BEING A FRESHMAN Kate’s Journal

Episode 9

Torrance, 1940

Arthur Murray taught us dancing in a hurry when we sent for his printed paper diagrams and invited him into my bedroom to follow the colored footsteps. Not that the two-step benefited me in any since I wasn’t allowed to go to school dances yet anyway. Jitterbugging was learned by grasping a doorknob in one hand and shimmying forward a few times.

Arthur Murray

When we returned to California I was skipped ahead another half grade making me a year younger than my classmates. Being younger is a definite social disadvantage at the age of thirteen.

I fell in love with my Biology teacher Mr. Katz while dissecting a frog, but I don’t think it was reciprocated. For some reason I developed a strong desire to become a psychiatrist and asked him for books I could read. To give him credit, he honestly tried to discourage me, though I may have been a good one.

The sports teams were the Tartars, and I was unexpectedly elected Junior Tartar Queen. The acquisition of a crown gave me confidence to actually run for office. It was always clear to me that the reason no one voted for me was that I was wearing my grandmother’s light blue lace evening gown and a pair of her strappy dancing shoes.

While living in Connecticut I had for the first time had a room of my own except for the times I lived with Auntie. In this new home I again shared a room with my mother, but as Grandma obtained new roomers, this room kept changing. When leaving for school in the morning we might have one room, but upon coming home, I would find myself in another. One roomer who became a boarder, was a girl my own age who had recently lost her mother. Her name was Dorothy Graham, and much to my shame, I was not kind to her. Dorothy kept most of her possessions under the bed, including old comic books, candy bars and empty soda cans. She had a sullen personality and though my Grandmother nagged me to take her into my group of friends, I never did. Poor Dorothy did not live with us long. I understand now that she needed much more than I could have given her anyway, but I still feel the guilt.

Sometime during the Fall semester, I discovered boys. One of our football players, a senior boy called “Shifty Hips” Parton, lived across the street, so I was always ready to mow the lawn when he was home. I wore glasses, and one day he insulted me by saying I “looked intelligent”. From then on I tried never to wear my glasses.

I never knew what to say to boys. They were a whole different breed except for one boy who rode his bike down our alley on his way home from school. I was frequently up in the fig tree when he came along and we developed an easy comradeship. We would talk, he would scuff his toe in the dirt and I would occasionally give him a fig. It was not a hot romance. One day a boy actually came to the front door and my mother let him in. What do you do now, I thought. At my mother’s suggestion we made fudge and sat silently eating it in the living room while my three year old cousin kept turning summersaults on the living room floor.

Cousin Judy and Me at Redondo Beach

Somehow I developed a singing voice which caught the attention of my choral teacher and an acquaintance of my Grandmother who was the vocal teacher of Deanna Durbin, a young movie star. I have to attribute my singing voice to the outhouse in Connecticut. Singing allows you to breathe through your mouth. I had sung my way across country in the backseat of our car.

The family, convinced that i would one day make us all famous, pooled resources and gave me voice lessons. I loved singing so much that I searched all over for a church which would allow me to join their choir, since the Christian Science church where my female family member attended did not have one.

I spent Sundays going to most of the churches in town and finally found that the Episcopal church choir could use another voice. And thus began a secret life, ostensibly in the name of religion. Upon being issued a choir robe and marching out for my first practice, whom should I see but my Grandmother’s gentleman friend sitting in the bass section. I lived in fear that my family would learn I was not attending the Christian Science church, but the dear man never told them. On my mother’s death bed I asked her if she ever knew and she shook her head.

CROSSING THE COUNTRY Kate’s Journal

Episode 6
New London, Connecticut, 1938

Through these past years I have blogged about various events which happened during our time in New London, Connecticut. Whether more things happened to me during that time, or whether I was simply old enough to have a better memory I can’t say, but Connecticut made a deep impression on me.

Still living in the details of my memory; the hurricane of 1938, my near-kidnapping, rustic country life and the summer-long case of poison ivy which greeted our arrival in New London, Connecticut.

In 1938 we received orders to go to New London, for two and a half years where my father began training in the submarine service. We loaded our belongings into our used black Chevy car and set out across country, like today’s migrants.

Assigned to the submarine base, both enlisted men and some officers could choose to find their own living quarters, which were few and far between off the base.

Our first was a one-room apartment bathroon-down-the-hall over a small grocery store, and the second was slightly better though it had no indoor plumbing, just a privy some distance away. Water had to be pumped each morning, and baths were taken in a tub after water had been heated on a huge wood stove. It sounds awful, and it was, but for two and a half years it was our home.

The whole monstrosity overlooked a large field and a small lake which in New England is called a pond. The field was promptly planted with vegetables, and the pond supplied recreation both in summer and in winter when it froze solid and we skated. During the winter freeze I skated part of the way to school.

Connecticut abounds with rivers and streams, and we lived between the pond and across the road from the Thames River, a deep-water river with the Submarine Base situated on its shore. Local kids swam in sight of the diving tower, where my Dad trained. It was there I first learned to swim when my father threw me into the river.

The Base had a commissary, or ship’s stores, where we did most of our shopping. There was a movie theater, a bowling alley, and other places of recreation. A large parade ground was in the middle of the compound, and there was always a dress parade on Saturday mornings, where I loved to watch my father, in his dress blues, march in formation behind the Navy band. We Navy kids used to play ‘parade’ with a majorette, and the rest of us following behind blowing on combs covered with waxed paper.

The first winter we lived there, New England felt the tremendous power of a hurricane, still referred to as one of the worst of the century. It was a school day and we were all hustled into the hallway to protect us from flying glass should the windows cave in. The incredible roar of the wind and the rain pounding on the roof was very frightening. One of the big double doors at the end of the hall blew open, and three teachers pushing on it could not close it. When the noise quieted, and the wind calmed somewhat, we were sent to our various homes.

It still amazes me that we were sent on our way alone in the wake of such a terrible storm. But the road was impassable for cars because of fallen trees etc. I lived some three miles from the school and walked each way except for cutting off about a mile in winter. The rest of the children were local farm children whose parents in most cases had attended the same small school.

The school consisted of two rooms and the principal’s office and I went there during part of the fifth and all of the sixth and seventh grades. We were expected to memorize poems regularly, and a Charles Kingsley poem reproached: “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.” I still feel a twinge of guilt knowing I grew up more clever than good, and as a “sweet maid” I was a disappointment. Having practiced being “good” up to this time without gaining the benefit of friends, I chose to be funny.

I still remember the smell of oiled wooden floors in the closkroom, wet wool snowsuits, and egg or tuna sandwiches emanating from the tin lunchboxes or paper bags containing our lunches. I had close contact with these odors on the occasions when I was sent out of the room to consider my acts of disobedience.

My teacher, Miss Lillian Ingraham, was possibly the best teacher I ever had, and thought I was smarter than I was, because I had read the most books, for which I received a prize. She was quite tall and skinny and had dyed red hair and eyes in the back of her head. She placed me in the front row, not because I had trouble seeing the board, (which I did) but so that she could keep one of her eyes on me.

A boy named Cecil Kirk was in my fifth grade class and passed me a note one day suggesting that we meet after school behind a certain stone wall, where he would show me ‘his’ and I would reciprocate. I ran most of the way home never looking at the aforementioned stone wall. We never spoke again.

I was not a star at team sports, but I was a fast runner, and could shinny up the flag pole faster than most of the boys. I was also an apt pupil of my father in games of marbles, cards, and mumbly-peg, which was a game of skill in throwing a jack-knife point down into a preordained spot within a large circle drawn in the dirt. I ‘m afraid that most of the games my father taught me were not looked upon with great favor by my teachers.

AMAZING GRAZING~~~~Chicken With Artichokes

The same three options keep cropping up as dinner choices at wedding receptions and Bar Mitzvahs: Steak, salmon and the inevitable chicken. Only of late do we get to decide upon a vegetarian meal, and who in the world wants a plateful of veggies at a party? We can have that at home.

I gave up attending an annual luncheon for my high school compatriots because the luncheon choice was either a salad or some sort of concoction containing chicken. You’re safer with the salad.

Mind you, I like chicken, during one period of my early life my father built a chicken coop and populated it with a few chickens. We lived in Connecticut at the time, and he concerned himself with running the nearby navy base, at least I thought he ran things over there. He certainly ran things at home; with the exception of the chicken family, which it turned out, was my job. You’d never imagine my father in his spit and polish uniform was a country boy, but he was, right down to the large vegetable garden and those blasted chickens.

As soon as we named a chicken and took note of its daily routine, my father dispatched it and my mother cooked it. I am not a country girl at heart, and I was never quite comfortable eating Esmerelda, but we did many deeds in the Depression which were not politically correct.

Now as a Sunday tribute to all the Esmereldas and Henriettas we have eaten:

CHICKEN WITH ARTICHOKES

Dip skinless and boneless chicken thighs in beaten egg, then shake in flour.
Heat a little butter and oil and brown chicken lightly. Remove from pan.
Add 1# sliced mushrooms and a couple cloves of garlic and cook till mushrooms release moisture and are done.
Put chicken back in pan and pour 1 cup wine over. I used Marsala in this one but any white wine would do. Cover and cook on stovetop or in oven in moderate heat till done.
Add 1 can artichoke quarters and a small can of sliced water chestnuts. Add 1/2 cup whipping cream or more and a squeeze of lemon.

TWO MEATBALLS & MASHED POTATOES, twenty-five cents

Lunchtime did not loom large in my imagination during my youth Justifiable perhaps given the likelihood of all too familiar contents in my paper bag or lunch pail. I don’t recall seeing a single cafeteria, serving what I imagined to be delicious lunches. In the small two room schoolhouse in New London, Connecticut, I am sure there was none; there was barely room for the four grades of children crammed into its old walls. Give the economics of the Depression era I would not have been allowed to eat in a cafeteria anyway.

Life and lunchtime changed when we moved to Alameda, California in my junior year however. In our own small enclave surrounding the high school, there was a bakery, a coffee shop, a music store which allowed you to listen to records before buying, a few small shops, a movie theater and J.C. Penney, where I began working to earn money to spend at these stores.

And among these stores, a mere block and a half from the school, was the Alameda Delicatessen, advertising two meatballs, mashed potatoes and gravy, and all for twenty-five cents! This was the era when gasoline was less than a dollar, but twenty-five cents was still a bargain. My feet wore a path to the deli each day at noon, and in spite of ridicule from classmates, I ate there daily for the remaining two years of high school.

Sixty years later, at a class reunion, a much admired former classmate, who had been a professional baseball player and then scout, confessed that he too had gone to the Deli every day of his high school life, and had eaten meatballs, mashed potatoes and gravy and paid twenty-five cents. He too knew a bargain when he saw it.

The large Swedish company IKEA, sells plates of meatballs and gravy to hundreds of people daily. They even sell bags of meatballs you can keep in your freezer for people longing for a meatball fix at home. Costco sells huge bags of meatballs as do a lot of other stores. If people didn’t love meatballs no one would go to the trouble. A local food editor last week did a whole column rating the quality of the meatballs sold at various stores in the area. Whole Foods got the best rating, and it went downhill from there, with some poor company rating no stars. And speaking of Stars, which is the offering at your last cocktail party which got the most action? The large cauldron of meatballs in spicy sauce, right?

Countries around the world have their own version of the meatball. In my husband’s Danish family they are called frikadellar, and are served with mashed potatoes and gravy.

But I have to say, none of these meatballs can hold a candle to those twenty-five cent meatballs at the old Deli which has long ago closed its doors. They are still the best meatballs I ever ate.

DEAR MRS. JAQUISH

Dear Mrs. Jaquish,

I don’t know if this is the way your name was spelled when I knew you. It’s how it sounded to me anyhow. This is a note to apologize for all the rotten things we rowdy kids did to you so long ago before we knew better. We children were not good neighbors. I’m sure you did not plant your flower garden expressly for us to pick, nor your trees for us to climb.

I would have written an apology right after we left, but I got poison ivy as soon as we began settling into living in Connecticut and after that it was too late and you were gone when we came back home two years later. I still have the nice letter you wrote to me which shames me somehow now as not being particularly worthy of your friendship. It begins “Dear Katie Lou,” which was my childhood name, and gives me the news of the neighborhood. I disliked my name even then, and you will be pleased to know I tried out many new ones along the way before settling on the present one.

I can picture Long Beach even now after all these years; hopping the squares in the sidewalk, the wonderful old palm trees lining the streets which all had squiggly black patches on them. The truck which came around with hot melted tar to paste on the cracks in the pavement lives in my memory because we used to chase it down the block and grab a piece of hardened tar before the man could catch us. We thought it was good for our teeth.

Maybe that’s what Life is though, a series of patching things up. Streets, houses, relationships. Even trying to make amends for shortcomings suffered three-quarters of a century ago.

I don’t know how old you may have been in 1938, but I’m sure I am older now than you were then, and with a love of gardening equal I’m sure to yours.

There weren’t many of us children in our neighborhood. Two or three more girls and a boy or two who lived around the corner where I was not allowed to play. If you will remember, in Grandma’s rooming house where I lived, there were a number of people who kept track of me.

When we returned home in 1940, someone else lived in your old house, and one of the two little sisters, our playmate Jackie Glass, had passed away as well as yourself. She was the youngest one at eight. I have her picture at my 10th birthday party taken right before we moved away. I don’t have a photo of you, but you live in my memory. You were the first truly old person I knew.

Anyway Mrs. Jaquish, if you get this letter somewhere up on your cloud, I have learned that apologies are best given with some immediacy.

Very truly yours,

MY MOTHER

Yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of my mother’s dying. So long ago and in another life. Sometimes it hardly seems as if she was here at all.

She was such a tiny wisp of a lady at only 4’11”, and gone too early before her 73rd birthday. My father had given her a snow mobile the winter before, which she drove through the snowy Oregon woods at top speed. They lived at Diamond Lake, Oregon during the summer months, and in Mexico during the winter. She took classes and learned to speak a passable Spanish, while my father simply pointed to what he wanted.

In her last year or two they remained in Oregon, buying a home in Brookings on the coast, but still spending a lot of time at the Lake, where she worked in the resort grocery store and ran a gift shop at the Lodge. She had never worked, always using possible poor health as her reason, but in her role as a “lady of some importance”, she bloomed. Earning her first money, she was able to spend something on herself. She had had very dark hair as a young person, but it began turning grey when she was only in her 20’s. It became a lovely white, and since she had an innate sense of color and style, she was as pretty as she had been when my father married her.

They married at the age of 19, and the love affair lasted through all those years, surviving the many absences caused by his Naval career, including five long years during WW II when he was at sea.

Though she never seemed to be a strong person, being overshadowed by my Grandmother, in whose home we lived, I’m sure she had a certain inner strength. During peacetime when we were often stationed in another place, I never heard her complain about starting a new home, however short a time we might be there. More often than not, she was given only a week or so to pack and move. She was a good seamstress, and if we happened to be living in a one-room apartment, which we sometimes were, she made curtains, bedspreads, etc. to make it as pretty as she could. I often had a small cot on one side of the room, and if possible, she hung a dividing curtain between my side and theirs.

When we were stationed in Connecticut at the Submarine base, my father did not want to live on the Base, so they found a rather ramshackle place out in the country which we called home for the next 2 years. It had been a trailer, to which a room had been added. There was no running water, a wood stove and an outhouse a distance away. It sounds awful, and it may have been, but they were the happiest 2 years of my childhood. I have often wondered why that should be. My Grandmother’s rooming house was large and in a fine neighborhood, and the Auntie with whom I often lived during a great deal of my childhood had a lovely home. But we were all together, and my little mother was happy, which was not always the case.

She was given her grandmother’s name, and I was given hers. My Granddaughter is also a Kate, so she will not be forgotten. After she died, I came across a small slip of paper she had tucked away which said “I hope if they remember me they will say I was fun”.

FISH AND CHIPS

We don’t live too far from the ocean.  Growing up I was never more than a block or two from the Pacific ocean or at one time the Thames River in Connecticut where I learned to swim when my father threw me out into the water..  But there’s something about the sound of crashing waves and the mystery of tides that keeps me captive, and I have spent many days painting it.

Yesterday we headed out down a heavily wooded road with native redwood trees hiding the sun in speckled sections,  toward Half Moon Bay, a lovely little coastal town in Northern California with a couple of friends for a relaxing day by the ocean.  Several stops along the way included a cemetery containing the remains of Union soldiers which we had passed hundreds of times and never noticed.  Interesting to see  soldiers from the Civil War buried here in Redwood City in a tiny oak-shaded memorial park.

Next stop was a funky breakfast shop in Woodside with a collection of everything including a life-sized green Statue of Liberty greeting you as you walked in the front door and an 8 ft. anaconda skin on the wall.  After that it took a few cups of great cappuccino to get us ready for the rest of the trip.

It was a brilliant sunny day with an invigorating sea breeze, so we walked to the edge of the cliff and inhaled the first pure air since we were there before.  My friend is from an island in the Azores, and he too feels right at home by the sea.  He said they took it for granted as we do, and the thrill of the day came when as boys they looked up occasionally to see an airplane which they knew was going to America from the direction it was flying.

Half Moon Bay,California is filled with nice small shops, bakeries and good restaurants, and the comfortable feel of a small town.  It was settled by Portuguese fishermen and as you walk closer to the water, there are boats and fish shops and more restaurants. The largest building in town is Cunha’s grocery store which has been there over a hundred years and seems to be the focal point of the town.  At one time there was a dance floor upstains and the downstairs was a large bar.  Easy to imagine the party when the fishing boats came in at the end of the day.

The Flying Fish restaurant was our goal and the whole purpose of our trip,  because they probably have the best fish and chips since our favorite pub in London near Paddington station, where we once happily survived for a week on fish and chips and beer for dinner.  (And perhaps Spotted Dick for dessert!)