After my rather "political" post last week, I decided this week I would return to my usual style of memoir writing. Today's post is about my childhood, no deep psychological ruminations, just memories. Enjoy!
When I moved there in the early 1950s, Rosemount was a very new suburb of Montreal East. Carved out of small plots of farmland in response to the influx of new immigrants from post Iron Curtain Europe and newly middle class factory workers, returning soldiers and the Baby Boom, post-war housing sprang up. These consisted mainly of smallish row houses and duplexes that hardly held the members of some large Catholic families. For example, my friend Brenda, with her eleven siblings, springs to mind. My friend Danielle, who because she was the only girl among five brothers, never had her own room and slept on the living room couch, keeping her clothes in the hall closet.
But our bungalow had been built in a smaller section of the area. All of the bungalows in the neat avenues were built with smaller, slightly more well-to-do families in mind. Growing up I thought that we were rich compared to my school friends. Not in a mean way just in a way that I noticed how different my life overall was to theirs, not only in the way we lived but also in their parent's history of fleeing from a war-devastated Europe, their ability to speak different languages and so on. I wasn’t aware of the truly “rich” areas of Montreal but, comparing myself to my friends at school, I had my own room, as did my sister, and a backyard and flower gardens. My father had a new car every three years, a Pontiac.
To my mind, my house was HUGE, although I think it was all of 1400 square feet. Because my family was small, just my parents, my ten-years-older sister and myself, there was plenty of room by 1950s standards. Our house was decorated to the best middle-class ideas my parents had experienced, such as matching French Provincial living and bedroom suites of furniture, a miniature crystal chandelier in the living room.
But mainly, and this was something my friends were in awe of, there was a recreation room in the basement. An actual recreation room that my father, a skilled carpenter, had built in his spare time. It was decorated with Naugahyde sofas, a large, for its time, television and a stereo set. The theme of the rec room was the beach/ocean. Dad had wallpapered—there was wallpaper throughout the house—with paper that had a weird pattern of drawings of various deep sea creatures—jelly fish and octopi with long tentacles and big eyes—on a brown background. I can still close my eyes and see that pattern, it lives in my dreams and some of my nightmares. He also found a large piece of driftwood on one of our beach vacations which he made into a lamp. We were all touched and excited when friends of ours from New Hampshire brought him an old lobster trap to add to the decor. Excited, that is, until our rec room began to smell like a wharf several hours after a catch; the lobster trap was removed to the far part of our backyard.
My parents had an extensive collection of LPs; the stereo set even stacked records so multiple records could be played! And they loved to host parties as did my teenaged sister. The rec room could easily accommodate 6 or 7 couples swaying or bouncing to the sounds of Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, or Benny Goodman, Bill Haley and the Comets, the romantic tones of Al Martino or Perry Como, the Everly Brothers, while others sat on the sofas chatting or, during my parents’ parties, perched at the small corner bar my father had created in a nook by the staircase.
After a rather unfortunate episode where, being five years old, a friend and I thought the brightly colored miniature liquor bottles on the mirrored shelves looked inviting and delicious, my father had installed a door and a lock on the door to the bar. Thankfully there were no long-term consequences to the great miniature liquor tasting caper as the bottles had already been drunk and my father had refilled them with water and food coloring. Still the memory of the stern lecture I received, and the fact that THAT particular friend was never encouraged to return, lingers on.
As does the happier memory of Dad, dressed in a smart suit—everyone wore smart suits and dresses even to private parties back then—standing behind the bar, shaking up some concoction from the recipe chart hanging on the wall in the stainless steel cocktail shaker while some of the guests lounged on the stools. My mother was the extrovert, always the center of attention, dancing and laughing. But Dad in his quiet way attracted those who just wanted to chat. Including some of the women with older husbands who were attracted to my Dad’s Robert Taylor dark good looks. I eavesdropped on several conversations between my mother and her best friends on the phone Monday mornings as my mother indignantly recounted someone making “googly eyes at Harold.”
I loved their parties almost as much as they did. As I was a late-in-life child, my parents’ friends were all empty nesters or childless. I was allowed to stay up until the party began, greeting guests in my pajamas, showing them my latest drawing or a quick magic trick I’d learned. Sometimes they even brought little gifts for me, like a comic book or a pretty wallet! Plus my mother would make up a special plate of party goodies for me to have before I went to bed: sandwiches but, more interesting, wonderful baked squares, dream bars and small pieces of cake, her never-duplicated crescent shortbread cookies. Once the party got into full swing, I could hear the laughter and music in my bedroom—the house was after all only about 1300 square feet between the main floor and the basement/rec room—and there was only one bathroom, on the main floor. I would fall asleep to the sounds of music and laughter and the increasingly unsteady steps of the people going to and from the facilities.
But, during the day or when there were no adults around, the rec room was all mine. All alone, with no prying eyes to judge, I would dance to the records, imagining I was Ginger Rogers or Cyd Charisse. I would whirl or, truth be told, use the couches to launch myself into the leaps I had seen with Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly.
Or, if I was lucky, there would be a movie with a favorite actor playing on the television: Gregory Peck or Richard Widmark. I liked the strong but ultimately kind male actors who were just a bit aloof. I was never a Marlon Brando fan, he seemed brutish. And I felt that James Dean was a whiner after I saw him in “Giant,” whereas Rock Hudson was so manly and strong. If I had known....
Again, as a late-in-life child I was often alone on Saturday nights as, if there was no party at our house, my parents would be off partying somewhere else. Or going to the movies. Once I was old enough to stay alone, about 7, 8 years old, I kept myself amused in an imaginary world. If they were all out for an evening, I would rifle through my mother’s or my sister’s closet and don one of their 1950s styles party dresses, the kind with chiffon, taffeta and sometimes a crinoline. I preened and practiced in front of the mirror, smiling at my handsome imaginary beau, accepting my Oscar for Best Actress.
Although my family never knew the full extent of this world, I still burn a bit with embarrassment remembering the time my mother noticed the scar on her beautiful rosewood French Provincial bureau and I was forced to confess I had been trying on some of her Evening in Paris perfume and spilled. No physical punishment was needed; my mother’s upset was enough for me.
In fact, my parents didn’t believe in corporal punishment although I did receive a quick smack on the bum one time. I and another friend had ventured into the cellar beside the rec room where my father had a workroom and tried to surprise him by painting an old wooden chair. Dad was away on a business trip and the deed might have been unnoticed until he returned home were it not for my friend Fred spilling oil-based paint on his t-shirt and weaving back to his house next door feeling very green from paint fumes. His mother told my mother and great ructions occurred.
Even my grandmother, who was over for dinner (a rare occurrence as my mother’s mother was not usually welcome in our house when my father was there) got involved, coming into the bathroom where I was soaking in the tub and giving me a stern Victorian “children in MY day knew their place” lecture. Then there was also the incident with my sister’s roll of undeveloped film. Again, being probably four or five years old, left to my own devices while my mother was talking on the phone (my mother spent hours on the phone), I had found a roll of photos in my sister’s chest of drawers and decided I wanted to see the pictures. So of course I unrolled the film. I wasn’t easily forgiven by a teenaged sister; film back then, once exposed, could never be retrieved. That incident and a few others where I trespassed into her room and created a mess, meant that my sister and I actually never did form a friendly relationship until she was in her 40s and I in my 30s. It was a relationship that was sadly cut short when she died at the age of 48.
Still, those awkward moments are just small blips on what was actually a very happy childhood. It was a world of imagination, fueled by the books I read and the programs I watched. Going to movies was a rare occurrence for me until 1961 because there was a law in Montreal that banned children from theatres, even if they were accompanied by their parents, unless the movie was rated for 16 and under; there were few of those when I was young. The law had come into being after a tragic movie house fire in 1927 where a panic exiting the theatre had resulted in the deaths of 78 children.
However, there were a few movies that were rated “16 and under” that arrived annually, mainly Disney movies and musicals. Much as she loved music and dancing, playing the piano (by ear no less), my mother also loved movies. When the annual “approved for children” movie arrived, be it one of the animated princess or animal movies (Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Bambi (traumatizing), Lady and the Tramp) or a live-action like Sound of Music, My Fair Lady or How the West Was One (which was filmed in Cinerama with a curved movie screen!) we would both get “dressed for downtown”, meaning dress, shoes, gloves and purse, and take the city buses for a day out.
We would lunch at the popular with the refined--mostly blue haired--lunch hour crowd restaurant, Murrays, where the waitresses wore pastel pink uniforms with white frilled aprons and caps. I actually worked at one of the several installations in Montreal a decade later for a summer while in university. Menu items consisted of such gastronomic delicacies as creamed chicken on vol-au-vents, roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and peas or macaroni and cheese, club sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Food that was similar to what I would have at home, but it was the experience of being in a restaurant with my mother, sometimes my aunt and cousin. And then to the movies! Movies were shown at wonderful old cinemas, built originally as vaudeville and “live” theaters, elegantly decorated with red velvet seats and curtains, lush wallpaper, mirrors and gilt cornices, a sweeping staircase.
Looking back at just this small set of memories, my childhood was indeed a magical time.
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