THE TALE OF THE DISAPPEARING HAT

  Despite the low wages during the Depression, Mother bought me a beautiful maroon fabric coat edged around the collar in soft black and white fur. Dozens of buttons marched from neck to hem. What made me feel especially dressed up, I remember, was the matching fur-trimmed, wide brimmed
hat that tied under my chin.

One afternoon while Mother and I were downtown, she suggested that I have my picture made. I was seven years old and disliked having to pose, but Mother insisted the coat and hat deserved preserving on film.  At the local Woolworth’s Five and Dime Store she pushed me into the photo booth, ordered me to sit, and dropped a dime in the slot, all the while insisting that I turn my head this way and that while a “Click” sounded in the booth. I fidgeted, followed her instructions but refused to smile. When the session was complete, Mother grabbed the strip of six black and white pictures and my hand and rushed to the street corner to catch Bus No. 7 for home.

 Within a week a telephone call informed Mother that Grandmother was sick again. This had become a ritual. In 1938 we spent a lot of time in South Mississippi rushing to the country when Grandmother became ill. I saw with this visit an opportunity to show off my new coat and hat. We quickly packed a small bag and headed to the bus that would take us to the train station next door to the Old Capitol Building at the top of Capitol Street.

We traveled to the country by train or bus, an exciting adventure. The trip of only 100 miles was never boring. My cousin William and his parents lived on the Mitchell farm ten miles from town. Uncle Royce helped Gran’daddy with farming and running the general store across the street. Aunt Emma nursed my Grandmother when her weak heart put her to bed or into the hospital. 

My grandparents’ unpainted house always looked gray and forlorn because it had never been painted. An open porch along the front of the house looked gloomy in the wintertime, but was the coolest place on hot summer day. Inside wallpaper covered the exposed boards in the rooms with fireplaces. When we arrived I paraded in my coat and hat before my relatives who, unknown to me, had gathered expecting a death in the family.  Despite the warmth of the fires in each room, I refused to remove my new apparel.

 After receiving the compliments I desired, I was ready to play outdoors with William. I was excited to see my cousin, a year younger than I. He was my favorite playmate. We explored the yard and played endless games of Hide and Seek, flipped over the horizontal bar at the windmill like
gymnasts; made roads in the soft earth under the house. However, this time I realized playing under the house was too dirty and the buttons on my coat wouldn’t allow me to flip easily on the bar at the windmill, so I insisted we play Hide and Seek.  After the third round of the game William disappeared. As I thought of where to search first, I felt a rush of air. In a second my hat was snatched off my head as a blur of William  passed me. I let out a yell: “WILL I YAM." With fury smoking I continued with  “YOU‘RE. GOING. TO. BE. IN. A. LOT. OF. TROUBLE.” I searched behind  his usual hiding places, hoping to catch sight of my prized possession caught on a bush. After what seemed like a day I stopped to gulp huge breaths of air. Without a doubt I needed help from William‘s
daddy.

 Outside Uncle Royce found his son hiding behind a large pillar on the front porch. He gave my cousin a facial expression that telegraphed William’s behavior as Trouble. William hesitated trying to decide how far along he could get with his joke in his dad’s presence. Uncle Royce commanded in a stern voice, ”Find. Her. HAT.” 

William turned 180 degrees, marched to the back of the house, around the chinaberry tree, through the back gate, and towards one of three wooden buildings. One was a garage for tractors, one the barn, and the smallest, the outhouse. William stopped, nervously hopping from one foot to the other, at the opened door of the outhouse. I was positive I’d find my hat here. I walked in without hesitation, glanced around the small space containing two holes for business. The hat was not hanging on nails stuck through from the outside. Not tossed on the floor.  Not caught between the pages of the Sears Roebuck catalog used for toilet paper. Was William joking? With his daddy’s urging, William pointed at the left hole. Hope turned to fear. My coat suddenly was too warm for me. My brand-new-never-before-worn-anywhere-but-here couldn’t be . . . down THERE. I begged my uncle to reach in and get the hat. Instead, he said, “If you can see it, I can get it.” However, one look into that gloom told me I'd never wear my hat again.

 No one could console me as I cried the rest of that day and for many days afterwards. Time erased the disappointment, but  for years at family reunions I reminded William of his owing me a similar hat.

A year after my mother’s death  in 1999 I opened her carefully preserved photo album to discover she had pasted one of the black and white strip pictures showing me pouting because I hated my picture taken. But there is the jaunty hat and coat with matching fur, however difficult to see because of the age of the photo. Despite not having preserved the coat, I was excited to possess the reminder of the pretty outfit and of a joke gone bad. 

MEMORIES OF LITTLE SISTER

Two events happened before my sister was past two years old. I still remember the incidents, although they happened over 75 years ago.

When Mother went to the hospital to have Sis, I was excited to think I’d get a brother. When Daddy called on our black telephone, I distinctly recall his telling me I had a little sister. Not having talked much about siblings, I wanted my parents to trade Sis in. For many years I think I resented Sis not being a brother; although she was a good baby.

I became her substitute mother. We lived on Minerva Street in 1938 when G was born. The apartment  was a four-plex, Each downstairs apartment had a wide front porch. I recall entering the door and seeing a staircase that led to the apartment upstairs where Mrs. Crawford and her daughter Floy lived. We had the bottom floor. A long hallway went from front to back, with lots of room we used for a dining room. On the right side of the hallway were two large rooms we used as bedrooms and a large  kitchen.  G and I had the middle room next to the kitchen.

In the summer I stayed with G while Mother worked days and Daddy nights. Mrs. Crawford was always around and checked on us. One rainy day G at age 13 months, climbed upon the single bed, slipped open the screen latch and leaned out—a bit too far and fell quite a ways down into a valley of bricks.  She was on  her back crying as the rain dripped off the roof onto her face. I called Mother and then Mrs.  Crawford.  However, little G’s straight hair turned curly. A bald throughout the early years, Mother wound a pink ribbon around her head to make her appear girlish. Her curls showed us the fright she'd had.

Another time on Minerva  I served as the “mother of the house” while the parents were gone. At noon I prepared G a sandwich on the small shelf of a  enameled cabinet in the kitchen. Tall, it held funnels for flour and cornmeal, shelves for bought goods, and drawers below a ledge there for dishes. As I recall kitchens didn't have shelving as complete as today's kitchens. After spreading  peanut butter across the bread, I began to trim the crusts, as Mother did to make the sandwich pretty. The knife slipped and hit G in the right eye.  Her head had leaned against the shelf watching me, her right eye at the level of the  edge. While Sis held her eye, again I called Mother and Mrs. Crawford (a heavy-set woman who couldn’t manipulate the stairs very quickly}. Off to the doctor went Mother, who came home with Sis wearing an eye patch. The doctor said, “No harm done.” 

I learned my lesson about handling knives. Mother cut the ends off the bread before she left for work. I used a butter knife to spread mayonnaise. To this day I trim the bread for my sandwiches with the memory of that near-fatal day oh so long ago.

MOTHER'S COOKING

Thirty years ago if you had asked members of my family’s church their favorite place for dessert and coffee, overwhelmingly they would agree:  the Wadsworth home. Hot muffins just “happened” to pop out of the oven while coffee was perking about the time visitors opened their car doors and hit the front steps. Did you, Ann, they would say in feigned innocence, make these tiny cakes for us? However, when Mother invited a few members of her Sunday School class for a meeting, the ladies knew in place of muffins there’d be two or three chocolate pies cooling

Sis and I were amazed how quickly Mother could spin out her muffins as easily as turning around a corner. If she saw guests arriving she recognized by the car they were driving, she'd run into the kitchen, whip up the dough, grease the muffin pan, and have the pan in the oven when the guests arrived.  The aroma alone told the guests to "sit a spell."

I recall the parents making friends with antique dealers. Mainly because Daddy was the best "clock fixer" around. These dealers came as far away as Vicksburg and Hattiesburg.  Two who worked in Vicksburg would drop by after they'd been antique hunting. "Just to say hello," they'd remark. In reality, they hoped Mother would baked them muffins. She would.

 Like many of her time, Mother was reared in the country, the youngest of ten children. She lived in a wood frame house with three older brothers who worked in the fields with their farmer dad.  As soon as she was tall enough to use the stove, she was appointed second in command to prepare lunch, the largest meal of the day. This experience was the foundation for her excellent home cooking and baking upon marriage. Unfortunate for her two daughters. Mother was accustomed to multi-tasking from childhood she never thought she should require her daughters to learn to cook and sew.

           

 Sis and I grew up on Mother’s chocolate pies and banana pudding. We imagined each had been developed by dozens of aunts and grandmothers who came before her, a secret only the Mitchells of Walthall County, Mississippi, quietly taught their daughters the “show and tell” method. By the time Mother aged and was unable to bake, we discovered the pies were an old recipe repeated in early cookbooks. She boiled a custard made of milk and sugar.  Then she added Hershey’s Cocoa, or for a  change, coconut flakes, or lemon juice. When time came for home made ice cream, she included seasonal fruit to the custard and cooled it for Daddy to turn the crank of the old wood ice cream maker filled with ice and salt. My mouth waters at the thought of those desserts.

           

 Never, though, did I ever think I’d find anyone who could make pies like hers.  Only until I attended a neighborhood auction did I find a chocolate pie waiting for my bid. Surprised, I discovered the  cook lived next door.

THIS IS MY DADDY

I don’t remember ever calling my father any title but “Daddy.” I felt close to him as a child growing up in the western part of the capital city. He is in all my early photos, Mother being the one behind the  bulky, black Kodak box. I recall it was Daddy who taught me how to ride a bike, Daddy who gave me driving lessons at age seventeen, Daddy who handed me money for a new vinyl record, or a Hit Parade song magazine. Daddy who took me to his work when he was on duty as a telegrapher nights. 

He and Mother were disciplinarians. He wielded the switch, which I had to bring in from the yard. His voice was as firm as the lashings on my legs. Not powerful for welts to rise; enough pressure to remember my misbehavior. A switch sat on top of the fridge through my teen years, though never used. A reminder I wasn’t too old.

 I recall Daddy’s fun times when I began to date. He inspected every guy who came for me, insisting on making “small talk” while I delayed leaving the bedroom. He checked out the young men’s handshake, hair and shoes. When a handshake was limp, the date got a minute of instruction plus a reminder that a firm handshake gives a good impression.  He didn’t embarrass the kid about his dusty shoes, or his unkempt hair,  but he let me know his preference. Daddy’s shoes sparkled as new. He never had much hair, but in those days a teen’s hair wasn’t to fall the face, but smoothed back with Brylcream. 

He loved to tell jokes he’d read or heard in Sunday School. They were corny to me. My problem was I was too serious, like Mother, to enjoy the fun he shared with us. His humor heightened when he beat me to the ringing telephone in the evenings. In a serious voice he said, “Hello, State Prison, Warden speaking.” I writhed with embarrassment, jerking the receiver before a hang-up. No pleading stopped his fun. I miss that now

Daddy kept himself in good form by exercising daily with bars and weights he bought back in the 1940s. A slim man standing no more than 5 feet 7 inches, the bit of hair he had in his youth disappeared by age 40. An industrious worker, he repainted the family dwelling every four years, maintained a neat lawn with a garden blooming with irises, and the car washed and waxed for his and Mother’s Sunday-go-to-church ride.  He cleaned the house interior religiously, leaving the kitchen and laundry duties to Mother. Our floors and furniture shined. He took pride in what he and Mother had acquired by steady work.  They married in 1931 during hard times. We were a family of four.  Daddy never got a son, but that didn’t seem to bother him. His four grandsons made up for that earlier loss.

Daddy loved to dress up for church. At work he wore grubby but clean clothes so his good clothes wouldn't be ruined.  However, at home he wore a dark green apron over a red plaid flannel shirt in winter, and a cotton short-sleeved shirt in summer. I recall he loved the 1950 leisure suits. He had several in several colors. When he dressed in one he was our Dandy Daddy. His younger sister, Carolyn, reminded me that her brother always loved dressing well and that attracted the women. Daddy in his pre-marriage days was quite a ladies' man.

He was a tinkerer. After retirement he taught himself to work on antique clocks. Just as he was cited a top telegrapher during WWII, he was known in the Jackson area as the best repairer of clocks. He knew their souls. He heard their hearts beat.

 One of our house rules was to leave a note on the living room carpet, so upon entering, whoever was home first could see it. Daddy’s notes were usually in rhyme and often in rural dialect. What few foreign words  he knew, he’d throw in here and there. An example of his humor was at the end of a note Mother wrote me: Vivian, change the sheets and wash the dishes. Get a quart of milk and a loaf of bread at the store before 5:00. Attached to the note were these words:

                                    And milk the cow while you’re at it. Pa

 That made me smile.  

OH, THAT TYPING CLASS!

The Dean of studies of my high school walked into typing class while we students were clacking away. Our fingers halted. “May I have your attention,” he hesitated and looked at our upturned faces.  In a commanding voice he announced ” Miss Chambers will no longer be your instructor. She has resigned her position.” He gave us time to soak in the news, then added, “Continue your assignments as usual,” and left.  That was spring, 1951. I was a senior.

When had Miss Chambers last been in class?  We girls chatted all the while, remembering how plain she appeared. Her red curly hair and freckled face was a lasting memory.  Later in the day the rumor spread: she had married Mr. Edwards, the barbering teacher. We marveled that our Miss “Missing”Chambers, had caught herself a husband!  

No one suspected anything. Each week the new assignments appeared on a side chalkboard. Typing was an independent study. Once we’d learned the keyboard (I still hear the cadence of “a s d f space j k l semi-colon) we completed assignments and handed them in. No speed test, as I recall. 

Mother urged my sister and me to be independent from early age. She often told us,“ When you get to high school, take typing. It’s the best course you’ll ever take and use forever.” That was one of the directions she gave us along with “Get a pilot’s license so you can travel the world” and “Don’t get married until you’ve traveled.”

Manual upright typewriters  - - usually Underwood or Royal - - came equipped with black cotton ribbon. We groaned when an error was made. That meant rubbing out the error with an eraser with as few smudges as possible.  Making copies in those days? A nightmare.  Between two sheets of white paper you placed a piece of thin carbon paper with the shiny side facing the second page. When an error occurred, groans were louder:  one to three erasures, depending on the number of carbons used. Each page corrected at one time. We were unaware at the time someone was busy inventing a correction fluid that would ease our woes.

That inventor was a single mother in 1951 who had typing erasure problems with her electric typewriter at her job. Tired of the smudges she made using the carbon ribbon, she became inspired after watching window painters eliminate flaws in their work. She devised a method and two years later with tempera paint she bottled Mistake Out, which with improvements was renamed in 1958 Liquid Paper.

Today in our using computers, all we have to do is “delete” and rewrite. However easy this is, I’m glad to have learned on a now-outdated typewriter. 

WHAT OLD LETTERS AND CARD REVEAL

Fishing through the myriad of boxes and folders that contain family history, I’ve come upon several letters written to my parents. They bear the dates of 1937 and 1938. At that time my parents had been married less than ten years.

 Brown and faded, the letters are written in pencil, as pens were a luxury only afforded by the few. But the three-cent stamps and the post office stamp with date, time, and place are indelible.

 The first is from my grandmother who lived a simple life in South Mississippi with her husband, a store keeper. Grandfather Mitchell  had built a one-room store across the road from the house and corn mill. So much bartering went on in those days that money seemed to be used for extras, as  what Grandmother sent to her daughter, Annie, my mother. At the time my grandparents had two daughters living in the Jackson, Miss. area. Her name was Wilmouth; everyone called her Will.

The short note was written on lined paper, within a 5” x 8 tablet. The kind you bought in a country store. The paper has browned considerably with age. In the 1930’s  loose-leaf paper was a thing of dreams. The envelope is dated May, 1938; I doubt this envelope contained the letter at all, since the contents tell a different time:

  Dear Annie. Enclosed your will find a check for four dollars. You have it cashed an give will one dollar & Elsie (her daughter) one you keep one give viv a fifty cts Hubert fifty cts  [sig] this is your Christmas Presant. Buy any thing you all want.  Love, Dad and Mother.

                  

Despite their offspring receiving high school and college educations, these humble folk never had the opportunity past the fourth grade. Just enough to write notes and add and subtract.

The second letter received by my parents was from a couple who had lived in the neighborhood and had moved out west. Only a portion of this letter is repeated, just to inform the reader of life in this California city in August, 1937. This time the letter is on unlined paper from a similar tablet, but also written in pencil.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. W: guess you folks think we’ve forgotten you, but really we’ve been so much on the go since leaving you all.  This is a beautiful country. Nothing like it anywhere.  We’ve been in this town two weeks, stayed a week in San Francisco. We are 48 miles from there now. This town is surrounded by mountains. With all kinds of orchids growing right up the sides of them (mountains). Four of us drove up Mount Hamilton after dinner and coming back we coasted 19 miles. The top of it is 4200 feet above sea  level.

Most of the work here is controlled by the union.  It’s a wonderful thing. Snooks (the wife) is making $18 a week and $1 to $1.25 in tips daily. It cost here $5 to join the union and $1.25 a month dues. My pay is $7 per hour for 8 hours, and I paid  $25 to join and  five dollars a day dues. Grocery stores and markets open at 9 a. m. and close promptly at 6 p.m. --Saturdays, too. We have a swell five room apart. for $35 a month.

This is the home of Edmund Lowe, Fatty Arbuckle, Jackie Cooper,  Janet Gaynor and a number of other stars. The population is about 80,000 people. Expenses are not much more than in Jackson. Jobs are not as plentiful as expected but when you do get on you get well paid.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about the desert. There is about 300 miles and hot as fire. We bought ice and dry ice too, and then almost died.

We are going to get us a large Kodak and make some pictures and send some to you. This is just like you see in the Wild West pictures. You sure can enjoy picture shows after you have seen this country. P. S. This town is pronounced San o-zay.

This letter must have set my parents to thinking about their future travels. By 1945 we family of four climbed into a packed Ford station wagon (with real wood panels on the sides, as Ford advertised) and take a similar trip to California following Route 66. 

When our daughter, who had lived west for a few years, moved to the Boston area, one of her many letters home reminisced  also about California in the 1980s.

California felt more open, long, flat stretches of land against mountains. There seemed to be little in between. I think, though, that it's probably different the more north you go. Outside of San Francisco the weather was hot, dry, windy -- more desert like. It was interesting to see the different flora --the pines, the eucalyptus, fruit trees, berry bushes, flowers, like the pictures in (the magazine) Arizona Highways, only up close, real life."

A note dated May 25, 1947 reminded me of my camping days. It was sent to Mother from the camp leaders before my sister and I departed for a summer session for the second time. It read:

 Janet, Susan and I are so happy Vivian and Glenda will be with us at Camp Montreat (NC) again. We can hardly wait for the time to arrive. I will meet the girls at the (train) station Tuesday, June l7 any time after 7 p.m. in Memphis. Te train leaves at 7:40 p.m. We are all thrilled over the special Pullman.

             
Camping high up in Montreat, NC was a special treat for my sister and me. Mother let us stay the entire two months to escape the hot summers of Mississippi. I was 15 years old and Sis was nine. We never forgot the beauty of the thick woods, steep mountain paths, and the rolling water over rocks near our camp.

CARE PACKAGES TO FRANCE

I’m young enough to still remember the patriotism and aid my family joined with other American citizens to support the home and the war fronts in the mid-1940’s. We saved tin cans, limited our sugar intake, made balls out of  foil gum wrappers. The most memorable effort in which our four-member family participated was saving our money to help others.

           

 Living in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1940’s did not afford many luxuries. We owned no car, using the city bus or walking to and from work or school. Movies were inexpensive enough to afford a night out with friends a few times a month. However, everyone possessed a radio, the single most important way to hear the  progress of the war, general news or the President to deliver his “Fireside Chats.” There were fun shows like “Amos and Andy,” and “The Jack Benny Show“. After dishes were washed and dried and homework complete, we listened to the radio from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m.

        

One evening we heard an advertisement seeking Americans to send food packages to families in war-torn Europe. Sending in $25  the applicant  was supplied with the name and address of a European family with whom to correspond. The money sent to CARE, Inc., afterwards would be converted into a food package for the assigned family.

Before the evening was over, we had voted to save dimes from our change. My sister was only six years old and I thirteen. We wouldn’t be handling much money. But the excitement of nightly checking Daddy’s pockets and Mothers’ coin purse, with their permission, of course, made Sis and me as much a part of the savings effort as that of our parents’. 

My metal dime bank was cylindrical in shape. A narrow indention on one side  measured amount of money saved. The little bank sat on top of the dresser in our parents' bedroom. When the bank reached the top at five dollars, my sister and I took turns pouring the coins into a box. The savings began again. After we accumulated twenty-five dollars, which took from a month to six  weeks, Dad sent a money order to the CARE . Then we waited several weeks for a letter from France.

Time has erased the particulars of a French family. There were a mother and several children. Since I was the letter writer in our family, I wrote them about our lives, school, our friends, being careful not to offend this family under strife. I had to restrict my words to two sheets of onionskin paper, for keeping the postal services open for mail to and from soldiers was another voluntary aid to the war.

Madam Poret scribbled on a page shaped like an envelope laid out unglued. She folded the flaps and with a swipe of her tongue sealed the letter.  She wrote in her small, careful handwriting using a fountain pen of blue ink. In each letter she described the contents in the latest box, about her children, how they were growing. Never did she mention the war.

When the familiar white envelope decorated in red, white, and blue arrived from France, stamped with PAR AVION, we were eager to get it translated. Jackson was small then, and Mother, who worked downtown, inquired around about a translator. One man, the patriarch of a Greek family and owner of a downtown restaurant, volunteered to read our letters. Although he agreed to the job, he never seemed happy to see me. He instructed me to be in his restaurant on Capitol Street at exactly 3:45 p.m. My school rang its final bell at 3:15. I rushed the two blocks from school to the bus stop to catch Bus #4 to arrive at the precise time. 

Never did he see me more than once a month, but any customer enjoying his afternoon coffee would have sworn with Mr. Translator that I was in there every week. Without a hello or good afternoon, Mr. T took my letter, mentioned nothing about my sitting down. He remained behind the cash register to read.  Fretting, he skimmed the pages, murmuring that the letters were "poorly written”, and then spit out the translation like he‘d eaten hot peppers. That, combined with his heavy Greek-English accent made listening difficult. There was no time to jot notes, despite my having a pencil and pad ready. The strain of listening to the news between his mutterings trained me to memorize better. By the eighth letter I could spout the exact information. Until then, I reviewed the contents in my head while riding the bus home. It was important to relay the information at the evening meal.

There were probably fifteen letters in the two years of correspondence. Mother kept the letters tied with a ribbon on a bookshelf in the family den. Over a span of thirty years when I visited my parents, my eyes drifted to the family den to check on the bundle. Just that move gave me the satisfaction that they had not disappeared.  One day I asked permission to take them home. They needed to be in a safe place, I told to Mother. By that time I had studied two years of French and wanted desperately to renew their contents. 

My mother died in 2002. Cleaning out her house, I gathered up all her correspondence and boxes of albums full of snapshots of a life time. Inside one was a sepia photograph sent by Madam Poret. She had been a beautiful woman whose long brown hair swept up in a pompadour above her face. The photography studio stamped its name and address on the back. The printed copy was very small, as though part of a strip of prints. She looked away, perhaps at the photographer, with a slight smile.

In 1975 I made a trip to Europe with a group of students. The packet of letters had not been located before I left. I had the idea of going to the town where she lived and inquire about the family, if there was such an opportunity. That town is now long forgotten, but M. Poret and her family are not.