An archive of posts by Lillian about cooking, quilting, knitting, and memories of family and the past. Open her cupboard and discover the treasures she stored there.
As I celebrate my 81st birthday, I look back on some notes I made in 1983 – 30 years have passed, unbelievable!
Tomorrow I’ll be 51 years old. Life for 50 years has been at times joyful, frustrating, exasperating, full of hope, full of despair, happy and peaceful, exciting, full of promise, loving, surprising (sometimes amazing), full of achievement and fulfillment, always holding the idea that I didn’t know what wonderful things were yet to come.
I think of other years in the “1” category – when I was 11 and in the 6th grade – the girls at school somehow found out my birthday was coming up and when I went to school on that day, each of them had brought me a little gift. I don’t think any of the gifts were new – just things they had found at home. I remember a Grimm’s fairytale book, a picture of the Sacred Heart – little things. I was completely surprised and it was especially nice since that was my last year at that school.
Lillian at age 11 – 1943
At 21, it was a very special birthday because I was expecting my first baby. Grandma gave me my last winter coat as she had promised for every year until I was an adult. She also gave me a camera which I was able to use for years while the kids were little.
Lillian at age 21 – 1953
At 31, we were in our own home in Oakley and the three oldest kids were 3, 7 and 10. I remember that particular year counting off all the many reasons I was so much better off at 31 than I had been at 30…maybe trying to rationalize for being over 30.
At 41, it would have been the first year we had our dog, May, on my birthday and that was the year my three-year-old youngest daughter made a birthday cake for me with her brother’s help and it seems to me that May got part of it.
So, now we’re at 51 and looking ahead. L – September 29, 1983
In the 30 years that have passed, I lost my husband, mother and sister, but I have my four children, a daughter-in-law and son-in-law, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. One son lives with his family in St. Louis, but two of the children and their families live in the area and my oldest daughter has come back to live with me.
Of course, May, the dog, has been gone for awhile, but in the passing years there were several dogs plus a couple of cats – and now, we have little Addie to keep us company.
Addie and friend – 2013
I’m happy and grateful that I have reached the age of 81 and still look forward to good things yet to come.
Throughout the years while I was raising my four kids (beginning in 1954), I kept a journal where I periodically made notes about holidays, school, vacations, etc. As an occasion arises where I think one of my journal entries would be pertinent, I’m going to post it just as I wrote or typed it back in the day (except for an explanatory note or correction of a typo).
The children will be known here by the nicknames their grandfather used when they were toddlers: The oldest daughter will be Newsie (because she was as good as a newspaper for finding out the latest happenings), the oldest son is Bar (because he called Grandpa’s truck Bar and Grandpa called him Bar), the youngest son is Jackson, and the youngest daughter is Shanty (as in Shanty-Boat).
Summertime and the living is pretty hectic most of the time. The days are filled with sounds of kids out playing – riding squeaky bicycles, fighting over possession of the sand pile, hitting baseballs off the garage roof, playing “mudders and fadders”, slamming screen doors, protesting the boys’ teasing.
Jackson and the water hose
The days are filled with the sights of wet bathing suits, soggy footmarks on the floor, barefooted and bare-chested boys, tan and healthy looking faces, dust two inches thick in the backyard and grass two inches long in the front, blooming petunias and marigolds, a veritable forest in the back hollow with lush trees, squirrels, birds, chipmunks and a family of raccoons.
The days are filled with the smells of summer – the harsh chlorine smell of a carful of wet kids coming home from the pool, the smoky fragrance of wieners and hamburgers on the grill, the smell that permeates the neighborhood when someone bakes a cake, the fresh fragrance in the air after the grass has been mown.
Lillian and Penny, the dog
Summer is filled with knothole games and the undefeated Sweeneys in their green and white uniforms, the much defeated Reds whose progress is followed avidly on TV and transistor, the harness horses at the night races and soon at the fairs, the neighborhood pools swarming with kids, the parks filled with families and picnic baskets, the roads overflowing with people and paraphernalia.
A knothole game at Oakley Park
Life is hectic, true, and fun and as the song says, “lazy, hazy and crazy”! L – July 11, 1964
1965 Sweeney team – Frank is in the second row, second from right hand side
In 1965, my oldest son, Frank, was 9 years old and his one desire was to play baseball. His father was a coach on a very successful and competitive knothole team sponsored by the Sweeney car dealership. He got on the team and got a uniform (probably because of his dad’s coaching job) but rarely got in a game and served mostly as a batboy. This is my journal entry for July 26, 1965.
“Frankie gets dressed right after breakfast and takes off. Sometimes he goes to Oakley Park by himself and has a one-man ballgame, without bat or ball. He spends most of his time running bases and sliding – his forte – and his clothes are so dusty he leaves a trail behind him. He goes around with a ball in his hand most of the time.
He loves baseball – his favorite is Frankie Robinson (Cincinnati Reds) – and he wears number 20 on all his uniforms and even draws it on his regular shirts if I don’t watch him. He’s never too tired to go to the knothole games and is perfectly happy retrieving bats and helmets if he doesn’t get in the game. The first game that the Sweeneys played, they lost and we were all pretty low about it, but Frankie said, ‘Well, what do you think! We wouldn’t have lost the game if I had been in it!’ He wears his green and white Sweeney uniform with complete pride and confidence and doesn’t seem at all perturbed that he doesn’t get in the game until they’re several runs ahead. 7/26/65”
In 1966, Frankie didn’t make the Sweeney team but in 1967, a Cub Scout league was formed where every boy was on a team and had a chance to play in every game, where winning was not as important as having the boys learn some skills and have some fun. Frankie’s team was managed by a Cincinnati Police Sergeant (last row center) and one of the coaches was his father (last row left). Frankie is #4 in the second row. Apparently, Frankie Robinson’s #20 uniform wasn’t available.
It was so much fun that summer with the mothers sitting on the sidelines in big straw hats, watching all of the boys do the best they could (one mother noticed that her son was chasing butterflies in center field instead of focusing on fly balls), and stopping for ice cream cones on the way home – win or lose.
My sister on her bike in front of the red brick house, with Gotham Place in the background
From 1943 to 1950, I lived with my parents and younger sister in a little red brick house on Gotham Place in the East End section of Cincinnati. To the east was the gas works, to the west was the water works, to the north was Eastern Avenue and to the south, the Ohio River. The red brick was the very last house on Gotham Place, then came a garage and then came the riverbank.
Shirley and Lillian – last day of school, 1947
In the seven years we lived there, we had to completely move out of the house three times during flooding. In the summertime, however, the Ohio River was beautiful and filled with pleasure boats and happy people. Several times a day, the Island Queen steamboat made the trip from the downtown river landing to Coney Island and back, playing lively calliope music all the way.
The Island Queen
On a typical Sunday morning in the summertime in the 1940s, my sister and I would wake up in our second floor bedroom and have the leisure of not hurrying so much as we might on a school day. The room was fairly small, as were all of the four rooms in the house. The bathroom adjoined this room and the stairs leading downstairs were along one wall. The odd thing about this room is that there was a door that led nowhere. In the warm weather, Mother tacked up screening material but we still had to be careful that we didn’t walk through it and take a big step down one floor to the yard below. My sister and I slept together, as we always had, and at this time had a tan metal double bed. There wasn’t too much else in the room that I recall – probably a chest of drawers of some kind. Linoleum was on all of the floors of the house, due partly to economics and partly to the fact that the river covered the first floor quite often and had gotten to the second floor in 1945.
Mother would be in the kitchen downstairs, getting breakfast. On Sunday we would have pancakes with homemade brown sugar syrup. During the week we ate cold cereal or oatmeal, but on weekends we enjoyed Mother’s pancakes, made from scratch We all preferred the homemade syrup and I particularly liked the white sugar syrup which Mother made when she was out of brown sugar.
Mother
We would put on our Sunday dresses, which were only slightly better than what we wore to school. Mother prided herself on keeping us supplied with pretty, homemade cotton dresses which fit perfectly because she fiddled with them until they did, no matter what kind of odd seams and darts had to be taken. We would put on our nice Sunday shoes and wait for Mother to fix our hair. I had long hair at the time which Mother put into broad finger curls, my sister sometimes had curls and sometimes pigtails because her hair was fine, thin and had no natural curl.
Shirley and Lillian in the Victory Garden (Water Works in the background)
We walked out the front door, through the trellis covered with pink tea roses, and started up the cobblestone street toward Eastern Avenue. We might have passed other people walking to St. Rose Church because most of the people on our street were Catholic. It was 6 or 7 blocks to our First Federated Church, but we both liked walking and avoided streetcars or friendly rides from neighbors.
First Federated Church was a nice little stone building which had a flight of stairs leading up from the street. It was an old church, a combined Methodist/Presbyterian, and we considered ourselves Methodist because Mother was raised Methodist. The hymnals were both Presbyterian and Methodist, and they alternated the hymns during the service. There were pretty stained glass windows, nice pews and the fascinating holders for tiny vials of grape juice for the people who took communion on the rare occasions they offered it.
The choir would file in, wearing their black shiny robes with white collars. Julia, the ancient and sweet organist, was banging away on the nice pipe organ for the processional. She was a trained musician but still played something in the style of my grandma, not being too concerned if she hit the wrong keys. The choir was a group of neighborhood women, none of whom had a particularly good voice.
The minister was a nice looking young man who had a tall, thin, gaunt wife who didn’t appear to match him at all. Their daughter was my age and they had two sons, one a cute toddler who gave his mother fits. The sermons weren’t too long or too tedious, but everything in church was tedious for my sister. She twitched, scratched, moved her feet, did everything I thought was unseemly in church and I was constantly correcting her. But we both loved to sing the hymns and I always sang the harmony, although probably too softly for anybody to notice.
My sister’s wedding at First Federated in 1955
After church, we’d make the long trip back home and by then I was absolutely famished. Mother would be frying chicken with that wonderful smell filling the house. There would be mashed potatoes with cream gravy, maybe creamed peas or another canned vegetable (my father didn’t care much for vegetables), and as a salad – some lettuce on a plate with sliced tomatoes topped with mayonnaise. I’m not sure that anybody except my father had the salad – I didn’t care for the mix and particularly I didn’t want the mayonnaise. For dessert we usually had pie – mostly cream pies with a small amount of meringue stretched out over several pies. Mother never seemed to have enough eggs and was always skimpy with them in her recipes.
After dinner, we might help with dishes or not, depending on Mother’s mood. Then my sister and I would have the afternoon to just spend together in the make-believe world we had invented with a lot of teenage characters, male and female. Or we might get together with some school friends and make the long walk up Eastern Avenue to the Jackson Theater to see a second-run film, a serial, a cartoon and a newsreel. Then, we’d make the long trip back as the sun was starting to go down.
In the evening, Mother brought out the dinner leftovers – a few pieces of chicken, mashed potato pancakes, and pie. We’d eat in the darkening kitchen while listening to Jack Benny or Fred Allen on the radio. The rest of the evening was spent quietly writing, coloring, or doing jigsaw puzzles while listening to the radio.
By nine o’clock my mother and sister were always ready for bed, but I was never sleepy. Most of the time I was allowed to stay up and quietly read along with my father until I felt I could fall asleep.
My memories of those Sundays are always of peace and quiet. If there had ever been an uproar over something, that unhappy memory has faded over the years.
Daddy, Mother, Lillian, Shirley in front of 247 Gotham Place
I recently posted something about a 1940s era junkman who visited my neighborhood and how my mother always looked for old pots and pans which she would repair with little pieces of metal. My daughter found this card of Mendets on eBay and bought it for me. This is exactly what my mother used, except sometimes she bought them in a small box.
Mendets were patented in the early 1900s and the dress/hairstyle of the lady on the card makes me think this might be from the 1930s. The back of the card has instructions as well as suggesting some other uses such as repairing a hot water bottle, using on campfire utensils and even shows a lady perched precariously on a ladder repairing a gutter (“Saved the cost of a tinsmith”).
Until World War II was over, I believe every pot, pan and kettle in our kitchen had a Mendet or two helping to give a bit more life.
Journal entry – May 9, 1954: Nancy was two weeks old on Mother’s Day. She celebrated by waking up at 3:30 AM and staying awake until 6:00 AM. I accompanied her. (Note: I remember that she was lying in bed beside me, eyes wide open and trying so hard to talk.) Her Daddy bought a box of chocolates for her to give me and a card signed, “Daddy and Nancy”.
I followed that first celebration with three more children and many more happy Mother’s Days.
The popularity of American Pickers on TV reminded me of the “rag pickers” of the 1930-40s era in Cincinnati. There was the occasional horse-drawn cart that rumbled through the streets of our small working-class East End neighborhood with a picker shouting in a sing-song style, “Any rags or old iron”. They were the pickers looking to buy; in our neighborhood we also had a picker who wanted to sell. On hot summer afternoons, a big grey 1930s Packard would turn from Eastern Avenue and make its way down the slope on Gotham Place toward the river bank.
My sister in front of our house with the beautiful pink tea roses. Gotham Place is shown in the background
A tall older man with a day’s growth of beard would maneuver the car to a clear spot in the large area outside our little red brick house and set up shop. The car doors would be opened and from every house on the narrow street women and children would hurry out the door. Mothers would call out, “The Ragman is here” and everybody would gather around the car to see what treasures might be available that day.
The Ragman drove a very raggedy version of this car
I never learned what the man’s real name was, but he made his rounds of the better homes in Hyde Park, Indian Hill, Mt. Lookout, Mt. Washington, etc., to pick up castoffs which he sold at very low prices on his various stops throughout the East End. Customers would pick up an item and ask, “How much?” The Ragman would think a second or two and give a reasonable price which we could take or leave. There was a constant stream of questions and answers going back and forth between customer and seller.
Daddy, Mother, Lillian and Shirley – pictured in the big area in front of our house where the Ragman used to park
There was something for everybody – pots and pans, dishes, glassware, clothes, toys, and my favorite – movie magazines. For a nickel I could buy 3 or 4 slightly outdated publications and read all about Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Lon McAllister and all the other “stars of the silver screen”. There might also be an occasional Seventeen magazine which was interesting for a pre-teenager to read to get news of the latest styles of clothes and tips on dating.
My mother tended to pick up old pots and pans which could be made new again with her addition of little round metal pieces that she always had on hand to patch worn-out utensils. My little sister might buy a small doll or toy. One year she bought a doll’s china tea set with a teapot and creamer that had pouring spouts shaped like elephants’ trunks. I had been irritable with her when I came home from school that day and Mother said, “Oh, be patient with her. She worked all afternoon cleaning up a special gift for your birthday.” It truly was a special gift – I wish I still had it.
My sister and I in our Victory Garden. In the background is the Cincinnati Water Works
These were the early to mid-1940s World War II days before television and shopping malls. It was a wonderful treat to be able to do some shopping almost in our front yard on the banks of the Ohio River on a clear blue summer day.
Is it any wonder that my favorite stores now are antique malls and thrift shops?
Throughout the years while I was raising my four kids (beginning in 1954), I kept a journal where I periodically made notes about holidays, school, vacations, etc. As an occasion arises where I think one of my journal entries would be pertinent, I’m going to post it just as I wrote or typed it back in the day (except for an explanatory note or correction of a typo).
The children will be known here by the nicknames their grandfather used when they were toddlers: The oldest daughter will be Newsie (because she was as good as a newspaper for finding out the latest happenings), the oldest son is Bar (because he called Grandpa’s truck Bar and Grandpa called him Bar), the youngest son is Jackson, and the youngest daughter is Shanty (as in Shanty-Boat).
Bar and NewsieJackson
“Jackson saw a plump robin on the front lawn today and with the confidence of childhood announced: ‘There’s a robin. It’s spring!’ And I’ll have to agree with him that the miracle of spring has come to Maple Drive. The sky is a pale clear blue, serving well as the background for tender green buds and leaflets appearing on so many of the trees. Each lawn is the fresh green of spring and the gorgeous color compensates for the bare patches of earth. Daffodils, dandelions and violets are blooming, and the tulips are budding. The leaves of the iris are straight and sure and reassuring. The temperature is 80 degrees this afternoon and the kids are wearing shorts and crop-tops, and Bar and his friend Danny are tossing a baseball. Our dog Penny ran with great glee over newly-seeded lawns and through flower beds, and dug a foot-deep hole in the dusty patch beside the back porch. Newsie and her friend Rosanne came in with nosegays of violets, dandelions and large leaves, picked in the hollow and carefully placed in a yellow plastic cup on the refrigerator.”
Precious memories of a spring almost 50 years ago.
Throughout the years while I was raising my four kids (beginning in 1954), I kept a journal where I periodically made notes about holidays, school, vacations, etc. As an occasion arises where I think one of my journal entries would be pertinent, I’m going to post it just as I wrote or typed it back in the day (except for an explanatory note or correction of a typo).
In 1952, when my husband and I returned home from his brief stint in the Navy, my parents offered to let us rent the upstairs portion of their two-family house at the rate of $12/month (cheap, even in 1952). By 1961, I had 3 children who were 6, 4 and 10 months – we had outgrown the apartment and were looking for an affordable house that was big enough to accommodate our growing family. While the oldest girl was in school, I had been on numerous outings with the real estate agent, grasping the four-year-old by one hand and carrying a very heavy baby in a snowsuit on one hip. Nothing we had seen was right for us. Then, one February Saturday morning, an ad in the paper caught my eye – and we were on our way to our home on Maple Drive in the Oakley suburb of Cincinnati.
The picture and the following description are from the 1961 real estate flyer. (Click on picture to enlarge.)
“If all goes well with the building and loan, I think we have finally started to buy our own home. On a rainy Saturday morning, I looked through the ‘House for Sale’ ads quickly and suddenly ‘Oakley – $11,250’ leaped at me from the page. I could hardly wait to call the real estate office, and was even more excited when I heard it described. It was in a driving rainstorm that Frank, the three kids and I turned onto Maple Drive. At once, I felt it was too good to be true – such a pretty, quiet, dead-end street, with well-kept homes. Then we saw the number 4108. ‘Oh, it’s a shingle!’ Frank said disgustedly, but then we noticed the shingle was only a small amount of trim on the gable and the rest was gleaming white frame. There was a nice lawn in front and some short pine-like bushes close to the house. Cement steps led up to a large front porch and on the small second-floor windows were green and white aluminum awnings. A driveway at the side led to a two-car garage and in back was a small fenced yard, with more property going over the hill.
L. – February 26, 1961″
My parents had been so good to us and I hated to leave, but we needed more room and to have a house with a nice yard for the kids was just a dream come true. We added another baby girl in 1970 and lived there for 21 years.
Throughout the years while I was raising my four kids (beginning in 1954), I kept a journal where I periodically made notes about holidays, school, vacations, etc. As an occasion arises where I think one of my journal entries would be pertinent, I’m going to post it just as I wrote or typed it back in the day (except for an explanatory note or correction of a typo).
The children will be known here by the nicknames their grandfather used when they were toddlers: The oldest daughter will be Newsie (because she was as good as a newspaper for finding out the latest happenings), the oldest son is Bar (because he called Grandpa’s truck Bar and Grandpa called him Bar), the youngest son is Jackson, and the youngest daughter is Shanty (as in Shanty-Boat).
In January, 1964, we were a family of five: mother, father, 9-year-old daughter Newsie, 7-year-old son Bar, and 3-year-old son Jackson. We lived in a 1922 two-story home in the Oakley suburb of Cincinnati with a nice backyard for the kids to play in. Jackson was prone to the croup and didn’t get to go out and play in the big snow that greeted us on the first day of January, 1964.
Maple Drive greeted 1964 wearing a thick blanket of white as seven inches of snow covered Cincinnati early on New Year’s Day. The street is rutted deeply with tread marks and the cars are all wearing top-pieces of snow which occasionally tilt rakishly on the side as the sun grows warmer. Most of the walks are neatly shoveled and salted so the kids troop gleefully across lawns and up the middle of the roads. Our kids got an extra two days of vacation due to the snow and showed their appreciation by wallowing in it all day. As a surprise for Jackson and me, Newsie and Bar fashioned a plump snowman with all the trimmings—limb arms, rock eyes and buttons, plaid scarf and Bar’s green leather cap. Jackson can look through the dining room window and see friend snowman staring back at him from the yard, which is pocked with footmarks of various sizes.”
L – January 2, 1964
Jackson had six more years to be the baby before another daughter came along and I love to read in my notes where the two older children went out of their way to surprise and please their little brother. Happy memories of almost 50 years ago.
LILLIAN'S CUPBOARD 