The war in Germany started the year I was born, but it wasn’t until the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, that America entered the war. My father went for his induction physical and failed due to flat feet. There was much talk about the war and I was given a soldier uniform. I was so proud.


It was the war years and “blackouts” were mandatory. We pulled all the window shades down at night to prevent any light to the outside. Today it seems very silly, but everyone took the war seriously. We had ration stamps initially for gas and later it included food. People would trade stamps to get things they needed for which they had no more stamps. My two uncles, Glenn and Merl Firestone were both in military service. Glenn was in the Army and Merl Jr. in the Navy Seabees. When they visited on leave, they looked so smart in their uniforms and I was so proud just to be next to them.

I was born in August of 43, so I don't have many memories of the war years themselves. Odd little bits, like watching my parents and their guests roll cigarettes with loose tobacco wrapped in little white papers. I later learned that tobacco and cigarettes were rationed during the war. Mom said that occasionally some "off" brands would come along, and the grocer would slip a carton of Picayunes (a Louisiana brand) into their box of groceries.

I remember my uncles coming home, and the mock arguments over which branch of the service was the best. Army, Air Corps, and Marines were all represented.

Ann

Ann,
funny thing about those cigarettes. I remember a neighbor walking the roads and picking up cigarette butts. There were no filters to contend with and he would squeeze out the tabacco from the remaining butt and then roll his own.

Animal feed from the mill came in cloth bags. The women would wash them and make dresses. Patches were sewn on clothes to cover the worn holes. Today they sell them that way as fashion.

The feed bags were around a long time before the war. During the Depression, my grandmother used them to make my mom's and uncle's school clothes.

Ann

My youngest memory is sleeping in a feather bed with my grandmother who was a very tiny woman. She lived in a big farmhouse with a wrap around porch, wood floors and no paint on the siding. I remember walking barefoot across the wooden floors that made noise. I remember taking a bath in a huge tub with handles on it behind the wood stove that also heated the water. I was very young. I don't remember the age, but I think I only remember because it was so unusual to a little girl from the north. I believe those are my earliest memories and pretty much my only youthful ones until I was about nine years of age. Anything else is a feeling more than a memory.

Here's an excerpt from a dormant project that recounts my life as a jazz musician. This is a first draft without the benefit of even one rewrite.
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The first memory I have of life is of the house where I was born and where we lived until I was about two or three years old. It is one of only a few memories associated with that time and place. I don’t know whether my parents owned or rented the two-story house in Dorsey, Maryland, a small suburban town a few miles south of Baltimore. I had two older brothers, Sonny and Jay, and sometime during this period my younger brother Wally was born, but I can’t say whether any of these early memories are from before or after his birth. He was born at home, but I don’t remember the occasion. According to a family story, Dr. Brumbaugh[1], the doctor who delivered Walter Ellsworth Stevens in November, 1942, announced to my mother his arrival and his gender by saying, “Here’s another boy to go fight the Germans.”

My father worked for the railroad and Mom stayed home, kept house, and tended us kids. It was 1943 and World War II was underway. Dad, at about 30 with so many dependents and his military obligation already fulfilled in the 1930s, would not be called to go to war. It would be two years later and another son born before duty called and Fred Stevens, Sr. re-enlisted in the Army. I’ll talk about that time in a later chapter.

My first memory foreshadows the rest of my life because it involves a piano. We had an upright piano, which, I suppose, did not belong to us, because it did not go with us when we moved away a year or so later. Or, maybe there was not room for it when we loaded our stuff. Or, maybe selling it provided cash to help pay for the move. Whatever became of it, in my first home we had a piano. Several moves and several years later we had another one.

In that earliest of memories, I climbed on the piano bench to play with the telephone that was on top of the piano along with framed photographs of family members. I remember taking the receiver off the hook and talking into the transmitter like I’d seen my parents do. It was a candlestick telephone, like the ones you see in old movies and in antique shops. In those days, when you lifted the receiver, an operator in your town answered to ask whom you wished to call, and she made the connection manually for you. Sometimes she was called “Operator” and sometimes she was called “Central.” I suppose I just babbled into the phone when the operator came on the line. I was too young to be talking intelligently. I remember her saying something like, “you children better stop playing with the telephone.” Today, whenever I see an old movie or newsreel with telephone operators with headsets, plugging cables into panels of phone jacks and yanking them out, I recall that day and wonder who the operator was and what became of her.

That episode, like others associated with that house and time, is just a brief and hazy vignette in my memory. I don’t remember what happened after that, but the piano is a clear image. I loved the piano but did not know why at the time.


[1]Dr. Brumbaugh is a bit of a legend. He maintained an active practice and made housecalls well into to his nineties, I am told. The house near Dorsey that served as his office and home is now preserved as a shrine to his life’s work. A register there lists the “Brumbaugh babies,” people whom Dr. Brumbaugh delivered. The list seems endless.

Good story Al. The bit about the phone reminded me of my uncle Joe. He had the only phone in the small village. He used the crank on the side of the phone to get the operator, and then gave the number or the name of the party he wanted to call.

I'm writing about my early childhood and it is amazing how one thought can trigger another remembrance.

My earliest memory is about a horrific accident on my tricycle. I was merrily riding down our sidewalk when I hit a crack and went flying off the trike. The seat came flying off also and dug a large cut in my thigh. I remember seeing the bone through my skinny leg, and thinking, "I'm going to die. No one will ever be able to fix this!"

My father came and picked me up and off we went to the doctor's office which was in his basement in Chicago. He didn't stitch my leg up but fastened it together with some metal clamps, proving my predictions of not being able to fix this wrong.

I still have this scar. The other day I was wearing shorts and a nurse asked me what happened to my leg. Very strange. No one had ever seemed to notice.

Carol

Ann,
yes those feedbags were around long before the war. I was referencing the things I remember. I remember the stories told by my mother and grandmother of how they used feedbags.

DK made mention of feather beds. I had forgotten about that.

Interesting story about that scar, Carol. They didn't worry too much about leaving a scar when fixing an injury.

In S. Korea, we had bags that rice came in with elegant cranes and dragons according to the brand. I had my dressmaker cut me a lovely summer frock from the material and the designs on it looked like couture, one of a kind clothing.

Unfortunately, the maid washed them. I guess we should have soaked them in salt or something; the designs entirely disappeared and I was left with sack cloth, plain and gray/white.

My earliest memory is of going to bed in the garage. I was born in 1947.

My dad built the garage and then our house. We lived in the garage while he built the house.

We were out in the middle of nowhere and the place gives me the creeps to this day--140 acres of trees, rocks, stumps, devils clubs, etc.,

We had no indoor water until I was 14 and left home--went to a boarding school.

I had no childhood, so am doing it now.

Enough said.

Interesting, Alice. When I was 14 and moved in with my mom in a little ranch house in a subdivision in the country, I made friends with a girl who lived in a garage. I thought it was so strange. The good thing was her mom was not so fussy as mine. We could play records and dance in the part that was designated "living room" separated by curtains or some sorts of dividers from the sleeping rooms. We could also eat there.

My mom didn't think much of that family because their garage was at the edge of the subdivision and not to the same code standards. Her dad was disabled, but pluggged away at the rest of the house, bit by bit, until today a lovely home stands there attached to that garage. Her parents are long gone.

The memory came up the other day because mom said the girl was walking by and asked about me. She had long ago moved away just as I had, but now alone, she had bought a little house at the other end of the subdivision, returning to the same neighborhood. Life is a circle.

I guess in that vein--having my childhood in the adult years, my first memory would be Disneyland. I was nearly 40.