, falling-apart street map of Pittsburgh and looked at the area where my intuition led me. There was a street on the map called Allequippa Street; it was a short street and came to a dead end. This was the place.

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After  a while, on a trip to Pittsburgh, I asked Peter and Michael if they would go with me and find Allequippa Street. Being the superior husband and son that they are (I’m bragging, I know) they said yes, let’s go. And Michael never goes anywhere without his camera. We found Allequippa Street. It goes uphill, the street is bumpy, and it ends with a huge wall of trees, shrubs, and what we used to call “jagger bushes.” We drove up to  the top, I looked to my left, and saw several concrete steps leading to something but I couldn’t see. Already I was in such a state of excitement that I could hardly breathe. I pushed the leaves and branches aside and–there was my house. It wasn’t a mansion but it was a house built into the hill, as houses often are in Pittsburgh. Thank God for my son who had his special camera with him. Because I was afraid that I might have dreamed this, he took many pictures of the place so I would know for sure it was actually there. I had dreamed it/it was real.

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Then I began writing this book. I had a job working overnights in a group home and I thought it would all fall together, working nights and having plenty of time to write because the individuals who lived in the house were sleeping. Sad to say, it did not work out that way and I–according to a friend of mine– “lost my fire.” What I had written got saved in my computer and then not thought about; not entirely though. I knew it was there and would haunt me if I “buried” the manuscript and I was right. However, I did nothing about this. Life and its multiple concerns used up all my time and I didn’t fight these concerns and finish my book.

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When I began visiting my mother the year was 2010. As I said, I was always trying to think of fun things to do with her. One day it occurred to me–I told my mother that we were going on a super adventure to a place she’d never seen. She was happy just sitting in the passenger seat of my old car, watching Pittsburgh fly by. I found Allequippa Street easily and drove to the top and looked. What I wanted to do was go around the place and see the other side. To do this I had to drive up a short hill with many potholes. Praying that I wouldn’t blow out a tire, I pushed on. My mother was in ecstasy. Not only had she never been there before; nobody she knew had been there before.

We made it up the hill. This was the moment in time that I have locked away in my memory of those times spent with my mother. It was a sunny day; she walked further out to the cliff edge–I was watching carefully of course–and she looked down, then looked out at the river and the Fort Pitt Bridge. She was breathing deeply and JUST FOR ONCE, SHE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE A BIRD IN A CAGE. SHE WAS FREE. So my mission was partially fulfilled.

Then we explored what was there. “My house,” the one I dreamed up and was in existence, was locked up and abandoned, just like what I wrote. My mother was a woman with a mission–she tried several doors, looked in all the windows standing on tip-toe. I watched her and my spirit was filled with joy.

“I wish we could get in there!” she said. I said I felt the same way.

We walked around a little, just looking at things. My mother was poking around in the shrubs and bushes; I was hoping she wouldn’t get poison ivy! What would my aunts say about that?! But she knelt and pulled out something that had been buried in the shrubs. If you take a look at my photo you’ll see a big owl. That’s what she found; and some may laugh at this part but she pulled it out in such a way that it resembled delivering a baby. In the mean time I was getting nervous. Here we were, almost in the Hill District, and trespassing,  in a way. Plus I had to keep an eye on my mother, except that she was just so happy rooting around that I didn’t want to leave.

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Then a man came out of the house that was nearest “my house.” God, I was scared. I thought for sure—I don’t know what I thought exactly would happen– we were in a strange place. But he was very nice and friendly. He didn’t even ask what we were doing there, so I told him the truth. I said that I’m a writer and the house behind his was going to be a big part of a book I wanted to write. He was very surprised and happy. He couldn’t quite believe that in this God-forsaken part of Pittsburgh, a writer would find something to write about.

Then I showed him the owl that my mother had “delivered” from the bushes. I was so overcome by 1) seeing my mom so happy 2) standing at the top of Allequippa Street and dreaming about my book 3) the appearance of the owl that I began to almost babble and I offered to pay him something for the owl. He laughed and said he didn’t even know the thing was there. What he did ask me was–would I tell him when the book was finished? So of course I said yes.

At this point my mother I were both kind of exhausted for different reasons. This was the only experience we had together that she was able to recall. Wow. That was food for thought. But then thoughts ballooned into dreams and I decided I was going to take my mother to live with me and we would do all kinds of fun things, there would be many happy days just like this one, etc, etc. I knew this would not ever happen so I decided to remember everything about this day when we went to this rocky, lonely part of Pittsburgh, I did not get a flat tire, my mother found my owl, and the man living there was nice to us.

 

My mother and I have an adventure 2

My aunts would come to Concordia House and take my mother out for lunch and shopping every Thursday. When I would come there I was always trying to find fun things for us to do together that were not in her normal routine. She kept complaining how badly she wanted to get out.

I thought the zoo would be nice for both of us. I had never driven there but I had a vague feeling that it was near the 40th Street bridge because I’d seen signs there. (I love the 40th Street bridge.) So we set off and it seemed as if we would be successful in finding the zoo but suddenly we were lost. So I parked the car outside a veterinarian’s office, went in, and asked for directions. It turned out that we were not far away at all.

My mother told me that I was wonderful, stopping and asking for directions like that. I asked her why it was wonderful and she said that Don–my step father–would never do that, he would turn around and go home. She said all her friends were like that. I said that Don would have found a way to get to the zoo if she really wanted to go. But it was so nice, my mother telling me that I was wonderful.

It was a hot, humid day in early autumn and a long, uphill walk to enter the zoo. My mother was trying to keep up but she was out of breath. So we stopped, just to look at the colony of lions that lived in a kind of rocky area. There was a crowd of people there.

A male lion was blissfully asleep on a hot rock, sleeping on his back with four feet up in the air. A young female lion scampered by, bit the sleeping male’s ear, then ran away. The lion woke up and roared angrily. The crowd of people–all of us–began to laugh.

A woman in the crowd said: “Get up and do something.”

A man said: “Welcome to my world.”

Everybody roared with laughter. I’ll never forget this; however, I don’t think my mother understood it all. Anyway, that was our zoo adventure and I’m grateful that I didn’t get discouraged and that I asked directions. That was when my mother told me she thought I was an excellent driver. She admired me for driving all the way to Pittsburgh from Bloomsburg. For me it was the best kind of fun and I only wished that I could do it again.

 

My Mother And I Have Adventures 1

I have to surrender to the fact that I will never stop talking and thinking about those few years when my mother was fading out. Everything about the experiences I had during those three years with her had a dream-like quality; or maybe it just seemed like a dream because it was something so rare and unexpected and something to be held onto.

My mother was always indoors once she was moved out of her own apartment.  When she went to live at Concordia House in Mt. Lebanon she was functioning not so great, but she hadn’t touched bottom yet as far as the Alzheimers would bring her. So she stood at the windows and gazed outside, trying to catch even a sighting of a bird; there was a small family of deer that lived in the woods behind the building and when she saw them at dusk she was overjoyed.

This was heart-breaking. It hurt so bad. Privately I called her a bird in a cage.

Being outdoors was so important to her; gardening, going on cookouts and picnics, taking walks, all of these things were so meaningful to her and now, at the end, she was shut in. She tried “escaping” and ran outside at dusk; this is a phenomenon that goes along with Alzheimers. It has a funny name but I can’t remember it. It is a restlessness that comes when the sun begins to set. It may be called “sun-downing.”

I kept trying to think of things to make her happier. I bought her a pair of binoculars so she could see the birds.

But there is something to be said that is difficult to put into words. However I must be honest. I had a job I loved, working for the Devereux Foundation when we lived in Philadelphia. I worked with mentally challenged adults in their group homes. This involved caring for helpless men and women, down to the nastiest tasks that the work entailed. Helping with dressing, grooming, tying shoes, and yes, some were incontinent and wore Depends. After that, we had to round up our “individuals” and get them into the super-sized vans to transport them to their “day programs.” Some of these day programs were so awful, I can’t even try to describe them. The higher functioning people were fortunate to get into sheltered workshops. Those men and women were always bursting with pride on paydays! And most important–I loved all of them. I had patience with them, I laughed when goofy stuff happened with them, I loved taking them to see a movie or go to a flea market. I had no experience with this so I didn’t know but I had a natural talent to manage what was happening with them. I loved the work. I put in long hours without complaint. I wrote a short story about my experiences called Suffer The Little Children To Come Unto Me.

What does this have to do with my mother? The truth is that my mother was not her normal self anymore. The same questions and statements, over and over again…there was something wrong with her that made it difficult for most people to spend any real time with her. Now I have to figure out a way to say this. I’ll put it this way; I have a God-given ability to cope with this kind of situation. I was able to spend full days with my mother while others could only spend several hours and then have to leave. I think my relatives were surprised at this; in fact I know they were.

So, that being said, I made it a mission to think of unusual things to do when I went to Pittsburgh.

 

Cousin Brown

My mother’s first cousin, Bryna Shore, was given a new name by Lee Skirboll when Lee was very young, learning to talk. The children in the family called this adult cousin “Cousin Bryna.” However, Lee called her Cousin Brown. It was one of those things that happen in a family that make you feel kind of good all over. Bryna always referred to herself as Cousin Brown after that.

As usual I was my little “sponge” self, able to take in bits and pieces of adult conversations and try to make sense of them–so I can remember certain words and phrases that my mother used while talking to the women in the female clan. This was true of conversations with Cousin Brown.

One time my mother was driving the car, I was in the back, and Bryna was in the passenger seat. Now it’s obvious that they were talking about their husbands or men in general because Bryna said “I could put a crown on that man’s head.”

Whoa!! Who was she talking about? It had to be her husband “Cousin Nate.” But listening to this knocked me out. I always loved words and their meanings within the female clan, so immediately I knew: She really, really loves “Cousin Nate.” What else could it mean? It is a great example of the way in which I learned about life and loving, just by hanging around these women. I catch myself becoming a little sad about all these people who are gone, but I’m strict with myself about staying positive. I am grateful that I’m still here and I remember so many things and have a means to record and share them.

It is true that Cousin Brown had her bad times; she experienced deep plunges into black moods and found it hard to function. One day I was coming down the steps and I could hear my mother talking to her on the phone. I overheard her say: Bryna, you know that cartoon with Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl, that the kids watch? Somebody, I guess it was Popeye, says: I am what I am and that’s all that I am…” So maybe you should say that to yourself when you feel bad.

I stopped in my tracks because I didn’t want my mother to know I was listening. On the other hand, she wasn’t trying to be really private. So, I thought about this. Bryna was going through a hard time, I thought. My mother was trying desperately to help. I was very young and I did not know about psychological disorders. I could only think what I always thought, that within this group of which I was a member there always would be help.

My Mother The Entrepreneur 2/Queen of The Hotel

Lois and my mother were wise. They had no overhead expenses for their business except the cost of running the advertisement in the Pittsburgh Press. If you want to include the price of gasoline they used when they drove from place to place–and remember the price of gas then–that would be a little over the top.

All they needed was in their heads. I still think, on looking back, that it was wonderful on a number of levels.

So. My mother saved her share of the proceeds; she put it in a bank account and the amount kept rising. Then, in the second term of school, right after the Christmas vacation, my mother made an announcement. She had saved enough money to take all of us to Miami Beach. We would fly there–first time on an airplane for my sister and me–and then stay in one of those fancy, expensive hotels situated along the beach. When entering this place I was overwhelmed. We were staying here for a week? We had taken lots of vacations as a family but only to Lake Erie, and we stayed in an inexpensive motel.

Here comes what I call the “Bragging Part” of this story; but, hey, I’m almost 66 years old. Is there a better time to tell this tale?

This was spring break for many young students and it seemed as if everybody was on vacation. The hotel was crowded with families and these families had teenage sons. From the first all of these boys fell in love with me. I’m not exaggerating. I always say when I tell this story that every girl should have had a week like that, sometime in their lives.

Yes, I was pretty and no longer plagued by adolescent difficulties. I mixed easily with this crowd but the point is that there were no girls. It was me and a mob of young men. They fought each other to sit next to me during meals; they fought with each other to swim with me, jump into the swimming pool with me, go to dances with me.

My mother–God Bless Her–had bought me a spring vacation wardrobe, complete with a madras (!) two piece bathing suit. So I did what the British say: “I swanned around the hotel, making my way through the boys that clustered around me.” I was indeed the Queen of the Hotel. Nothing like this had ever happened to me, even in my dreams.

The very best part of this memoir isn’t the fact that I was so popular; it was the effect that this had on my parents.

My father, being removed from the female world, had not seen me in this way. Briefly he may have looked at what I was wearing, ready to go out on a date or said a vague “hello” when a boy came over to take me out someplace. Here I was, wearing pretty clothes–thanks again, Mom–fighting off boys. The truth is that both my parents fell in love with the situation and the image. I was allowed curfews I could only dream about, back in Pittsburgh. Actually I had no curfews at all and went my way, doing what I chose.

There was one boy from New Jersey, Tommie was his name. We really fell for each other but there was no pain, no loss, nothing traumatic or overwhelming. And it was just like a movie, walking on the sand at night, swimming  together, going to listen to music at the next door hotel. My mother, along with my father, was in raptures. This was the kind of thing she prayed for, to have a daughter who was popular and well-dressed, didn’t have acne, always out on dates with nice boys. There’s a bittersweet feeling because as I matured I outgrew this image and became more serious. But, it was a moment in time to think about with pleasure and joy, just grateful that I had the experience.

There is a final note to include here re: my father. One morning, early, he opened the door of his room–my sister and I shared a separate room from my parents–and found Tommie sitting on the floor, his knees drawn up, head on his knees. He had been there God knows how long, waiting for me. My father leaned against the door frame and laughed joyfully. He was having so much fun.

 

My Mother The Entrepreneur 1

There were many satisfying friendships and relationships on our block. It was paradise for children. The adults became friends and these friendships, between the women who lived on Shady Avenue Ext., lasted 50 years.

We were very good friends with the Smallovitz family–also called “Small.” Their oldest son was just my age and the younger two were close in age to my sister. Lois Smallovitz and my mother admired each other. They ALWAYS looked chic and comfortable, even on a week day, doing housework and caring for the children. Both had excellent taste. So–I do not know how this got started but one of them must have approached the other and said–Why don’t we start a business?

Of similar taste in clothes and home furnishings, they advertised themselves in the Pittsburgh Press Classifieds as “estate clearers.” Due to a death or divorce, sometimes home owners wanted to quickly get a large house cleared of everything. Anyway, people started calling them and, while all of us were in school, my mother and Lois would make dates to meet these people, assess the job, and if it looked OK, begin to put prices on everything in the house. Then, on Sundays, there would be an open house sale day when people would come and look around and buy things.

Charles and I were both 16 when our mothers asked us to help out. They always put us in the basements were there were piles of mis-matched cutlery, piles of dishes and platters, toys, books, garden furniture. Nothing down there cost more than a quarter. Chuck and I were always good friends and when we weren’t selling things we were talking and laughing, mostly about Allderdice, gossiping, talking about boyfriends and girlfriends.

Our mothers thought we were wonderful and told us so. We got big hugs. Then Chuck and I would each get $20. Remember-this was 1966-67 and to us that was a marvelous amount of money. Our fathers had been taking care of the younger children all day. So we met up at Hebrew National and our mothers took us out to dinner. This was always amazing to us. I know my father, in his very quiet way, was amused and admiring of my mother’s being able to do these things.

I’ll say it over and over–children accept the world as they see it. Rarely do young children question why something is happening. So we never thought–this is really ingenious. Two housewives, putting their resources together, find a way to make money while the children were safely in school during the week. Then my mother saved her share of the money and gave us the best family vacation ever. That is part 2 and will be published tomorrow.

Finally, during one of my visits with my mother I told her that. I told her about the sometimes unbearable stresses put on young women, to have a family and a career, always  running around with 17 things to do at the same time. So she and Lois accomplished something suitable for their families and everybody got a share of the proceeds. My mother just looked at me. Maybe that was the beginning of her fading away? But I tried to get across to her, with all my strength, how wonderful it was. I still think it’s wonderful and I’ll never forget those days when old pain was buried and dissolved and I was able to express my love for her.

My father was a chemical engineer who specialized in coatings of industrial buildings. It was an offshoot industry from the steel mills. As I learned even up until recently my father was respected wherever he went.

He belonged to the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Society of Paint Technology. They had a meeting, with dinner, every other Thursday night. It was no surprise that he was quickly elected president. With this honor he was given a gavel which he used to call the meetings to order. This gavel, made of real wood, had a gold band around it. The gavel had a special place in our house; it sat on a shelf, all by itself, UP WHERE LITTLE HANDS COULD NOT REACH IT. My sister and I liked to look at this beautiful object and think about finding some way to stand on a chair and get hold of it. But just thinking about the possible outcomes made us turn cold with fear and we never even tried.

On those Thursday nights my grandmother came for dinner. I hate to say this because it sounds as if we didn’t love our father; however, he was a very strict father, pretty much removed from the female and child world. His demands of us at the dinner table were pretty difficult for us, as young children, to follow. So when he was away we always had a great time–me, my sister, our grandmother, and our mother.

The atmosphere was funny and care-free. Also my father didn’t like fish so when he wasn’t there we had either crab cakes or my mother would make salami and eggs, another dish he did not like at dinner time.

This was a delicate situation for me. I loved my father but at the same time I was very sensitive to the change in mood when he wasn’t around, watching us. My mother was different, more relaxed. My father did not allow a lot of laughing at the dinner table. In a way he was like the old Victorians who said that “children should be seen and not heard.” Of course I had periods of time when I was sure he didn’t love me and I tried to figure out why. But this story has a happy ending; very happy indeed.

 

Ghosts Walk On Alderson Street/Cousins Club

This title may be a bit weird but the truth is that a big chunk of my relatives lived on Alderson Street. Bryna and Nate, Audrey and Mache, even, for several years, my mother and father, when I was very young and my sister had not yet been born. We lived on the top floor of a duplex in the middle of the block.

For a while, one night a month, all the adult cousins got together. They called it the Cousins Club. I vividly remember the nights when they came to our home because I couldn’t sleep on those nights. The laughing, often hysterical, would keep me awake. But I always thought it sounded like a lot of fun. I can’t remember everybody but it was my aunts, June and Art, Wyllis and Joe, Bryna and Nate, Audrey and Mache, Bill and Lil Silvers. I know there are more but I can’t remember now.

Then in the summer there was the Cousins Club picnic in Schenley Park. The children were invited to this. And what a mob of people! Of course it was “special because Maxine was there.” Mark and Stu, Lynn and her younger brother, and there were several babies. Billy Shore was a baby and Debbie not born yet. The men always stripped their shirts off to play volleyball and my grandmother sat with her sister Lil and watched the men play. My grandmother always had something “earthy” to say about the men’s partially nude bodies. Shy, she was not!!

All the children played together. At one of these picnics my mother was 9 months pregnant and went into labor, so my father quickly drove off to the hospital with her. I continued to play, secure in the knowledge that I was one of a large, loving group of people who cared about me.

Bill Silvers liked to call me “Lestoil.”