When my mother took me to school in Phila- delphia for the first time I remember I was wearing a boy’s cap. Why I don’t know. But it is the kind of thing a little girl remembers. Mrs. Oldt was my teacher and I was in third grade. I loved the swings in the school yard and would pump them as high as I could. During summer vacation, in the schoolyard, when we lived at 30th and Dauphin, I put on skits based on fairy tales for the neighborhood kids. I would teach all the kids their various parts and if they didn’t learn them fast enough they were out and I would do all the parts. Once I was out walking with one of the young women who cleaned for my mother when she started throwing rocks at the school building
THE PIT AND THE PIANO When we lived on Natrona Street the country was still in the worst economic depression it had ever experienced. Everyone was very poor, both food and jobs were scarce. My father opened a garage on the corners of 30th Street and Dauphin Street. He serviced cars and I remember the pit over which the cars parked while he worked on them from underneath. He also had a little store attached to the garage where he sold oil products for the cars. Later we would move to a house next to the garage. My mother was always very supportive of my father and she would often help pump gas or clean the customers’ car windows, check the oil or inflate the tires. Years later is when she worked in the factory. Our fami-
and actually broke some windows. I don’t know why she did it but to me as a child it was an astonishing act. W h e n I think back on the back-breaking work that the women who worked in our house did,
ly doctor was Dr. Koppel, he was right out of medical school, and was a customer at my father’s garage. My father would have him check us occasionally while his car was being serviced. Dr. Koppel charged a dollar for his services. Once when he checked us over I remember him saying about my cous- in, Ruth, “Now this is
I put on skits based on fairy tales for the neighborhood kids. I would teach all the kids their various parts and if they didn’t learn them fast enough they were out and I would do all the parts.
with all the cleaning and ironing, and with fami- lies of their own, and I consider how we kids never thought anything of it and just threw our clothes around as if they ironed themselves, it bothers me. We should have known better. On my ninth birthday Aunt Katie had a double birthday party for me and my sister, Pearl. All my friends were invited. One neighborhood girl appeared at the door and asked to come in; when I saw she had no present in her hands I simply said, “No,” and closed the door. Aunt Katie rushed in to allow the girl into the party. My best present was from my friend Shirley who brought me a twen- ty-five cent paint set that I loved. Aunt Katie, my mothers youngest sister, was married at the time to her first husband whose name was Kringle. He was George’s father. Kate had George when she was sixteen. Her second
what I call a healthy girl.” Made me wonder what I was – I must have been very thin and undernour- ished looking. I know it is hard to believe but in those days doctors came to the house when you were sick rather than you going to them. My mother always had someone to help her with ironing and cleaning the house. I remem- ber she paid them $4.00 a week. Our clothes were always ironed and starched so beautifully that they could stand up by themselves. Our furniture was just the bare necessities but poor as we were my mother got us a piano and a piano teacher named Grace Stein who instilled a love of music and play- ing in my brother, Marvin, and me. She was a wonderful teacher and we were very fond of her. Each lesson was fifty cents.
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