Jones Beach, 1950
Backyard, 1954
I am staying out of my usual trouble on OS by sharing childhood memories. In 5 months I will be 65, one of our older elders. Think of these posts as history rather than nostalgia.
When I compare my life with that of my parents, I realize they were virtually immune to the seductions of consumerism. My mother stayed home with us until I was 18. They lived on such a tight budget that mom invariably had to borrow from our allowances, babysitting money, or paper route money, until my dad got paid once a month. She carried around small notebooks and kept track of every penny.
Raising six kids and sending them to Catholic schools on one middle-class income, they had to make their own entertainment.We didn't get a TV until I was 14; we got a mediocre audio system at about the same time. The radio was our main entertainment source. I recall the thrill of getting my own radio as a birthday present when I was 11. I could listen to Brooklyn Dodger games whenever I wanted. Movies were a luxury; we ate out about twice a year, usually when someone graduated.
My parents subscribed to the Catholic journals of opinion, America and Commonweal, and to the New Republic. We never had a women's magazine in the house. I never read Seventeen as a teenager. I was almost totally spared media images of feminine fashion and beauty.
We entertained ourselves by visiting family and friends. On Sundays we often visited my nearby aunt and uncle and watched Disneyland. All of my 45 first cousins were an easy drive away. There were countless Christening, First Communion, Confirmation, Graduation parties. We had family picnics with terrific softball games for all ages.
There were gangs of kids in the neighborhood to play baseball, shoot baskets, play badminton, volleyball. Someone's basement always had ping pong or a pool table. We had the largest backyard in the neighborhood, where we could play baseball without breaking too many widnows. There was no extra money for music or dance lessons or gymnastic lessons.
We spent most of our summers in the water. We always had a cheap backyard pool. Our local high school had a pool open to the community.
We were only 20 minutes away from
We learned how to take the bus by the time we were 7. My best friend and I figured out how to get to Manhattan by two buses and a subway by the time we were 12. Usually we biked for transportation. My parents only had one car and were too busy with my younger sibs to play chauffeur. My mother didn't learn to drive until she had 3 children under 3. Once she drove, she had to drop off and pick up my father at the railroad station, so she could have the car. Because there was no neighborhood Catholic school when the first three of us were young, we took the bus. I took two buses and walked 15 blocks to get to my high school--90 minutes for a 15-minute drive. Bus routes on Long Island are designed to get you to and from the railroad; they haven't changed in my lifetime.
Card playing was the way adults socialized. Almost every adult was competent at cards, and many were excellent bridge players. My parents played bridge with friends once a week. We used to creep down the stairs to hear the kibbutzing. People almost always had a deck of cards in their bag or their pocket if you had to wile away time. Periodically my family discovers there is no cheaper or more varied form of free entertainment than card playing.
My parents were devout Catholics, genuinely good people with a stalwart faith. When they moved to Long Island after my dad came home from the war, our home town was just potato fields. Schools, churches, libraries, community organizations had to be built. St. Martha's, the local Catholic parish, met in a nineteenth century building that became the volunteer library after the church was built. My parents and their friends worked tirelessly to raise money for a church, a school for 800 kids, a convent for the nuns, and a rectory for the priests. That represented commitment to fundraising for a working class community.
My mom and dad were tremendously involved in social action outreach with the local Catholic Church. My dad was head of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, which ministers to poor struggling families in the parish. He visited the local nursing home every Sunday without fail. Some evenings he was called out to visit a family experiencing a sudden emergency.
The local library was run by volunteers for the first ten years. I had been infected by my parents' community spirit. When the library was vandalized when I was 9, my best friend and I volunteered two times a week to sort it out. I remember the chief volunteer struggling to explain to us the difference between fiction and nonfiction.We also established the first library in our grade school. I spent four summer working as the children's librarian in high school. There were not yet professional librarians, so I had a free rein to run the summer programs anyway I liked.
We often heard "we can't afford it," but most of the time we didn't feel deprived. I hated my school uniforms, but now understand how they rescued us from feeling unfashionable. My mother made almost all my dresses and skirts. She gardened and canned a winter's worth of tomatoes, tomato juice, and tomato sauce. Nothing has ever compared with my parent's home grown corn.
All our lives my brothers and I teased my parents about their frugality. But we all appreciated the inheritance my mother left her 5 children and 15 grandchildren. I have copies of all my parents' tax returns. That she had any money to leave seems the equivalent of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes.
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Comments
Rated, Rated, Rated!
Professor Emeritus, I am glad you enjoy it.
Walter, I am sure it was a simpler time. Whether it was a better time, I have pondered over the years. My daughters have had much more exciting lives. I agree that as a graduate of an academically demanding Catholic high school, I had far more general knowledge than the Ivy League grads I know. We had to be more self-reliant and less self-indulgent. I do think growing up in a large family was a advantage.
Haven't seen you around in awhile, Redstocking. Glad you're back!
(r)
Gabby Abby, we had an arts and crafts summer school down the block. I fondly remember those lanyards and baskets and boxes made out of popsicle sticks. Several of my brothers mastered water skiing, but I knew better than to try.
But there was a much darker side, that I wrote about in Duck and Cover, McCarthy, Assassinations, Vietnam, Jail From age 5 I feared I would never grow up, marry, have children because I would die in a nuclear war.
Trilogy, Jones Beach is still my beach. I live even closer than I did growing up. Watching my grandson fall in love with it evoked so many wonderful memories. I wrote about Catholic schools on my post on Penguins.
Madam Ruth, thanks for the kind words.
Aunt Mabel, I wish I had more of my mom's thrift personality. I don't think walking to school is appreciably more dangerous than it was then except there are few other children walking with you and you are more likely to be hit by the cars of all the paranoid parents.driving their children six blocks.
Clark K, I am afraid the clean plate syndrome contributed to my weight problems once I passed 40. Winter is a low energy time for me; I have been reading and rating, but not commenting or writing much. Thanks for noticing.
Bellwether, thanks for reminding me of the hazy smear of memory. At 18 I vowed I would never lived in the suburbs and could not escape to Manhattan fast enough.
Gina, having a large extended family was wonderful. My community ties were compromised by always going to school outside my town. My younger brothers were more fortunate; by the time they were ready for school, there was a Catholic grade school and high school in Uniondale.
Caroline, I am so glad you enjoyed the pictures. I am so blessed to have them. Don't throw out the family slides if you have any.
I really like your non-fiction stories. I've missed your posts here on OS. I hope you'll write more.
Thanks and Rated.
I hope I am emerging from my usual winter hibernation and will write more. Thanks for the encouragement.