Daddy was a big-city boy. Born in New York City in 1891, to Jewish immigrant parents, he was the oldest of seven children. He had a sixth-grade education, and from that point he earned his living in a variety of jobs until he hopped a freight train, to try life out West.
Mother grew up on a New Mexico sheep ranch until she was seven, and then the family moved to Sedro Wooley, Washington. Her mother’s family had been in the United States since the 1750’s. Her father’s family came around 1853. She graduated from Sedro Wooley High School in 1914 and went on to the Bellingham Normal School. Her course of study there was one full year, and three summer sessions. At that time she received a lifetime teaching certificate from the State of Washington. She was a teacher in the Seattle Public Schools.
Mother owned a summer cottage at Juniper Beach, on Camano Island. During the school summer vacation she spent most of her time there, regularly entertaining groups of friends from Seattle. In 1928, her current boyfriend brought along a friend of his to meet her. Mother thought that Denny, the boy friend, was afraid she was getting to close to marrying him, and brought Nat Krause, my father, along for protection.
Juniper Beach, July 1931. Susan Steele, standing far left. Nathan Krause, reclining right front
They were married on June 19, 1933 after a five-year courtship. Times were hard during those depression years. My father was a small businessman. He owned a dry-cleaning shop on Magnolia Bluff, in Seattle. He was about to lose another piece of property he owned because he could not pay the taxes on it. Mother had some money, and she offered to loan it to him. He thought, if he was going to use her money to pay the taxes, they had better get married, and so they did. This is mother’s version of the story, but I never hear Daddy dispute it.
The Krauses seemed notoriously difficult to get to the altar. My father was the only one of his siblings to marry up to that point, and he was forty-two years old. His next younger brother, my Uncle Harry, married for the first time when he was sixty-five, and for a remarkably similar reason. He had had a long-term relationship with a woman, and she found a house that she wanted to buy out in the San Fernando Valley, outside of Los Angeles, California. She needed money for the down payment. Harry had the money and he offered it to her, but he thought they really ought to get married first. And so she became my Aunt Anne, the only aunt or uncle I ever had from marriage on that side of the family.
Mother and Daddy both wanted to have a family, but were concerned about being older parents. Would they live long enough to raise the children to adulthood? They decided that since both of their parents were still living, they probably had a good chance of longevity, as well, and if they were going to have a family, they better get started on it as soon as possible. I was born on June 25, 1934.
The family home was located at 6539 3rd Avenue N. W., in West Woodland, a Seattle neighborhood northwest of Ballard and west of Woodland Park. I lived at this address until I got married in 1955. By this time, Daddy’s business was located in Ballard, although he still used the Magnolia Cleaners name, and had a regular pick-up and delivery route to that area. Mother’s doctor at the time of my birth was Martin Norgore. His offices were located across the street from one of my dad’s shops, the Bon Ton Cleaners on 15th Avenue N. W., at 63rd St. Business was slow for both of them during the depression, and they sometimes kept each other company when they went out on their calls. I was born at Ballard General Hospital. It was located on the second and third floors of a business building on Market Street. I believe the Doctor’s bill was $30.00 for my birth. When Mary Lou was born, two-year’s later, they traded the cost of her delivery for dry cleaning services, because they simply did not have enough money to pay in cash. Dr. Norgore was still our family doctor, when I left home.
Mother thought she knew everything there was to know about raising children. After all, she had been teaching young children for eighteen years. She said later, that if Mary Lou had been her first child, she would have thought herself the perfect mother. Whether it was due to my parent’s inexperience, or if I was a particularly difficult baby, I do not know. Her friends referred to me as ‘the sterilized and boiled baby’. One of them commented that she had always thought of Susan as being strong-willed, but listening to her trying to get me to go to bed one night, she wasn’t sure who was going to win out in the battle between mother and baby. Whenever Mother would get up in the night for a feeding or a fussy baby, Daddy would be right at her side. She finally decided it wasn’t necessary for them both to lose sleep, and let him do the nighttime duty. She must have ultimately been successful in subduing my willfulness, as I remember being a compliant child by the time I started to school, but perhaps that is only my memory of the situation. She told me once, when I was an adult, that she never always wondered if I was going to grow up to be a genius or insane, but in the end, I turned out to be just ordinary. I felt that it was a rather mean thing for her to say to me, and that she was, in the end, disappointed in me.
Our home was a house that Daddy had owned before he and Mother were married. He and a business partner had owned two pieces of property. One was the business, and the other was the house. When they broke up their partnership, they flipped a coin to see how they would divide up the property. Daddy lost the call, and got the house. Mother had said she would live there before she ever saw it, and always regretted her decision. It wasn’t much of a house, but she did her best to make it into the kind of home she wanted. Mother said she thought I would tear down the house, and my grandmother said that I would have achieved it, if Mother hadn’t been forever remodeling the place. The house she really wanted was Dr. Norgore’s home on Sunset Hill. It was a beautiful Georgian Colonial and he wanted my dad to buy it when he moved his medical practice downtown to the Medical Dental Building, and his family to Broadmoor. Dad thought it was way too expensive, and in matters of money, he usually got his way. He was always afraid of debt, and was very conservative about spending money, so we stayed in the house on 3rd Avenue, and mother was disappointed. She tried to fill it with beautiful things, but that was later on after World War II started and she was able to go back to work.
I never remember being ashamed of my home. I don’t really think kids notice their surroundings much, if they are basically happy. We always had enough to eat and nice clothes to wear. The homes of my grade school friends didn’t seem much different than my own.
Third Avenue was an arterial, and carried lots of traffic. In those days, it was not so busy that we couldn’t run across the street to play with friends, but I remember my mother was always warning us to be careful about the cars. When I was very young, it was only one lane of traffic in each direction, but later on, the city took our parking strips and widened the road to two lanes. Today, it is a very busy street.
The house itself was a two story affair with five rooms downstairs and two bedrooms and a large central hall upstairs. There was a sink and toilet in the bathroom upstairs, and a full bathroom on the first floor. When my grandparents came to live with us, Mother added another room to the back of the house for them. There was a basement under part of the house and the addition also had a room under it. The lot sloped back from the street, so the basement was partially above ground in the back. In the front of the house, there was a dirt-floored cellar where my parents would store old toys, and all sorts of other neat junk. My sister and I used to love to drag things out of there, much to my mother’s dismay.
My parent’s bedroom was at the back of the house, and when we were little, Mary Lou and I shared the front bedroom. I can remember when the addition was added to the house, but I barely remember my grandparents living with us. They both died in 1938, when I was only four, so I don’t think they lived with us for more than a year. After that, the room was rented. First there was a young married couple. He was in the service, I believe a young doctor, and they weren’t with us very long at all. I do remember that the wife paid a lot of attention to me. Then Mrs. MacKinnon came to live with us. She was an older woman who played a lot of solitaire. She taught me how to play several types of solitaire as well as pinochle. This was a big thrill for me, as my mother never really approved of card games. She also taught me how to knit, a skill that has brought me many hours of pleasure. She also smoked cigarettes, another thing my mother did not approve of. Mrs. Mac worked as a legal secretary, and she told us an interesting story about how she and the woman attorney, who was her boss, had to take some photographs as evidence in a divorce case. I believe I remember something about climbing a tree to get the pictures.
I don’t remember how long Mrs. Mac lived with us, but she remained a family friend for years after she moved away, often joining us for Thanksgiving dinner. Mrs. Mac actually had a husband up in Canada. They were never divorced, but she had not lived with him for many years. I think there may have a drinking problem. She was a Canadian citizen and often visited in Vancouver. I know that I once went to Canada with her on one of those visits, and we had tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria. I don’t remember much else about the visit, but there had to be a letter from my parents saying it was all right for me to travel into Canada with her.
When Mrs. Mac moved elsewhere, my parents moved into the downstairs bedroom, I got to have the upstairs bedroom in the back, and Mary Lou got the front bedroom all to herself.
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