Nostalgia – LILLIAN'S CUPBOARD

My Radio Days – 1930s-40s

By the time I was born in 1932, radio was available, but not to people like my family who had no money for frivolous things, sometimes barely enough for necessities like food. My father was always fascinated with radio and by the time we had moved to a one room flat in 1935 and he had a job with the WPA, making enough to feed his family, he started building crystal sets. As he progressed in the WPA, going from the lowliest laborer to time-keeper, we came up in the world and moved to a two-room flat and had a pretty nice radio. I can remember one playing while we sat at the kitchen table in the morning. I liked the jingle that four young guys sang (lyrics the way I remember them):

    Shine your shoes and you’ll wear a smile
   Shine your shoes and you’ll be in style
   The sun shines east and the sun shines west
   But Griffin polish shines the best.
   Some folks are not particular
   How they look around their feet,
   But if they wore shoes upon their heads,
   They’d make sure their shoes looked neat.
   So, keep your shoes shining all the time,
   All the time, it’s the time to shine
   When you hear this familiar chime (ding, dong, ding)
   It’s time to shine.

Forty years later, I found out it was the young Williams brothers singing the jingle, including the youngest, Andy Williams, who would become one of my favorite singers in the 1960s.

We listened to the Farm Hour, with reports on grain futures and cattle sales, along with weather reports. The broadcast came from a model-farm type operation and they always talked to the farmer about what he was going to do that day on the farm and sometimes to his wife about her cooking and housekeeping tips.

Mother kept the radio on all day while she did her housework, favoring the country music of Mother Maybelle and the Carter Family, Cowboy Copas, and Mac Wiseman, learning songs that she later sang to us. The sadder the ballad, the better, as far as Mother was concerned. She never complained, never cried, always had a pleasant smile on her face, but she loved the most doleful, tragic ballads where people died and roses twined around their tombstones.

My father liked sports broadcasts – baseball, football and the boxing matches. I can still hear the tinny sound of the announcer from Madison Square Gardens in New York, announcing the name of Joe Louis and his unlucky opponent. We all listened to the news broadcasts and shows like Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, and Lux Radio Theater.

Lillian and Shirley - 1940 — Lillian and Shirley – 1940

Just before World War II, we could afford to move to a four-room apartment and my father managed to get a wonderful radio that had a green eye that vibrated and pulsed with each sound coming out of it. The radio was glorious and my little sister and I loved to watch the magic eye do its gyrations. It was on this radio that we heard the news on a wintry Sunday that Pearl Harbor had been bombed and we were now in the middle of World War II. Throughout the war and for several years afterwards, the radio continued to be the major form of information and entertainment in American homes. Our family gathered in the living room around the radio, everybody doing something besides just listening – my parents reading, my sister and I lying on the floor with puzzles or coloring books or paper dolls.

On Saturday nights, we usually listened to a barn dance show, probably the precursor of Grand Ole Opry, and heard someone “calling Rattler from the barn – Huyh, Rattler, Huyh, Huyh” and some guy saying, “I’m going back to the wagon, folks – these shoes is killing me”.

Shirley and Lillian - 1943 — Shirley and Lillian – 1943

I can remember sitting in the kitchen with the radio playing Fred Allen while we ate a supper of leftovers from a big Sunday dinner – fried chicken, potato pancakes made from the mashed potatoes, the remaining meringue-covered chocolate or coconut cream pie.

Of course, we loved The Shadow – “Who knows what evil lurks in the thoughts of man — The Shadow knows!”; Bull Drummond; Your Hit Parade and the latest song by Frank Sinatra (a young, skinny kid at that time); The Lone Ranger and Tonto; Little Orphan Annie and Jack Armstrong and so many others. We always wound up each New Year’s Eve listening to Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians.

Radio was so important to us until one day in 1946 when figures appeared on a tiny screen in my father’s workshop as he built our first television set and radio was never a very big deal again.

Television on Gotham Place – 1940s

My sister, Shirley, and I are standing in our front yard in 1949. I was a junior at Withrow High School and Shirley was in the 8th grade at Highlands (Cincinnati). Mother made our “Dottie Mack”* dresses

The first time I ever heard the word “television” was during World War II when my father showed me an article in one of his radio magazines about this new invention which would change the world after the war was over. I was interested (anything my father showed me was interesting), but I didn’t hold out too much hope for it – a lot of things were promised “after the war”.

Then one day in 1945, the war was over and within a year, my father was in the workshop he had built on the back end of the porch of our little red brick house on Gotham Place, fiddling around with trying to make a television set. He had always been interested in radios and my image of him throughout the 1930s-40s was of him reading a radio hobbyist’s magazine. He had made small radios and was a HAM operator during the war. One hot Saturday afternoon in 1946, we were called to the workshop to see a screen about 5×5 inches and on it was the rather faint image of two men wrestling. It was the first time my father had been able to access one of the few local broadcasts.

My father and mother standing in front of the back porch where my father had his workshop

I understand there were kits available around that time to build a primitive TV set, but my father built his from parts he accumulated as he could afford them. He continued to work and finally built his own set – very rough – all of the innards showed and the small screen just sat there without any kind of cabinet, but it was magnificent because there was a moving, talking picture on it. We were among the first residences in Cincinnati to own a television set. He eventually put a huge magnifying glass in front of the tiny screen to make the picture bigger and on Saturday nights he drug out his masterpiece to set in the front yard of the red brick where the folks on Gotham Place could bring their folding chairs and sit clustered around, watching wrestling. By the following summer, most of the families had their own TV sets.

My sister and I are standing in front of the gate where my father would set up the TV set for the neighbors

The most popular show at the beginning was wrestling and little by little other programs were added, although the day was far from being fully scheduled. When an actual live broadcast wasn’t on the screen, there was a kaleidoscope test pattern so people could adjust and readjust their sets to hopefully get it right before a real show came on. I also remember some kind of an Indian head image with rays going out from it to help with getting the sets adjusted. My father ran for the set every time any kind of image was being broadcast and fooled with it continually.

Eventually, we bought a small TV set with a 7-inch screen which required a humongous aerial on the roof and a lot of adjusting with that, but aesthetically the little cabinet looked a lot better in our living room. There were still problems with “snow” – a hazy snowstorm that appeared over the picture; getting “out of synch” – the screen rolling around and around; the adjusting of the black and white screen; the logistics of getting everybody in a position to see the tiny screen – but there were never any serious complaints (except from my father who had to fix everything) since everybody was just enraptured by the sight of that screen and the wonder of it.

A television set similar to the one we owned — A television set similar to the one we bought

Programming continued to improve. In 1947, the first Cincinnati Reds baseball game was televised and for the first time in my life, I skipped school to come home and watch the afternoon broadcast. I had taken the streetcar to Withrow High School but got off and got on another one coming back home so I could see that game. It was a little disappointing. I guess I had thought even on the small screen there would be close-ups such as there were in newsreels, but they apparently only had a couple of cameras in the stands and we got nothing but long shots. This was before the zoom lens that at least brought home plate into focus, but I was still glad I got to see that piece of history.

Sporting events were always big on television, and lots of local shows – Midwestern Hayride; cooking shows, Ruth Lyons (a show for housewives by a Cincinnati legend), news broadcasts, comedy shows, Bride & Groom with local star Bob Braun singing “Oh, Promise Me”, etc. A favorite was Paul Dixon’s Make-Believe Bandstand with pantomiming to music by Paul, Dottie Mack and Bob Braun. Dottie Mack was a young, pretty model who was an expert at pantomiming and had a gorgeous wardrobe. For Christmas in 1948, Mother made my sister and me matching outfits based on one of Dottie’s – black faille skirt and tie, white blouse and rhinestone pin. (*See picture, above)

Eventually, we got feeds from the networks with big time broadcasts like Show of Shows with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coco, live theater, Ed Sullivan’s show, soap operas and variety shows. My father usually scoffed at the variety shows, saying they were just a bunch of vaudeville acts – and he was right, but most of us had never seen a vaudeville act and we thought they were wonderful: Milton Berle, Burns & Allen, Ed Wynn, and scores of animal, juggling and miscellaneous circus acts.

In a few short years after the war had ended, television was truly the marvel my father had said it would be.

I'm standing with my mother and sister at the back porch where my father built his workshop and first TV set — I’m standing with my mother and sister at the back porch where my father built his workshop and our first TV set

Click pictures to enlarge.

Summertime Memories from 1964

: Jackson, Newsie, Dad and Bar

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.

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.

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.

Life is hectic, true, and fun and as the song says, “lazy, hazy and crazy”! L – July 11, 1964

Here’s a 1963 version of Nat King Cole singing about the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.

Note: It would be 6 more years before Shanty came along to join us in our summer fun.

Click picture to enlarge. The colored pictures are from a home movie and not of the best quality.

Summer on East Court Street in the 1940s

Shirley and Lillian - in our WAC uniforms — Shirley and Lillian – in our WAC uniforms

Summer on East Court Street (downtown Cincinnati) in the early 1940’s was hot and devoid of trees and shade, but my little sister and I were happy there and grateful to have a nice big third-floor apartment next door to my favorite aunt, Mabel, and her kids. We didn’t have a yard to play in – rather a big flat-top roof with plenty of space, provided you didn’t get too near the edge. To visit my aunt, we would climb out of our kitchen window onto the roof, walk a few feet to the portion that connected with my aunt’s apartment, jump down and go in her kitchen window. It was very convenient and much faster and safer than going down three flights of stairs and onto a busy city street.

Aunt Mabel and cousin Buddy. Vine Street going into Over-the-Rhine in the distance

Aunt Mabel and cousin Carol on the roof. Central Parkway is in right hand background.

One summer my sister and I had a large wooden box on the roof and Mother let us plant radish seeds. We were fascinated, especially when we got an invasion of caterpillars and we spent one entire day watching, picking up, putting down furry black and yellow caterpillars. That night we both dreamed we had fuzzy critters crawling all over us and I don’t recall ever bothering with the “container” garden again.

There was no swimming pool nearby, but sometimes Mother let us go out in a summer shower and splash around in the puddles on the city pavement. My mother dreamed of the day we would be able to move from the inner city. She was a small town girl and told us endless stories of how she ran all around Morrow (Ohio) when she was a child, how she played in the cemetery, knew everybody in town, went wherever she wanted while her widowed mother worked in a munitions factory during the day. She used to draw pictures for us of the house we would have some day with trees, grass and a picket fence running all around the house and “kids running around the picket fence”, but it was during World War II and housing was scarce. (We did move to a little brick house with a picket fence and a rose trellis in 1943).

One year, a daughter of my father’s boss at Dayton Acme invited us to go swimming at a pool at Guilford School near Lytle Park in another part of downtown Cincinnati. Mother made us red and while polka-dot swim suits and we were so excited, although after I got there I really didn’t care for the confusion and noise of a very public pool. I preferred splashing around in the puddles on the sidewalk in front of 20 East Court Street during summer showers.

Sister Shirley, cousin Dixie, Lillian in front of Scotti's Restaurant on East Court St. — Sister Shirley, cousin Dixie, Lillian in front of Scotti’s Restaurant on East Court St.

Mendets – The 1930s-40s Way to Repair Pots and Pans

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.

Click on photos to enlarge.

An Old Time Picker – The Ragman

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 — 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?

Click on photos to enlarge.

April 16, 1964 – A Journal Memory

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).

“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.

A Teenager’s Idol Passes On

Obituary
Grady Hatton, the former major league third baseman who managed the Houston Astros in the 1960s, has died. He was 90. Alyssa Hatton, his granddaughter, says Hatton died Thursday of the effects of old age at his home in Warren, the rural East Texas Piney Woods town that was his home for 40 years.

Hatton hit .254 with 91 home runs and 533 RBIs in 1,312 major league games in 12 seasons from 1946 to 1960 with the Cincinnati Reds, Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles and Chicago Cubs. He had a 164-221 record as Houston’s manager from 1966-68.

The Beaumont native starred at the University of Texas and served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

A funeral is scheduled for Monday at First Baptist Church of Warren. He will be buried Mount Pisgah Cemetery near Woodville.

I can’t remember when I wasn’t a baseball fan, but during the summer of 1946 when I was 13 years old (ready to start high school in the fall), I became a full-fledged Cincinnati Reds enthusiast. I listened to every game on the radio back in the days when games played away from home were broadcast by Waite Hoyt adding his wonderful embellishments to bare minimum details received over the wire. Of course, he called the home games from old Crosley Field with all of the background sounds of fans cheering, bats cracking, and the organ urging everyone to cheer a little louder. I loved the Reds and I especially loved a rookie who came up that year – Grady Hatton. He was 22 years old, single, handsome, and a good player. He immediately became the darling of the teenage girls in Cincinnati or the “bobbysockers“ as the press called us.

Television was new and the Reds were not on the schedule yet – that would happen for the first time on September 21, 1947. It was the only time in my life I ever played hooky. I took the streetcar to my high school that morning and, knowing the broadcast would be over by the time I returned home in the afternoon, I got back on a streetcar heading for home and saw the game on our very tiny television set that my father had built.

The only way to see my idol was in person at the games (and I didn’t have the means to go to very many) or to grab any picture I could find in our daily Cincinnati Post or Sunday Cincinnati Enquirer. All of the pictures I’ve posted are from my scrapbook which still survives with faded clippings of an exciting era for me.

I loved finding pictures of players off the field such as this one of the Reds at the railroad station, returning from spring training in 1948. Grady Hatton is in the center along with some of my other favorites – Ewell Blackwell, Kent Peterson and Eddie Erautt.

From 1947 is this shot of Grady (second from right) in the dining room. It’s interesting that the caption says this is the first year that players in training have received expense money.

I also liked this photo of Grady and his sister who was visiting from their home town of Beaumont, Texas.

RIP, my favorite ballplayer of all time.

Click on pictures to enlarge.

Our First House – 1961 – A Journal Memory

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.

Boiled Raisin Cake – a 1940s Recipe

One of my Christmas gifts in 2011 was a small 4-½ x 6 inch leather bound book engraved “Cooking Recipes”, purchased in Sugar Creek, Ohio. The pages are edged in gold and there are 10 index tabs for food categories. The real gold in this book, though, is the collection of handwritten recipes. There aren’t a lot of recipes – just 25, 22 of which are desserts. There is also a page where a child scrawled – Mama probably wasn’t too happy with that.

The book itself could have been from the 1930s, but I believe the recipes are from the 1945-1950 era. This is based on a lot of recipes calling for shortening, for using the word “oleo” rather than margarine and the attention given to oven temperatures. I believe it’s post-World War II because of all of the sugar-laden desserts.

The handwriting is clear and ingredients are listed correctly, although most of the recipes give no idea of how the item is to be prepared, what kind of pan to use or how long to bake. That’s why I’ve decided to make each of the recipes, using the products specified, and adding my own instructions. I like to think that the woman from the 1940s kitchen (who would have been about my mother’s age) would enjoy having someone fuss around with these recipes again and turn out some delicious food for the family.

This cake was new to me and since no directions were given with the recipe, I checked out the internet and found it appears to have been a favorite cake of a lot of people. It’s a rather plain cake – I made half of the recipe and added a glaze which many on the internet remembered their grandma adding to the cake. I would consider this a lunch or supper cake – satisfying but not too rich.

BOILED RAISIN CAKE - A 1940s RECIPE

Servings: 6-8
Print

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup hot water
¼ cup shortening
¼ cup oleo (margarine)
½ cup raisins
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1-¾ cups all-purpose flour

GLAZE

1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
Approx. 2 Tblsp. Milk

Grease and flour a 9-inch loaf pan
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

In a large saucepan, place sugar, hot water, shortening, margarine, raisins, cinnamon and salt. Bring to a boil over medium heat and boil for one minute longer.

Remove from heat and immediately stir in baking soda – it will foam up. Allow to cool.

When cool, add flour and beat for 2 minutes by hand right in the pan.

Pour into a greased and floured 9-inch loaf pan and bake @ 350 degrees F for approximately 50-55 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Let set in the pan on a rack for 5 minutes.

Loosen sides and remove from pan to continue cooling on rack.

Mix together the powdered sugar, cinnamon and milk to make a thick glaze. When cake is cool, spoon glaze over top and allow to drizzle down the sides of the cake.

Makes one 9-inch loaf cake