The Day I grew up.

It was a quiet Sunday in 1939, December 10th to be exact. Usually the five children would go to Sunday School at 9:30 AM and then the parents or my mother alone would meet us after regular church. This day was different because my mom was not feeling well. A few days before she had fallen down the cellar stairs when she went to check on the furnace. My father worked various shifts at the the time and he was not home the day she fell and hurt her back
My mother had not gone to a doctor of course because she felt that her back was just bruised and she could walk. In reality my mother was a sick woman. She had been ill as a child with rheumatic fever and Scarlet Fever and it had left her with a damaged heart. But in those days there was no cure and she had made it into her 40's and had six children. In the long run she had been told never to have any children because of her heart condition.
Sadly she went from weighing 98 pounds at her wedding to probably over 180 pounds on this fateful Sunday. Everyone knew she was sickly. Her mother and sister helped her with her home tasks. My father went shopping and whenever he was off work he took the five remaining children to a park or a museum or just a car ride somewhere. Mother who was named Chrissie did the best she could but was very limited physically.
Back to the fateful day. My mom stayed in bed that morning. My dad said we could stay home from church and Sunday school that day. That did not make me or my sister or three younger brothers unhappy. Around 9:30 AM we were all in my mothers' bedroom lying on the bed and talking to her. Dad came in and said, "Let your mother rest now until lunch time. So we all went downstairs.
Around 11:30 AM my dad said, "I am going to wake your mother and see what she wants for lunch.". He went upstairs and almost immediately he started screaming for me to come upstairs and the the other children to stay down. I ran up the stairs panicked and saw my mom lying on her back. Her face was cyanotic (blue), which meant she had been dead for quite a while. I did not know that then of course. But later I became a nurse and figured out what I had seen.
My younger brothers and my sister,Margaret, came running upstairs and we were all crying and rubbing my moms' arms while my father was trying to get her to respond. Apparently she had died shortly after we left her room.
I was sent next door to get the M.D. public health administrator to come over quickly. My sister went to telephone my mothers' family in the next town. In those days there was no 911.
In the end my mother was dead, we were taken to my grandmothers' house where we lived with my father for the next few years until he remarried. We never went back to the house. Whatever toys or belongings we had were minimized and the adults made all the decisions about what we could keep. There was a good reason because we were adding six people to one house and storage was minimum..I know all this now but no one ever discussed any of this with the children at the time. And by the time we grew up none of the older adults wished to discuss the death which devastated our lives. We changed schools in the middle of the semester. We all had friends and were very active and well known in our own schools before we moved . Now we could relate in many ways to children whose parents move frequently. The school situation especially high school is not fun when friendships and acquaintances are well established. We survived.
There is a lot more to this story and in the end we all graduated from colleges and beyond. But there was a lot of trauma and good stuff along the way.
In case anyone reads this the childrens ages were, me,Catherine, 13, Margaret 12, Peter 10, Richard 8, and John(Jack) 5. Dad was 39

MEMORIAL DAY 1931?

New Jersey in 1931 in the small town that I lived in was in the throes of the Great Depression. I was probably five years old and went to the parade on the main street of our town with my father. To me it was a big one but it probably was very short with mostly local people and bands marching.

We met a friend of my dad's that day and I remember their conversation, not entirely but they were discussing a "march on Washington". I was not sure what that was about but later found out it was WW1 veterans planning a march on Washington.DC.

Since it was the depression the veterans were apparently promised a bonus for being in the service during the "GREAT WAR". Jimmy tupper was a vet and he was going. Now I may be off on the year but they were quite excited about the occasion.

Since the depression was in full swing the money must have been really important to the people who had been promised it after the war. Mr Tupper was very upset. He did actually go after the discussion.

I guess the government turned on the Veterans on the day they marched. General McArthur was in charge of the Army at that time and he told the soldiers to threaten the veterans with guns. So they disbanded as a group and never apparently received the bonus they had been promised. It was a bad time for everyone.

The depression to children like me did not mean much. We thought that life was the same as it always had been. We ate and played freely on the streets and did not worry about money. Except the one time I was sent to the corner to get a bottle of milk by my mother and I dropped the bottle on the way home. There was broken glass and milk on the ground. Luckily for me my mother was just sad about my carelessness and I think she cried a little bit. We were not starving but she had four children.

My dad was lucky in a way because he held a job throughout the depression years and he was able to support us.

When I say support, he also supported my grandmother, my two young uncles and an Aunt who all lived together in an old Victorian house with us. So the money stretched and we got our penny candy and did not go humgry. I am not sure about the adults. They all seemed to enjoy life and we had fun playing street games and board games without threat or danger. Both uncles went to sea somewhere in that time and worked on ships that sailed around the world. Almost no pay but they ate and travelled and took the burden of support off my father.

I think my family benefited in many ways from living in that time. I never heard anyone complain or say they were hungry. Homeless men would come to our door at times and my grandma would give them whatever she could.

Times have changed and all the people mentioned are gone now. All I can think is that they enjoyed their lives as it was at the time. They all survived into fairly long ages and life did become easier.