Some of my brothers and sisters may think of the old house as the one we lived in the longest, 1008 Pendleton, in Mt. Prospect. But for me, the old house will always be the bungalow at 2937 N. Parkside in Chicago, where we lived in the 50's.
Mom and Dad didn't own the house, they rented the first floor. There were two bedrooms, a back porch, living room, dining room and kitchen.
It's the first house I remember and we left there when I was ten. I think the quality of attention I paid to everything around me was much greater then, so I remember things very clearly. (At least I think I do. Others may remember it differently, but that's ok, that would be their memories.)
By the time we left that house, there were six of us kids, with one more on the way. (Actually there were five more on the way, who knew?) By this time the back porch had been turned into a bedroom to take the overflow from the kid's bedroom.
I am not sure how long she did it, but for awhile around 4:30 or 5 every day, after she made sure we had taken all of the toys out of the living room and dining room, Mom would stop making dinner for a few minutes and change her clothes. Then she would put on lipstick. And sometimes, she would put on a record of one of the shows that had recently come out. King and I, Flower Drum Song, My Fair Lady. I loved the music of King and I, but the cover of My Fair Lady always gave me the creeps with the god character in the clouds with the strings attached to the humans. Anyway, when Mom changed her clothes and put on the music, it felt like magic. I always thought Mom was revealing what she was really like, not just a Mom, but a beautiful woman who loved music and theater and talking and laughter.
Then Dad would come home and we would all eat dinner. Dad would talk about his day at work. One time he talked about someone getting fired and I thought it was terrible that they would put a man in an oven just for not working hard enough. My idea of the nice office Dad worked at was altered to a terrible dark furnace room. My father was a HERO to go there every day!
As I look back, they were so young. Not just compared to them now, but compared to ME now! I remember Dad on the floor, playing with us, letting us crawl all over him, telling us story after story.
The main feeling I have about Dad back then was that he was sure that he was lucky. I don't know if it was the Dale Carnegie course, or his success at work, or his family or all of it. But he acted as if he felt he were lucky - good things were on the way. He made me feel that way too.
On summer evenings, I remember Mom giving us baths and us getting into our pajamas. I can remember what a great feeling it was to be clean and fresh, ready for bed with the sun still up. As I remember one night, Mom was giving someone a bath when a big pink car pulled up in front of the house. We didn't have a car, Dad took the bus to work. (He also walked huge bags of stinking dirty diapers down the block to the laundromat.) The driver of the pink car was honking and it took me a few minutes to see it was Dad leaning out of the car, saying, "Go get your mother!" We tore into the bathroom to tell Mom. I think this was one of Dad's classic surprises.
The bungalow had cement stairs leading up to the front door. However old I was, and however big, the stairs were too deep and I was not allowed to take them one by one. Eventually I wanted to go down the "grown-up way".
Of course I fell, and got a gash above my eye. Dad was right there, it must have been a weekend day. After the cleanup and the bandaid, Dad sat next to me on the couch. He said that the cut had come very close to my eye. And then he looked and me and smiled and said, "You were very lucky." I remember thinking yup, that 's us. We are very lucky.
I look back now at our family's life. I look at Dad watching his great grand-daughters playing and flash back to that young man rolling around the floor with us, tickling us and telling us stories. I look at Mom's beautiful face, that still reveals who she really is.
No doubt we all have all had our challenges, disappointments and even tragedies. But I still think Dad was right. We're very lucky.
5 comments:
From Mom,
It was a great article and I wish I was as great as you make me out to be, but you keep on doing it.
Here are some corrections though.
When we moved from Parkside, David was one year old, so that would have been 6 of you, with 5 more on the way.
Neither Dad or I have ever heard the term "man in the oven" so I think you could go back to Dad working in a nice office.
We had a washer and dryer in the basement on Parkside, so never used a laundromat. That was when we lived on Trip Ave. where we were when Deb was born.
When you say Pink car it sounds PINK, Dad says it was light brown with a pink cast.
I'm glad you have such good memories of the house and times on Parkside and I guess I do to. We had some tough times, but by and large I think they were good years that taught us a lot and gave us all good memories.
OK Mom, Thanks! I changed the number of kids. I left the laundromat in, because I got mixed up about when it happened...and because it is such a cool image!
Thanks Kay,
You've jogged a few of my memories as well, like getting through the fish on Friday so we could walk down the block to get ice cream bars.
I remember sleeping three in a bed and the back porch, and of course the NEW CAR.
Linda
Kay
I don't know how to spell ckeck this so it is what it is.
I beleive the house on Pendeleton is our ansesterial home, at least what is says in the Family bible.
However, for a completely different view of the pre-six children years.
I always saw the box of records but have no recollection of ever hearing them outside the christmas records. Also we never got ice cream after that fish meal (the surgen general, FDA and EPA have refused to acknolwdge it as any known speicy of fish how-ever).
I do remmeber the plymouth wagon were we had to rock it to get it started. For the record I beleive it was blue with wood trim. However I suffer from bad retna from some fish I used to eat when I was young.
I also remmeber a similar feeling but not as lucky but a capable. In fact it was the concept of always knowing that no matter what the issue, it was managable. Watching them in the action of a crisis (broken windows, water seaping in, or the occasional bloody what-ever even the Zipper issue of 72) There was never a panic-- or should I say we never saw panic. I can not begin to understand the control, paitence or stress that it must have taken to get through a day when we were young. Like most veterans of true combat, they always brush off any marvle of their accomplishments as juvinile hysteria.
A true story when I was 3-5 years old and before they built the TV room or the houses in the feild to the north. Mom had a little garden next to the porch. She would plant flowers I think right next to the basement window. Well if you remember- the old kitchen window used to corner the basement wall. Well right under the window mom was pulling weeds when she stood up and said Oh my! Now Pat Murphy, I were playing on the porch and turned to look at the corner were mom was. She backed up and grabbed a broom from the porch and started to wack at somthing saying shoo shoo. It turned out to be a garden snake at least five to six feet long( it went from the corner of the house to just past the basement windows which are each 2 feet wide). She kept swatting at that snake until it was completely in the feild on the side of the house. "She calmy turned back at us and said it was only a snake and that it was more scared of us then we were of it".
Of course we then went into the house.
Kay, you are a remarkablly talented writer and you create powerful and visceral images of your early childhood on Parkside in Chicago. Nostalgic and evocative images of a time and place long past. As we put distance between our modern times and that what has passed us by, it is easy I suppose, to dismiss or forget the daily routines of ordinary living -- but these are the things that truly matter the most,and isn't it wonderful that in our fifties we can remember them so well. The smell of laundry in the bssement, the toys we played with, the kids we went to school with. Kay, you know me, and you know I tend to dwell and obsess on my own past -- the good and the bad, it seems sadly, that the bad moments somehow remain in sharper forcus for me, but with your help I am seeing a brighter side to the past and looking at things a different way now.Thank you.
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