6539 3rd Ave NW When we were small, Mother kept a gate at the top of those stairs to keep us from falling. I think that the style of the house would be a typical bungalow. There were five rooms downstairs and two attic bedrooms. The two rooms at the front of the house were the living room and the hall, but they were of equal size. Directly behind the hall was the dining room, and behind the living room was the kitchen, which you entered from the dining room. Behind the dining room was the playroom. I expect it had originally be a bedroom. In the space next to the playroom and behind the kitchen there was a laundry room, a bathroom and a little hallway where my mother kept her sewing machine. You could enter the laundry room from the kitchen, or the bathroom. You could also enter the bathroom from the little sewing area off the playroom. The laundry room was not a heated space, so the bathroom door and the kitchen door were had weather stripping, as they would if they led directly outdoors. There was a back porch and entrance off the laundry room. The stairs to the basement went down from the kitchen, and the stairs up to the attic bedrooms led off the side of the entry hall.
Upstairs there was a large central hall between the two bedrooms and a half bath. There was no heat upstairs. Instead there was an opening in the floor with a register that could be opened and closed, to let in the heat from the entry hall below. In the morning, my mother would lay out our clothes on that register, and Mary Lou and I would get dressed standing right on top of it to keep warm. I remember how very cold it was on winter mornings when we huddled around that welcome source of heat.
The house was full of little cupboard and closets, and I loved to play and hide in them. In the upstairs hallway there was a cupboard under the sloping eves where my mother kept all kinds of wonderful things. I especially remember her unfinished quilt. It was a Grandmother’s Flower Garden, the most popular quilt of her day. It seemed to me that there were hundred of the little hexagon flowers in a green border, just waiting to be put all together into a quilt. I learned later that she had never finished the quilt because she had run out of the green fabric, and could never find a match for it. The flowers themselves were of scrap fabric, but the green was essential to tying the quilt together. Mary Lou and I have both wondered whatever happened to those quilt squares. When we were still small enough, we would climb into that cupboard and hide.
There were two closets in Mother and Daddy’s bedroom. Both of these were also under the eves, so they were deep and had ceilings that sloped toward the back. They were another great place to hide. My mother’s wedding suit and shoes were in that closet. Usually Mother wore tie up oxfords with two inch, broad heels; but the wedding shoes were a beautiful pale gray, with slender high heels and a pleated leather bow at the front. I loved to put on those shoes and walk around in them. I never saw Mother wear those shoes.
There was another closet under the stairs in the entry hall. Here were kept our coats and hats, and also Mother’s handbag. We were never allowed to take anything out of that bag. Mother would ask us to bring the handbag to her, and she would be the one to take out the money, or whatever else was needed.
The best closet was in the playroom. We often used it for a store, with a counter in the doorway. Our toys were kept on shelves in the closet, or on a rather large bookcase, storage shelf that was in the playroom, itself. I can remember hiding in that closet sometimes when I was in trouble.
We also used to play elevator on the stairs going upstairs. They were enclosed by a door at the bottom, and made a wonderful place to play. Mother would put things inside the door that needed to be taken upstairs. Anyone who went upstairs was supposed to pick up the objects placed there, and to return them to their proper place upstairs.
The stairway down to the basement was also used as a sort of closet. Here hung the broom and dustpan, Mother’s aprons, the ragbag, and other assorted cleaning supplies. I think Mother had made shelves between the fire stops, and put hooks on the studding. The basement always smelled musty to me. The ceiling was quite low in this area, and tall people had to be very careful coming down the stairs, or else they might crack their heads on the ceiling at the bottom. This was never a problem for my short parents, but during my teen years, quite a few of my boyfriends ran into that beam. There was a daybed in the basement, and on hot summer days and nights it was always cool there. When the upstairs bedrooms were sweltering, Mary Lou and I were allowed to sleep down in the basement.
On one side of the stairway in the basement was the panty, and later that was where we had the freezer. Mother also had stored there her collection of National Geographic magazine. They went back to the early 1920’s, and were an unending source of pleasure for me as a child. The magazines were really quite dusty, but everything about them was a wonder, even the advertising. We were allowed to cut them up for school reports, and we were never limited access to them. They finally ended up in a school paper drive, probably when we needed to make room for the new freezer. We continued to get the new National Geographic, and while I enjoyed reading it, I don’t think it ever quite measured up to playing around in the old ones.
There was also a wooden chest down there where Mother put all her sewing scraps. Whenever I needed a piece of fabric for some project, I was allowed to go down to find something out of that chest.
On the larger side of the basement was where the clotheslines were strung for use during rainy weather. Mother would often be down in the basement, taking down the laundry, when I got home from school. I would run down the stairs, curl up on the daybed and tell her all about what had happened at school that day.
One Halloween, Mother gave us a wonderful party. I don’t know what inspired it, but the party may have been for my Brownie or Girl Scout troop. I know she had the help of some other adults.. Mother and all of her helpers were dressed up as witches.
Each of the guests was turned into a goblin at the start of the party.
My dad was a drycleaner, and in those days brown paper bags protected the finished cleaning instead of the plastic bags in use today. Those bags were just the size to make a covering for a child. Mother had used colored crayons to draw a goblin on the front of each bag. She had made holes for the eyes and nose, and there were openings in the sides for our arms. It was pretty scary inside those bags. After all the guests were transformed, the lights were turned out. She must have had candles or dim lights, but it was pretty dark. We were led into the bathroom first. There, our hands were put into something squishy, probably a gelatin mix of some sort, but I don’t remember that it was sticky. Since we were in the bathroom, they might have washed our hands afterwards.
Then we were led through the laundry room, into the kitchen and down the basement stairs, and all through the basement. I remember walking through hanging things, and lots of scary noises. That is all I really remember about the party, but I think we played games for a while down the basement. I do remember the refreshments. My Uncle George worked for a dairy, at that time. He brought us ice cream made in Halloween shapes. There were witches and pumpkins and black cats. I had never seen such wonderful ice cream before, and haven’t since.
This was the best party I have ever attended in all my life. It must have been a lot of work, but I have never forgotten that mixture of fear and fun that I experienced that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment