Theme Days

For the first five years in the Jackson Street house life went on in a very regulated way except for the wed­ dings of both Maud and Bessie and the births of Helen, Leland and cousin Norbert, Jr. “Each day seemed to have a special theme,” Helen writes. ‘For Monday the big laundry room in the basement was presided over by the laundress who came and spent the whole day over the wash-tubs. I liked the steamy warm smell of soap when I stopped to look in on my way to play in the yard. “On Tuesday the laundress and Emma wielded the heavy black irons back and forth over two ironing ·boards. One or the other kept feeding chunks of wood to the small round bellied black iron stove that stood on three legs with a long pipe carrying the smoke out a hole in the wall. The top of the stove had room for four irons. A hot one was replaced by a cool one every few minutes, as the household linen gradually was smoothed to perfection. Did anybody ever wonder how tired these household slaves might be after wielding those eight pound irons all day? “Tuesday was also the day that Mama went calling. The ritual began wnen Mama placed her personaly engraved card with name, address and ‘Day at home-Thursday’ on the

I silver card tray offered by the maid or butler.

1:· :1· :1·

:I ,.I

“A twenty minute call would give Mama time to sample the tea and Petite Fois and add her scrap of gossip to the gross incredulities now in full swing, and have time to make three or four more calls. She might even get around to one or two who had no special day at home. “If you were a member of the inner circle, you were familiar with the code. To those who were at home, the cards meant that they owed Mama a call now. To those who found the card on their return home, the card meant that Mama expected an invitation in the near future. “Mrs. Lindel came to the house on Wednesdays which meant Wednesdays were mending days, for Mrs. Lindel was the seamstress. On arrival she was ushered into the spa­ cious linen room. Besides the shelves and cupboards stacked with bed linen and towels, there was plenty of room for a sewing machine at which Mrs. Lindel sat all day my time that day between the sewing room and Mama’s 1 mending anything and everything that needed it. I divided dressing room where Miss Isaacs gave Mama a hair treatment with some vile smelling stuff, followed by a shampoo. 1 “Sitting almost under the sewing machine I watched Mrs. Lindel’s constantly moving lips from which came no words. Every once in a while I said, ‘What did you say, ,1 Mrs. Lindel?’ If what she replied was an answer, I still knew no more than I did before. But I never gave up try­ thing and eventually it would given me to understand. 1 “Tea time was on Thursday, and it was a black day for me when it rained. That was Mama’s day at home and cal­ 1 lers came to tea, rain or shine. Selma didn’t take Leland and me out for the afternoon if it rained. Foggy days or windy days didn’t keep us at home, but a rainy day did. 1 “I played upstairs in nervous anticipation of Mama’s ‘Put a clean dress on Helen and send her downstairs•. The ;l command over the communicating tube from the front hall, ladies want to hear her recite her German.’ It was like a • w1intry wind on a shorn lamb to hear those words, though I was expecting them. “Friday was Madam Sotto’s day. Madam Sotto did the more special sewing. She made dresses for me, put lace edgings on under_..skirts and small pairs of pants. Maybe new material would be cut into for a shirt waist for Mama conversed in French, not only because Madam couldn’t speak 1 with the popular legs o’ mutton sleeves. Mama and Madam a word of English, but Mama was (to use her words) a • • French scholar and needed the practice. Madam Sotto was bosomy and hippy, but superbly corsetted. She wore a high pompadour and it wouldn’t have been difficult to believe she was fresh out of the court of Louis XVth with her air of hauteur. She couldn’t have seen me less if ·1 I’d been under the carpet. “Holidays were picnic days, for Papa loved picnics. A week in advance of the holiday he would say, ‘By George, let’s go on a picnic.’ “Mama would nearly always agree with him, because she : also liked picnics, but first there was a discussion about where to go.’ “‘We won’t go to the beach,’ Papa began the discussion. ‘The women these days have no modesty. It’s an abomina­ tion the way they dress.’ “‘You don’t have to look at them,’ Mama said. But Papa never changed his mind. However, there were other places to go. Often we took a ferry to Sausilito and a train to Muir Woods. Mable and Charlie were always included and usually Maud also came on these picnics. “Some times we went on the street cars to the Golden Gate Park. At the park play_.ground .there were donkeys _in an enclosure saddled for rides at five cents a ride. There were also goats hitched to carts that two children could sit together in or else I sat on the seat by myself and held the reins as the goat trotted around the track of the enclosure. He showed considerable more speed than the , donke}ES’and I can still remember the breathless feeling of expectation I had before the two wheeled cart took off with me on the seat. “No mother of straying kittens was in more of a dilem­ ma on those occasions when I had to make a choice. Would I ride the donkey or would I rather drive the little goat cart? After the decision was made and the ride taken there was still the merry-go-round with its music full of bells that I loved. Around and around I would go pretending I was on a real horse. I always rode the horses.

“I-f Uncle Charlie were with us he’d and as long as I wanted in the swings.

swing me as high Even if Mable and

Mama did keep yelling, “Not so high, high!”

Charlie,not so

:1 rl ,•·1

“Well, tomorrow is Sunday,” Papa would say every Sat­ urday evening. “Will be, not is Sunday,” Mama routi y replied. “Sunday doesn’t exist yet and it may never come.” “Despite Mama, come it always did. Sunday, too, had its special activities, which included a long list of prohibitions. It was a different sort of day than any other. Papa was home and there was cigar smoke in the

1 parlor where Mama and Papa read the Sunday papers. I could play there if I was real quiet. Papa didn’t believe children should have company on Sundays, there should be ‘no romping around.’ We could play solemn tunes on the music box he had given to Mama when I was born, (That music box is still in the family.) or Leland and I could play with our paper dolls. Such restrictions on our ac­ ·1 ivities could have been why I had assumed the two imagin ary boys that I took about with me most of the time.” When Helen was about five years old she started to go 1 to Sunday School with Ruth Romaine, an older girl who lived across the street. It was a long walk to Ruth’s church, but Helen liked sitting in a circle with the other children singing songs and afterwards listening to a Bible story. On thinking it over, however, Clara decided that the Unit¼rian Church failed to instill the fear of God into its congregation, so Helen was enrolled in the Pres­ byterian Sunday School which was seven blocks closer to home.” 1 For a period the whole family went to church. They all dresssed for the occasion. Helen wore her stiff patent leather high button shoes and best dress and coat. Together they walked the nine blocks to church on the 11 corner of Filmore and Jackson Streets. “It also used to be part of Sunday to play in the back ;l yard,” Helen writes, “while Papa trimmed bushes and watered flowers and the lawn. There was little commun­ ication between us. It was inconceivable to Papa that a child wanted anything more than to be amused. The silences between what he said seemed to be devoted to thinking up a succession of droll remarks with which to .1 prod me into laughter. Something like tickling someone. The fun is all on the side of the tickler. “Some Sunday afternoons we went with Papa and Mama for .1 street car rides. You could take quite a long ride if you asked the conducter for a transfer and got off at a transfer point and took another car. Sometimes we’d ride on six street cars before we’d get home again. “we liked the ferry boat rides much better. Often 1 we’d take the ferry that went to Sausilito and sometimes we only took the twenty minute ride that went to Oakland. When the bay was’very foggy, the boat just crept along and blew it’s whistle about every other minute. Sea gulls i, followed just above the boat with their scratchy, screechy call a d swooped down to the deck and up in the sky all the way across the bay.” Summer was a special time, too. It was the time for longer trips, such as to Calistoga, to stay with Clara’s ·1 old school friend, Mame Benjamin and her family. That was Helen’s favorite place to go, for Mame’s daughter, Marion, was best friends with Helen. Sometimes they went south on the train about twenty­ eight miles to visit Clara’s sister Nina and her three children, Vera, Willie and.Eric, down at their lovely big

• Jv-•c’bome in Redwood City. Jerome usually went down with them on Saturday, but took the train back to San Francisco on Sunday, while the rest of the family and Selma stayed until the following Sunday. Although Aunt Nina’s three children were older than Clara’s they all played together. Vera, six years older than Helen took charge, and all got along very amicably. Helen was delighted playing with her cousins and visiting the horses and sometimes riding around the spacious grounds in a horse and buggy. { his ptopert, years later beeaffi”t:! the campus ef Seqttoia lUgh School. )- Nott.: -n\l:s rt"” e’f’ “” !’\of: be. Q Ctu.r-11,e • cQ_