ReTRo HouSeWiFe

RETRO-SPECTIVE THE DECADES PAST:
Ginny M. Boston MA - A personal story from the 1940s  
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I was eleven in 1942  the year I started Latin School. A tough school, but I did OK in the seventh grade. I liked Latin and enjoyed my new friends. We were living at 31 Nottingham Street then, and to get to school I took the streetcar to Dudley Station, then the bus to school. For awhile I stopped every morning at Mission Church to say seven prayers for each day. Sunday Mass near home was ridiculous to me. Every sermon was on the evils of drinking and I got bored. Long sermons too. My allowance was $2.00 a week. One dollar of that went to car checks, subsidized public transportation for students. 10 cents a ride. The rest I spent on music most of the time. Complete collection of Chopin one dollar. Waltzes, Mazurkas etc. I still have them.

Sometimes a bunch of us went to Schrafft's and had chocolate fudge cake with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream. Six to ten of us would sit in a booth together meant for six. Every other week or so, the street car going home was too crowded so we'd walk to the next stop which was in front of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and we'd go in, sometimes because it was snowing and we were cold, or simply to kill time. We had our favorites - mine was a small female figurine about 10" high - Greek. The Egyptian exhibit was great, scary - lots of sarcophagi. I think one or two had fake mummies. Lots of paintings, Greek vases and American colonial furniture. We also loved to mosey in antique stores, a few miles further down toward town (Boston). I dreamed of being an antique dealer when I grew up who would discover fabulous works of art in someone's basement. I read a great book about the foremost dealer and was enthralled.

One day my mother and I were on a house hunting trip and got lost. Buses and subways were our transportation and Mum couldn't speak English all that well. So tired and disappointed we trudged down a street looking for the subway at Ashmont and there was our Beaumont Street house. Weeds five feet tall, broken windows, three stories high, deserted. Mum loved it. It was a beautiful street; huge houses, big lots, all one family.

Mum was practical. She bought the house (she bought all of our houses), converted the house into a lower apartment and we moved into the top two floors which had all dormered windows on the top, nestled in the trees. She figured the rented bottom apartment would pay the taxes. Mum was a character. She didn't totally believe in the safety of banks, so there was cash hidden all over; under the carpeting or stairs.

We had porches on the back, porches on the front. The back porch was to hang the laundry which she did by hand with a washboard. Top back porch was for sunbathing. Our porch in the front was screened in. Summers were hot and muggy and we needed that screened porch. We had a dog named Cleo; half German Shepard half Great Dane. The sweetest dog. How we all loved her. She loved my mother best until Ryk came home from California and she never left his side.

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