In Sickness and in Health

These are real events as I recall them. After August 20, 2015, when Logan goes off to college, I will again veer off into my fantasy road trip.

Much of my adult life I've been harshly critical of my mother because of her alcoholism. I'm sad and angry that it removed her from active participation as a grandmother in the lives of my children. Today I put that aside and remember the selfless, tireless, beautiful young mother I had as a child.

She was  just twenty when I was born, two years after her high school graduation from Oakland High School in 1937. She and a group of her girlfriends had formed a sorority they called the Maddi Kappi; they hung out together and met a bunch of architectural students from Cal (UC Berkeley) and that's how I came to be.

She was a student at Heald's Business College, but she didn't finish the program. She worked one Christmas season wrapping gifts at Hale's Department Store in Oakland, the only job she ever held. According to Social Security, her lifetime earnings were just over $200. And then, she became a mom.

I always thought she looked kind of like Lauren Bacall. She was fun, flirty, loved to dance, and loved to sing, always humming under her breath as she went about the housework. I was proud of the way my young mother looked and felt sorry for the kids with fat frumpy older moms.

My father was a student when my parents married and he worked part time for Standard Oil as a draftsman. He graduated from Cal a year after I was born. Shortly thereafter, he went to work for Owens-Illinois as a draftsman and then later as an architectural engineer. He remained in that position until his retirement. His salary was always just a little short of what we needed to get by, so he supplemented it by spending hours at the drafting table he set up in our dining room, drawing house plans for all the executives at the glass factory. He designed several homes which are still standing in Piedmont, the Montclair district, Orinda, and Oakland. He further supplemented his income with a series of loans from his mother, drawing down on any future inheritance.

In those days, the only inoculations available for kids were DPT and they weren't mandatory, so we didn't get them. These were also the days before health insurance, so any doctor's visit was an unplanned expense and our household had no room in the budget for unplanned expenses. Only maternity care was allowed in our household. 

I don't remember my mother ever being sick, or even slowed down by her pregnancies -- five of them (although today I'm writing about a time before the youngest two were born). I have vivid memories of the times we were sick and the wonderful loving care she bestowed on us.

Measles, we called them the red measles, the two-week kind, were epidemic among kids from about five to eight years old. And we caught them serially, so for six weeks a fevered child lay in my mother's bed. The shades were drawn because of the risk of eye damage, I don't know if darkness really did anything to prevent damage, but we also weren't allowed to read for the same reason. I remember running a fever of 105 degrees and my mother getting almost. but not quite, worried enough to call the doctor. In lieu of a doctor's house call, my father called Dr. Bensinger, the plant doctor. He became our de facto family physician.

When we were sick we slept in our beds by night, but in the daytime, we rested in our parents downstairs bed and we were treated royally. Mom read to us, sang to us, brought meals in on a tray, and bought treats like comic books or ice cream bars. When she left to walk down to the corner store, we got out from under the covers and jumped on the bed. Being sick had lots of perks. 

In addition to the measles, chickenpox and mumps won us time in our mother's bed. For some reason, we never caught rubella, known to us as the German measles, the black measles or the three-day measles.

Brother Rick (the little guy in the pictures), and I had the whooping cough. I had what was probably the world's lightest case, I barely coughed with a slight whoop for six weeks and felt fine most of the time, but I had to stay out of school. They said whooping cough was two weeks coming, two weeks there, and two weeks leaving, comprising the six week quarantine period. Rick had a terrible case. Every time he coughed, he vomited. He coughed until the blood vessels in his eyes broke. He became very thin and we were all very worried about him. He was given special drinks to keep him hydrated and fed lots of Popsicles. I think Popsicles were a universal cure, at least in our household. 

But the worst, the very worst, was the ringworm. My father had taken in a stray kitten. We loved it and cuddled it and fought over who would get to hold it next. And then I began to itch on my chest, right where I snuggled the kitten. Soon both my brothers were itching in the same spot. This time my parents took us to the doctor. The first diagnosis was impetigo. When we returned to the doctor in even worse shape with the condition spreading to our arms and legs, the diagnosis became scabies. Finally when the eruptions settled into the characteristic round shape of ringworm, the accurate diagnosis was made, and the kitten was identified as the source of our malady. Sadly, by that time our other household pets, my beloved cat, Dingle, and our sweet cocker spaniel, Duchess, had to be put down. 

Not only did we lose our household pets, but all our stuffed animals were burned. By this time our entire bodies were covered including the scalps of my brothers. Their heads were shaved, but my scalp was spared and I had to wear my hair tightly braided and pinned to the top of my head. Ours were the worst cases of ringworm the doctor had ever seen. He referred us to the dermatology clinic at the University of California Medical School. There, a half dozen dermatologists peered at us and photographed us for medical journals. 

The outbreak began in June just as school was letting out for the summer. The treatment called for rigorous cleanliness and isolation from any other kids. Our parents were absolute saints during this time. I'm sure they felt enormous guilt for bringing this plague into the house, but the effort they put forth in caring for us and entertaining us was superhuman.

 Like every household in 1949, we had only a wringer washer, Our mother washed and line-dried our bed sheets every day. We bathed morning and night and had a salve called Salinadol smeared over all our lesions. My hair was shampooed daily, greased with the gooey salve, braided, and pinned up out of contact with the eruptions on my neck and forehead. Gallons of Hexol were used in cleaning every surface of the house. My mother worked to keep the bugs at bay from dawn till she fell in bed at night.

The picture below was taken two months before ringworm turned our beautiful skin into a repulsive mass of sores. It sat on my mother's dresser where she would look at it and weep, wondering if her children would ever be beautiful again.

Our parents went to great lengths to entertain us and compensate for our cloistered summer. My father built wonderful toys, using cardboard and wood liberated from the stock piles of the glass factory. He built a 5/8 scale stage coach with doors that opened and shut, seats inside, a seat outside for the driver and a side kick. Horses heads also made from cardboard fit over our heads and rested on our shoulders. My grandfather (Bobo) gave us a regular full-sized pinball machine that we operated using slugs instead of coins. Both the stage coach and pin ball machine were in a garage we used as a rumpus room. Mimi bought us books; we couldn't contaminate library books. We had homemade stilts and a constant supply of new comic books.

Our mother sang to us and our father told us stories. He made up a stories about the Whiffenpoofs, a family who had ringworm, but were able to put them to good use. They would scrape them off and use them as tires on their cars and take wonderful trips. And we did take wonderful day trips. We explored the entire bay area, took the ferry to San Francisco, or had picnics in many of the wonderful East Bay Regional Parks, and went for walks in the woods.

By the time summer was over and school was ready to start, we were cured. We didn't miss a day of school and our exhausted mother had a chance to rest.

School Days

Another installment of reminiscing prompted by my trip to Oakland. These too, are true so far as memory allows.  

I started kindergarten at Cleveland School in January 1944. At that time, kids could start mid-year because of a semester system that divided each grade into "high" and "low." I think it is a good system; a child who wasn't quite ready for school in September could start in January and not have to wait a whole year to begin. And my mother loved it. She still had two more little kids at home; the nest was getting a little crowded.

I was a mid-year kid until I skipped the high third grade, going directly from low third to low fourth grade. My mother cautioned me, "Don't go thinking it's because you're so smart, it's just because your class was too crowded." But I was immediately placed in the top groups in reading and arithmetic (we didn't call it math until the fifth grade).

The desks we sat at like those in the picture were mounted on wooden runners. I remember running the edge of the sole of my shoe along the runners and along the grooves in the pine floors. The smell of the oiled floors mixed with that of chalk dust and the ink in our ink wells created a particular school room perfume which is lodged in olfactory memory. Third grade had a special rite of passage. When we had satisfied Mrs. McNary we had mastered the Palmer method of cursive handwriting, we were issued pens and blotters and our inkwells would be filled. We dipped our pens in the blue-black liquid and carefully scratched out the final copies of our compositions. 

Mrs. McNary's classroom was in one of the portables. Being assigned to a portable was a special honor because they were heated by coal-burning stoves. Not only did we have blackboard monitors, but some lucky boy was also chosen for the highly esteemed position of coal monitor, charged with keeping the coal bucket filled, and stoking the fire as needed. Girls could be blackboard monitors, but only boys were allowed to be coal monitors.

When I was in about fifth grade, a boy just a grade behind me died by hanging in the basement of his home. We were told it was an accident and I never doubted it. Even though these were the years polio was rampant, and several friends had been crippled, it had never occurred to me that a child could die. Another tragic event was the murder of the mother of a classmate. His brother had bludgeoned their mother with a hatchet in a ferocious rage in the basement of their home. My classmate continued at school, but I could never bring myself to talk to him after that. Even looking at him was difficult and made me wonder if my brother were capable of such a thing. I couldn't bear the possibility of losing my mother. And I feared tragedy was contagious. 

Clayton Wright was my first boyfriend. One day our fifth-grade substitute teacher caught us passing love notes in class. She called both of us to the front of the classroom and while holding me in a hammerlock, squished against her ample bosom, she forced me to read the note aloud to the class. I'm not sure why it bothered me so much, everyone had opened and read the note as it made its way across the classroom, there was no secret within. But I still remember the mortification and the smell of that woman: a mixture of Vick's Vap-O-Rub and gardenia perfume. However, my love for Clayton was undiminished by public shaming. 

Clayton gave me a chocolate-covered marshmallow heart for Valentine's Day. The tinfoil wrapping was all wrinkled because he had unwrapped it to enclose two dimes so I could meet him for the Saturday matinee at the Parkway theater.

I was more excited about having two dimes than the prospect of going to the movies with Clayton, so I rounded up a couple of girlfriends and we headed for the school store. The school store, located just behind the school on Brooklyn Avenue was in the downstairs corner of the house pictured below with an entry right on the corner. Inside, was a fabulous assortment of penny candy, Mary Janes, sugar dots on paper, wax lips, wax bottles of sweet syrup, several kinds of licorice, lollipops, and both Fleers and Bazooka bubble gum. I bought a little of everything and shared it with my friends. Fortunately, I was able to beg 20 cents from my father to keep my date with Clayton, In fact, the entire fifth grade class kept our date. They sat in a solid line in the row behind us. I was so annoyed that I got up and moved to a seat by myself. As near as I can recall, that was our last date.

The map above illustrated the approximate boundaries of our free-range territory. It is about a three-mile square area, with Lake Merritt as its main attraction. The red X marks the location of our house. I know as young as nine years old, I borrowed a friend's bicycle and rode all around Lake Merritt, a distance of 3-1/4 miles. My mother never knew about it. When I was ten, I got a beautiful Schwinn bicycle for my birthday and frequently rode around the lake. So long as we appeared for meals, we never accounted for our whereabouts.

The year I was in fifth grade, I got a violin for Christmas. It was a wretched piece of equipment; the tuning pegs would never hold, and it was constantly slipping out of tune. The fact that I was a terrible musician compounded the horror. Even worse, I loved playing the violin and practiced relentlessly while my mother would beg me to please, please, please, use the mute. You can probably tell by my awkward pose that I simply had no feel for the instrument. 

In the picture of the three little musicians, you can barely make out built-in cabinets on either side of the fake fireplace. The one on the left housed my Story Book Doll collection. Although I never played with dolls, I loved getting new Story Book Dolls to add to my collection every birthday and Christmas. My parents, grandmother (Mimi), and Aunt Helen all helped my collection grow until I had around thirty dolls. When I grew a bit older, they were boxed up and stored in my closet. I noticed one day they were missing and later learned my brother had given them away to his girlfriend. My parents did nothing to help me get them back and he was never held accountable for taking them. I've worked really hard over the years to let go of resentment toward my brother, but this one surfaces from time to time and I'm still mad.

The War Years

This is more reverie stirred up by my visit last week to my childhood haunts. Again, so far as memory serves, this is true.

World War II is a backdrop to all my earliest memories. I'm told my brother and I were at Fleishhacker Zoo in San Francisco with my parents, Bud and Ruthanne Blair, and my aunt and uncle, Helen and Bill Millward, on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941, while the Japanese were dropping bombs on Hawaii.  I see no traces of war worries in our Christmas photo. I see my beautiful mother who hung tinfoil icicles on the tree one strand at a time so that they would hang gracefully. My talented father had graduated from UC Berkeley a year and a half previously with a degree in architecture and was working as a draftsman for Owens-Illinois Glass Company. My brother, Mickey was fifteen months old.

Christmas 1941, just 18 days after Pearl Harbor.

 Our 1944 Victory Garden

Among his many talents, my father was a wonderful gardener. He mixed sand into the adobe soil, fertilized with compost he carefully tended, and watered religiously when he got home from work. Several of our neighbors benefited from his green thumb.  

Summer of 1944. My Grandmother, Minnie Blair, holds Ricky while I stick out my tongue and Mickey prepares to spit.

Grandma visited to see her new grandson, Ricky, and to say good-bye to her youngest son as he went off to war. I cannot begin to grasp the agony of her conflicted feelings as she sits with new life in her lap and contemplates the dangers and possibility of the death of her own dear son, but I think it is written on her face. That year marks the beginning of the time she seemed like an old woman to me. 

My father, me, and my father's brother, Bill Blair, Summer 1944

Uncle Bill came to visit just before leaving for his assignment in the South Pacific as an Army Air Corps B-24 co-pilot. He returned safely after flying 49 missions in the "Red-Headed Woman." As of this writing, he is still living in Pasadena, California and now enjoys WWII memories with many of his fellow WWII vets who meet together regularly. 

In the picture above, my father patriotically smoked a Lucky Strike from a package adorned with a red circle instead of the older-style pack with a green circle, because, according to the slogan, "Lucky green has gone to war." In front of the fence grew asters, zinnias, and cosmos, while behind the fence were dahlias, more products of my father's prodigious gardening skills. 

My father never went to war for reasons that remain vague to me. I remember hearing something about "flat feet" and "too many kids," His contribution was serving as the neighborhood Air Raid Warden, which as nearly as I can recall, meant when the sirens sounded and there was a blackout, he patrolled the neighborhood, wearing a special vest and a helmet, pulling a canister of water mounted on wheels while checking to make sure everyone had drawn their blackout curtains. It was never clear to me what he was supposed to do with the water, but I knew it was important.

My parents made another contribution by hanging out in bars (Oscar's down on Park Boulevard), drinking with war wounded, and bringing maimed service men home for a meal. They all seemed to be missing a limb. I remember one with a black glove over a useless rigid prosthetic hand, another had a claw he could hold a cigarette with. One who was missing a leg walked with crutches while his pinned-up empty pant leg swung back and forth. Some of the intact service men were mess cooks stationed at Camp Shoemaker. They were a convenient source of scarce and rationed food. Butter, sugar, and eggs were available in our home while the corner grocery shelves were empty.

Ice skating is all mixed up in my memories of the war years. I know my parents were both good skaters and enjoyed ice dancing. My mother was particularly fond of a sailor named Matt who was a wonderful skater. In later years, my father, perhaps after having had too much to drink, told me more about Matt. Apparently, he and my mother intended to run away together, taking my brother Mickey and leaving me behind. The rent money was missing around that time, I don't know if it was part of the runaway scheme, or if any one our guests had stolen it. My mother also revealed a dark secret years later while under the influence. She told me she had an abortion after the birth of Mickey and before Ricky. That would have placed it around 1942-1943, the same time she was planning to run away. I don't know how to connect the dots in these scant pieces of information, but I do know they cast a long shadow over their marriage.

Knowledge of these secrets reinforced feelings that had been developing all my life. I saw my mother as flawed, weak, and flighty: my father as a long-suffering noble hero. And I felt unloved by my mother, thought she saw me as competition and perhaps, I was. My father understood me at a level she could not. I held these feelings for most of my adult life and have only recently come to challenge and change them. In my later years my mother emerges in my mind as something of a martyred heroine.

This Old House

These reflections on my childhood are true, subject to the frailty of memory.

Before setting out on my great adventure, I took a trip to Oakland to revisit some scenes from my childhood. 

This old house, built in 1914 at 570 Athol Avenue, Oakland, California is the warehouse for many of my childhood memories. I lived there from 1944 until 1952, from when I was five years old until the summer I was thirteen.

I slept in the house during the night, but most of my memories are outside in the backyard, in the streets, on the sidewalks, roaming the neighborhood, and beyond. We were free-range children. I don't know if that was the norm for the day, or if it was because my mother was always busy with the baby -- I was the oldest of five children, so there was always a baby. Perhaps she was settling into her alcoholism, or just, as she said, "Too nervous to have us underfoot." But, as nearly as I can recall, unless we were at school, it was raining, or we were sick, we were turned out to play.

Sometimes we played in the backyard. My father was very clever at all kinds of building, and made our backyard into a great playground. There was a nice lawn, beautiful flower beds, a 15 x 20 foot playhouse constructed as soundly as any house with cement foundations, wood framing on 16" centers, solid wood sub floors over sturdy beams, an eight foot ceiling and a pitched roof with exposed rafters. It served later residents as a studio, He had constructed a swing set from salvaged pipes, and an enormous sandbox filled with sand liberated from the glass factory where he worked as an architectural engineer. When glass furnaces were rebuilt, used bricks became available for reuse and showed up in our backyard as a barbecue pit on our patio (pronounced PAH-tee-oh, by him).

But, the front yard, the streets, the neighborhood and beyond were also part of our range. In the front yard, we played jacks, or rock school on the front steps. In rock school, one kid was chosen to be teacher and stood in front of the students who sat on the steps. The teacher hid a small rock in one of her closed fists. The students started in Kindergarten on the bottom step and if they guessed which hand held the rock they would be promoted. The first kid to the top of the steps became the teacher and the game started over. I loved rock school.

The street was great for jump rope, kite-flying, hide-and-seek, kick the can, Red Rover, Mother May I, Simon Says, and an infinite variety of tag games, like freeze tag, blind man's bluff, and stoop tag. On really hot days, we liked to squat down in the middle of the street and pop the tar bubbles that formed. We would also pull up a patch of the sticky stuff and chew it like gum. If we were really lucky, someone in the neighborhood would be having a roof repaired and there would be a truck pulling a tar pot parked in front of their house. We could then get a fresh, "clean," chunk of tar to chew on. If we got thirsty, we drank from the hose, anybody's hose, in the front yard and we might accidentally squirt one of our friends.

We knew all the neighbors, if not by name, by ethnicity: the Brazilians on the corner, the Filipinos next door, the Jews on the other corner, the Chinese on the other side of the block, the Greeks who ran the grocery down the street. Mrs. McCarthy could always be depended on for a cookie if we knocked on her door and asked; Mr. Green always called his car his "machine." The Amundsen's across the street still had an ice box and had ice delivered twice a week. If we were out front when the ice man came, we could get a chunk of ice to suck on. And the Lukes had the first television on the block, making their live-in granddaughters, Sandra and Claudia, very popular.

Large Queen Anne style Victorian -- missing witches hat tower roof

The architecture of the neighborhood was eclectic. Older Victorians stood next to Maybeckian shingled houses, Craftsmen-style cottages, '30s deco and Spanish-style houses filled in some of the gaps and a '50s moderne occupied the last-to-be-built corner lot.

Maybeck-style

More on the old neighborhood tomorrow.