Category: Post World War II America

QUEST OF THE MAGI

12/23/2019

Here is my holiday gift to my readers: One of my favorite photographs, of one of my happiest childhood memories - the annual reenactment of "We Three Kings" by my sisters and me, accompanied on the piano by our grandfather.

Cindy, Leslie, and Sherry Stodola, with our grandfather Edwin Stodola at the keyboard. I must have been around 9, and my sisters 7 and 4, which would make the year ~1952.

In the back of a large closet in her Oakland, NJ home, my grandmother kept a trunk crammed with the makings of just about any costume a child could desire - exotic scarves and shawls, colorful lengths of tulle and velvet, and opulent fabrics threaded with silver and gold. I never saw my grandmother sew, so I suppose these treasures were gleaned from the wardrobes of her various thespian activities. Her grandchildren were always welcome to delve into its depths, strewing its contents around the room as we searched for just the right pompom or scrap of lace to complete the look we were striving for.

At no time was our fervor for such revelry greater than at Christmastime.

Because their three-ness matched our three-ness, my two sisters and I felt a particular affinity for the Three Wise Men. When Amahl and the Night Visitors debuted on Christmas Eve of 1951, we quickly adapted our own hilarious (to us) and rather raucous version, prancing around the house and belting out "Mother, Mother, Mother come with me!" at the top of our lungs.

Not even Gian Carlo Menotti's charming opera, however, could compete with our perennial favorite, the splendidly dramatic old carol "We Three Kings." Each of us had her own favorite king and her own favorite verse to sing. Mine was Balthazar; for some reason I found his lugubrious description of his gift perfectly irresistible: "Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume / Breathes a life of gathering gloom / Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying / Sealed in a stone-cold tomb."

I hadn't the faintest idea what myrrh was, of course, but then I didn't know what frankincense was, either. No matter, we all knew they had to be something pretty special since they obviously had to equal the value of the third gift, gold.

Once we had perfected our costumes, committed our verses to memory once again, and duly rehearsed, we herded our captive elders into the living room, and my grandfather, after considerable coaxing, sat down at his Steinway. In his youth he had had a successful career as a concert pianist, but by this time his skills had sadly atrophied from disuse and arthritis. I now have an inkling of how painful this must have been for him, but at the time I was completely oblivious. I only hope he knew how grateful we were for his critical contribution to our production.

And this, this is the magic moment captured in the photo - the performance just about to begin, Sherry and I trying our best to look serious as befitted the solemn occasion, the irrepressible Leslie grinning from ear to ear, our long-suffering grandfather seated at the keyboard, chomping on his ever-present cigar. My father was undoubtedly the photographer. Truly a Stodola classic.

* * * * *

Wishing my loyal readers health, happiness, and all good things in the New Year. Thank you for joining me in my ongoing quest to honor the legacy of Project Diana and to preserve the life and times of the many people who in one way or other were touched by it. Look for more in 2020.

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ME AND MY UKULELE

6/29/2018

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I received a ukulele for Christmas one year and learned to play it well enough to give me pleasure and avoid annoying those around me. Compared to the other instruments I took up as a kid (or more accurately had thrust upon me) - the piano and the saxophone (for which my father paid $25 in an Asbury Park pawn shop) - my ukulele was, well, quiet. And while playing it at a virtuoso level would have taken more practice than I was ever willing to throw at it, and probably more talent than I could muster, it wasn’t that hard to tune it (G-C-E-A, with the memorable lyrics “my dog has fleas”) and to learn enough chords to make my way through a few familiar songs. “On Top of Old Smoky,” all umpty verses - even without googling I can still dredge up at least five - was my hands-down fave.

But what was a little girl in a small coastal New Jersey town doing with an exotic Hawaiian stringed instrument?

Me and my ukulele.

Luckily enough, I have a photograph of myself clutching my ukulele - slightly blurry, but clear enough to permit further research on the topic.

The ukulele is a plucked stringed instrument belonging to the lute/mandolin family. Although it is sometimes thought of as quintessentially Hawaiian, along with hula dancers in grass skirts and leis, it was actually developed in the 1880s by Portuguese immigrants who came to Hawaii from Madiera and Cape Verde, based on similar guitar-like Portuguese instruments. Its place in Hawaiian music and culture was cemented by the support of King Kalakaua, who enthusiastically promoted the instrument and made it a central part of performances at royal gatherings.

The US mainland discovered the ukulele in 1915, at the Hawaiian Pavilion of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Being cheap, portable, and relatively easy to learn to play passably well, the uke quickly passed into the popular culture, appearing in film and becoming a mainstay of jazz, country music, and American song.

The life trajectories of two men converged to turn the ukulele into the musical phenom it was to become in the post World War II era:

The first was Arthur Godfrey, folksy host of a series of eponymous radio and then television variety shows. My Aunt Phyllis, my mother’s younger sister, always claimed to dislike Arthur Godfrey because, she said, he laughed at his own jokes, but whenever his show came on the air, she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down to listen. We often spent several days with Aunt Phyllis and her family in Worcester MA during our summer vacations, and when “the Old Redhead” (as he called himself) came on we stopped what we were doing and joined her in her kitchen. He was famous for poking good-natured fun at his sponsors’ products. The off-script commercial I remember best was his test of the proposition that Lipton teabags could be reused for several days in a row. The second day came and went without too much comment, but by the third day his reaction was simply “blecch.” He got away with it because it was known he would not accept a sponsor whose products he didn’t personally enjoy, and because (bottom line) it sold those products.

Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts started in 1945 as a radio show. From 1948 to 1958 the show was transferred to the next big thing, TV, but continued to be simulcast on the radio. From 1949 to 1959, he also broadcast Arthur Godfrey and his Friends, also known as simply the Arthur Godfrey Show, which featured many of the Talent Scout winners including Pat Boone, Eddie Fisher, Tony Bennett, Connie Francis, Patsy Cline - and Julius LaRosa. LaRosa, in fact, triggered a downturn in Arthur Godfrey’s popularity in 1953 when Godfrey fired him on-air, without warning, for exhibiting too much independence or, as Godfrey put it, “a lack of humility.” That was not how underlings were supposed to be treated in those days, and it didn’t sit well with his fans. But during his radio days and his early years on TV, everything he touched turned to gold. He raked in millions of dollars for his bosses and as a result was probably the first media star to become truly wealthy.

It is sometimes said that apart from being an uber-genial host, Arthur Godfrey was devoid of any special talent. This isn’t strictly true; he was an accomplished ukulele player who even gave on-air ukulele lessons. “If a kid has a uke in hand,” he assured parents, “he’s not going to get into much trouble.” Too bad color TV had not yet come in; black-and-white could never do full justice to Godfrey’s shock of red hair and his colorful Hawaiian shirts as he strummed his big baritone ukulele. Through him, the ukulele found a welcome in millions of American homes.

The second contributor to the postwar ukulele craze was an Italian luthier named Mario Maccaferri, until then best known for designing the guitar played by the legendary Romani musician Django Reinhardt. Maccaferri was also a classical guitar virtuoso in his own right, perhaps in a league with Segovia, until a freak swimming accident in 1933 injured his right hand and ended his performing career forever. He continued making stringed instruments, however, and also started a business in France making high-quality reeds for woodwind instruments.

In 1939, Maccaferri fled with his family from war-torn Europe to the US, struggling to maintain his reed-making business (now christened the French American Reed Manufacturing Company) in the Bronx, despite a wartime shortage of the French cane he needed to make his product. Then a visit to the NY World Fair introduced him to a new concept - plastics! - and fired his imagination. He started experimenting with polystyrene reeds and found that indeed, they worked pretty well, especially when wooden reeds were unavailable. Endorsements from clarinetist Benny Goodman and other Big Band musicians brought him a good customer base. Emboldened by his success, he went on to found his own molding and manufacturing company, Mastro Industries, which produced cheap plastic versions of everything from clothespins to toilet seats.

Everything went well until it didn’t. Eventually, a combination of increased competition, increased demand for more upscale fixtures, and increased availability of alternative construction materials started making serious inroads, and Mastro Industries found itself on the skids.

That’s where things stood when a chance poolside encounter between Mario Maccaferri and Arthur Godfrey in a Florida hotel rocked both their worlds - and ended up putting ukuleles into the hands of millions of American kids including mine. The two men knocked back a few drinks, played a couple of impromptu duets, and bemoaned the lack of affordable mass-produce-able ukuleles. Maccaferri had long dreamed of making a plastic ukulele but lacked the capital to proceed without some promise of success. When Godfrey replied that he could sell a million of them, Maccaferri was inspired to revive his dream and redouble his efforts to finance this new venture.

Although Maccaferri’s earlier attempts to make a plastic guitar and his subsequent attempts to make a plastic violin were neither commercial nor artistic successes, it turned out that plastic was well suited to producing an instrument-quality ukulele. After extensive research, he settled on Dow Styron, which gave him the warm wood-like tone he was seeking, and strung it with nylon strings made by DuPont. He called his creation the Islander and packaged it with a pick, a tuning tool, instructions, and a songbook. It sold for $5.95.

Just like the box that appeared under our Christmas tree.

Nine million sold!

Toy plastic ukuleles like Mattel’s Uke-a-Doodle had done well, but the Islander was no toy. Arthur Godfrey, who as noted would never embrace a product he wasn’t willing to use himself, tried it and fell in love. He began promoting it on his shows and the orders poured in. In the end, more than nine million ukuleles were manufactured and sold. Godfrey never asked Maccaferri for a penny; he could well afford to indulge his own dream of making the ukulele a household item. A broad grin would undoubtedly have lit up the Old Redhead’s freckled face to see me and a dozen other student ukulele players in an onstage strum-fest during a school assembly - a scene that was probably repeated hundreds of times in school auditoriums across the nation during the heyday of the ukulele.

* * * * *

Look closely at my photo and you’ll see an odd gadget on the neck of my ukulele. At first I thought it might be a capo - basically a clamp used to shorten the strings evenly, enabling you to play in different keys using the same fingering - so you only have to learn one set of chords. (Call it a "cheater" at your peril!) But no, it was something that potentially simplified the process even further - the Chord Master, an automatic chording device invented and patented by Maccaferri that allowed you to play six basic chords with the push of a button. For an extra dollar you could get a Chord Master for your Islander, as obviously my parents did.

It all comes back! The Chord Master was supposed to be attached with two rubber bands, and I sort of recall having trouble making the darn thing stay put - probably more a commentary on my technique than on the device itself. Again stirring up some long-dormant memories, I think there was an additional reason for my Chord Master woes: The buttons are labeled D7, B7, and G on the upper row and D, A7, and E7 on the lower row - indicating that the Islander was supposed to be tuned not to G-C-E-A, as I did, but rather a whole tone higher, to A-D-F#-B. That had to be confusing to anyone who was looking for the chords you’d expect to use in the key of C.

For whatever reason, in the end I ditched the Chord Master. Instead, I mastered a handful of chords and then limited my repertoire to songs that required only those chords.

* * * * *

Tiny Tim

Predictably, imitators started cutting into Mastro’s market, and in response additional models, both larger ukes and the smaller “ukette,” proliferated in the wake of the Islander’s success. And then, with the advent of rock music, the popularity of the ukulele took a nosedive. As Arthur Godfrey had said, “If a kid has a uke in hand, he’s not going to get into much trouble.” Where’s the fun in that? Kids eager to cultivate a "bad boy" image followed their musical heroes and took up the guitar, not the ukulele. If you were inclined to write the ukulele’s obituary, you could do worse than to choose February 9, 1964 as the day it officially died, with the Beatles’ American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show (though in fact the Beatles loved the ukulele and occasionally played it onstage). Herbert “Tiny Tim” Khaury probably put the final nail in its coffin in 1968 with his popular but wildly campy falsetto rendition of “Tiptoe through the Tulips,” stripping the poor old uke of whatever shred of dignity it might once have had and masking its genuine musical versatility.

But the ukulele just won’t stay dead. It has enjoyed at least two revivals since then. The first was in the 1990s, when a new generation of instrument makers started appealing to a new generation of musicians, most of whom had forgotten Tiny Tim and maybe even the Beatles. The second is now in progress, fueled by the rise of youtube ukulele artists like Hawaii native Jake Shimabukuro, whose videos routinely go viral.

Don’t look at me, however. I haven’t played a uke since the 1950s, and my once-cherished Islander has long since disappeared into the mists of time.

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DR HELEN JONES

2/3/2018

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In the mid 1970s, I worked for two years as the Director of a grant-funded Oral History Project on Women in Medicine at the Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (formerly the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and the last medical school in the country to go co-ed; currently part of the Drexel University College of Medicine). In that capacity, and as co-editor of a book that included several oral history interviews resulting from that project, I learned quite a bit about the history of women in medicine in the United States and the obstacles these pioneers encountered in their attempts to achieve their career goals. I am, you might say, something of an expert.

So I felt more than a little sheepish when it only recently crossed my mind that my childhood pediatrician, Dr Helen E Jones, was a part of that history; and that even being her patient, at a time when only a tiny fraction of physicians were women, was an unlikely feature of my childhood. I immediately recognized this topic as a potential blog entry. Almost as immediately, I recognized that despite my vivid visceral memories of Dr. Jones - her strawberry blonde curls, her small physique, her all-business demeanor, and of course all those injections! - I knew next to nothing about the biographical details of her life or the hardships she must have endured to obtain her credentials and establish a thriving medical practice in a small coastal New Jersey town.

Having gotten as far as I could with google and the archives of the Asbury Park Press, I consulted two main additional sources. One was my friend Sandra Chaff, Archivist-Director of the MCP Archives and Special Collections on Women and Medicine at the time I worked on the oral history project, who was fierce about finding and preserving documents, photographs, and artifacts relating to the history of women physicians. The other was a Facebook Shark River Hills nostalgia site several of whose members were also patients of Dr Jones and were generous in sharing their recollections.

I am now happy to report that with a little help from my friends (thanks, guys!), I have cobbled together at least a blogs-worth of information about the elusive Dr Jones. And I am especially happy to post it on February 3, National Women Physicians Day, celebrated on the birthday of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from medical school in the US and a trailblazer in promoting medical education for women throughout her life.

* * * * *

Helen Elizabeth Jones was born on October 15, 1918 in Scranton, PA, the middle of three children of Horace I Jones and Norma A Johns Jones. When Helen was three, the family moved to Asbury Park, where her father taught at Asbury Park High School for many years. Her mother was a musician and teacher who ran her own private school.

After her graduation from Asbury Park High School, wishing to see more of the country, she enrolled in premedical studies at the University of Michigan. She also joined the Psychology and German clubs during her days in Ann Arbor and pursued music and dramatics as well. During her summers at the Jersey Shore she worked as an assistant at a first aid station at the beach.

In September of 1940 she enrolled in Temple University School of Medicine - one of around 10 women in a class of 104. “Gone are the carefree college days,” intoned Dr John B Roxby in his welcoming speech. “You have chosen a great but difficult path, and the travail which lies ahead is of a quantity which may defy your present imagination.” Along with the demands described by Dr Roxby, additional clouds hung on the horizon. The prospect of American entry into World War II loomed larger every day and became a reality at the end of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill of 1943 was as unsuccessful as succeeding socialized medicine proposals but nonetheless caused uneasiness and fear of the unknown.

Skull (Temple Medical School yearbook), Dec, 1943, Helen E Jones.

Helen’s graduation photo appears in the December 1943 yearbook - possibly on an accelerated schedule to accommodate a wartime need for medical personnel. The accompanying text notes that she was known as “Jonesy” to her close friends and that her special interests were in pediatrics and obstetrics,

During the latter half of her senior year she interned at the Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia. Following graduation she interned at the Jersey City Medical Center.

At the end of 1944, she started posting notices in the Asbury Park Press that her offices at 617 7th Avenue, located in her home in Asbury Park, would open for business on January 2, 1945, with office hours 2-4 and 7-9pm, and on Sundays by appointment.

Asbury Park Press, 0ct 11 1954. This photo shows Dr Jones (center, holding baby) exactly as I remember her.

In addition to her regular pediatric practice, over the years she took on additional duties, serving on the staff of the Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune for nearly 30 years, as school physician in Ocean Township starting in 1957, and as pediatrician to the Asbury Park Well Baby Clinic for 20 years. She was a member of the American and New Jersey Medical Societies and the New Jersey Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Asbury Park Press, Apr 30, 1974, shortly before her retirement.

In 1974, Helen’s brother-in-law accepted a position in California and Helen decided to head west with him and her sister. "I'm worn out physically," she told the Asbury Park Press of her nearly 30 years as a pediatrician, adding that her own physician had advised her to give up her private practice. “It was impossible to retire here," she continued. "I did try to cut down, but it didn't work. Children don't get sick according to a schedule. Pediatrics is a day and night, seven days a week profession. Out in California I will be working eight hours a day, five days a week."

Dr Jagdish Bharara took over her practice in New Jersey, and Helen sold her house in Deal Park.

On May 19, 1974, Helen began her new 40-hours-a-week “day job,” which involved working with what were then described as “retarded and emotionally disturbed children” at Camarillo State Hospital. At the time she arrived, Dr Ivor Lovaas, a pioneer in the application of behavior analytic techniques to autistic children, was at the peak of his career at Camarillo State, so whether or not she worked with him directly, it is impossible that she wasn’t touched by his somewhat controversial use of both rewards and punishments to encourage language skills and reduce self-injurious behavior. It would be interesting to know what she thought of his research-oriented approach, in contrast to the treatment model that had guided her own career.

Helen Elizabeth Jones died on December 17, 1993 in El Dorado, Placerville, California, at the age of 75. Four years later Camarillo State Hospital permanently shuttered its doors.

* * * * *

One of my fellow denizens of Shark River Hills volunteered: “I remember…the shots in the butt!” Another posted this recollection: “I always went into a panic as soon as I smelled the rubbing alcohol. I broke away from her assistant once and ran around the exam room with the syringe hanging off my butt.” Except for the added fillip about the syringe, this funny-but-sad scenario exactly mirrors my own recollection of my mom and Dr Jones's assistant chasing my little sister around the room as she too made a desperate attempt to escape the dreaded needle.

Although I was too wimpy to engage in such hijinks, I had my own personal nickname for Dr. Jones that still comes more naturally to my tongue than her given name: “Fanny Jones” (yes, for the obvious reason). If you think you detect an undertone of affection in that sobriquet, you would be quite wrong. And yet she never did me any harm; indeed, she probably saved my life on more than one occasion. The only thing I can say in extenuation of my youthful animus is that I remember her as rather severe, so the pain she inflicted was not much tempered by warmth or playfulness.

No one likes having a shot, but I cannot remember this level of needle-phobia in the days when I took my own daughters to the doctor. Did we have to endure more shots in those days? I may be exaggerating but I can’t remember a visit to Dr Jones that didn’t include at least one shot. Although the number of vaccine-preventable diseases is larger today than when I was a child, combinations such as diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus didn’t come into use until 1948; the shots and their boosters were given separately. Smallpox inoculations continued to be administered (remnants of my scar are still visible) until the late 1960s and beyond, even after the disease had been eradicated worldwide. The long-awaited vaccine that finally ended the terrors of polio became available in 1955, but the orally-administered version didn’t make its appearance until 1961. So - for awhile, yet another shot.

Non-routine shots were also commonplace - for example, tetanus boosters after injuries, such as I received after a dog bite when I was ten. (Telltale marks where Dr Jones cauterized the wounds can still be seen on my chin and neck - more battle scars!)

Although the antibacterial properties of the Penicillium fungus had been recognized for decades by the time the Scottish biologist Sir Alexander Fleming succeeded in culturing and concentrating it in 1928, it wasn’t until World War II that a form stable enough to be mass produced for clinical use was developed. Overuse of this miracle drug probably began almost immediately. I became seriously ill with bronchitis and pneumonia when I was in the first grade and Dr Jones arrived at our home every morning for two whole weeks (yes, Dr Jones made house calls!), clutching her black doctor’s satchel, to give me an injection. More than my fair share - so little wonder, perhaps, that I felt traumatized by my encounters with her!

Alternatively, is it possible that shots actually hurt more back then? Just about around the time I began my career as a pediatric patient, glass syringes with interchangeable parts, already a staple of medical practice, began to be mass-produced. Not until the mid-1950s were disposable plastic syringes introduced, eliminating the problem of contamination from improper sterilization; might they also have had a smoother action that reduced the ouch-factor? Or do newer manufacturing techniques produce finer and sharper needles than were available in the 1940s? Does modern medical training focus more on minimizing or distracting from the pain of injections? Just spinning out ideas here, but descriptions by diabetics of changes in insulin injections over time lend credence to the possibility that shots are less painful now than they used to be.

* * * * *

What led my mother to choose Dr Jones? I doubt she actively sought out a woman physician, but obviously it didn’t put her off, either. My guess is that when my sister was born in late January of 1945, Dr Jones - having hung out her shingle just three weeks earlier - attended her in the hospital. Perhaps my mother was dissatisfied with her current pediatrician, or perhaps she was attracted by the prospect of joining a new and relatively uncrowded practice. Perhaps she just plain liked Dr Jones, who, despite her failure to win me over, clearly had a way with mothers. Said one grateful mom when Dr Jones retired, "She takes the time necessary to examine the child and encourage and reassure the parents…. Quite simply, she is a good doctor in the highest sense of the word."

* * * * *

Helen Jones and the choices she made were typical of women physicians of her day. Although women overall were not welcome in the medical profession, pediatrics was considered a “soft” specially and therefore better suited to women than specialties engaging in heroic treatments of “really sick” patients, or involving surgery. Moreover, women who married were taken less seriously; unlike men, they were supposed to be “married” to their profession.

By the time Helen graduated from medical school, to be sure, these patterns were starting to crack a little. As a result of World War II, women were working outside the home in larger numbers, a trend that undoubtedly helped Helen build her practice. Helen was also fortunate in having as a role model a mother who ran her own business at a high professional level. Nonetheless, Helen played it safe, opting for a “soft” specialty and remaining single. Failure was probably not an option,

This is not in any way to imply that her choice of pediatrics was simply a matter of expediency. "Medicine is demanding,” she said, “but the thing that makes it all worthwhile is seeing a child grow up well and happy…. You become close to the children and they're almost like your own." She maintained a deep conviction of the larger importance of her work: "They will be the heads of state, one way or the other. You look at a little baby and realize that everybody who comes in contact with that child is going to have an influence on the development of his personality and character.”

Devoted as she was to her profession, Helen was not completely devoid of outside interests and activities. One of my Facebook “informants,” whose cousin worked for many years as Dr Jones’s receptionist, said that Dr Jones shared her home in Deal Park with her sister and brother-in-law, which afforded some presumably welcome companionship. Her mother’s daughter, she was an accomplished musician who played piano and organ. Other hobbies included collecting stamps, with an emphasis on those featuring opera and the history musical instruments; and caring for her two Yorkshire Terrier stud dogs, one of which took a first at the Westminster Dog Show in Madison Square Garden.

Did Helen’s busy pediatric practice - stampeding kids and all - add up to a full and rewarding professional life? Did her hobbies enrich her nonworking hours? Did she miss having children of her own or did she enjoy a little calm and quiet when she returned home in the evening? Did she indulge herself in a few precious moments at the piano communing with Chopin, or did she just drop into bed exhausted? Did her second career working with special-needs children and scaling back to a 40-hour work week in an easier climate give her a new lease on life?

I wonder.

I offer this blog entry not as a love letter, exactly, but as an expression of gratitude for the medical care I was fortunate to receive as a child and as an apology for the ill will I harbored against Dr Jones for no other reason than that she always seemed to be brandishing a needle.

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OUR PETS

1/20/2018

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We always had pets - at least one dog and one cat, and often more. A few of them show up in the famous Stodola Christmas cards.

Goldie and Penny - a holiday handful

I am ashamed to confess to having possibly contributed to the Stodola cat census via an acquisition method that could best be described as “Look what followed me home.” Never mind that I was covered with scratches from the process of persuading a reluctant feline to “follow” me home. I suppose I may have ended up keeping one or two of these kidnapped unfortunates; most, however, were truly feral animals that were mercifully (for all concerned) released back into the woods.

* * * * *

Before I was born, my parents adopted a kitten and pup duo my mom called Nip and Tuck. I don’t really remember them, but I do know that was the last time my mother ever had a chance to name our pets. After that my father took over, and he reigned supreme till we kids were old enough to join in the name game.

None of those cute pair names like Nip and Tuck or Salt and Pepper or Whisky and Soda for him! Rather, finding something catchy to call our pets was only a starting point for the prolonged discussion by which, through some cabalistic process, we eventually arrived at their true titles. So it turned out that Perky the tabby was really Percopolis, Penny the little car-chasing spaniel was Lady Penelope Penny van Pennysworth, Laurie the goofy boxer was Laurelita von Sniffnwoof, and Goldie, our gentle giant of a yellow tom, was actually John Timothy McGoldrick.

My dad came by this practice honestly. I can’t remember a time when his own mother didn’t have a calico cat capable of prolific reproduction, and although we always knew each in this long succession of creatures as "Orrie," their collective official name was Aurora Borealis. My grandmother charged $5 for each of Orrie's kittens, claiming they were much easier to place if you sold them than if you gave them away; somehow, to my mother's eternal amazement, my grandmother succeeded in selling out every litter.

* * * * *

Sharing!

My mother always claimed not to like pets very much but anyone who watched her with them knew better. (Not that we children could believe anyone could possibly dislike the little guys. It wasn’t till I was an adult with kids of my own that I learned how much work they could be, especially dogs, even if you adored them. Guess who sheltered me from that knowledge!)

One dog-related task that I always participated in enthusiastically, however, was a regular Saturday morning session that somehow turned into a bizarre father-daughter bonding ritual. No one had ever heard of Lyme disease then - perhaps it wasn't even a recognized diagnosis yet - but living at the Jersey Shore meant lots and lots of ticks, and the ones we knew best were dog ticks. When the season started in the Spring, my father filled a glass jelly jar with kerosene and then sat on the cellar stairs with a dog between his knees, tweezers in hand and his daughter at his side, watching with abject fascination. As the season wore on, the jar would become filled, with both the athletic little black ones that had barely had a chance to latch on and the large bloated white ones that had been gorging on dog blood for days. By the end of the season my father would happily display his trophy collection to anyone unwary enough to feign an interest in the process.

* * * * *

Of course we had a succession of nameless fish and turtles, but can you call a box turtle a pet? Every summer we found a few good-sized box turtles lumbering along the roadside - easily distinguished from their surly snapping cousins by their much sweeter faces and dispositions. We kept them in a box for a few days, painting our initials on their backs and feeding them lettuce, then released them and waited to see if they would return the following year. That seldom happened - though I once found one with someone else's initials!

Other non-pets included the fireflies we kept in jars by our bedside, watching dreamily as they lit up the room after dark.

Beyond that, my many rather elaborate efforts to catch and adopt wildlife were uniformly unsuccessful. For some reason a squirrel was at the top of my wish list. No one ever explained to me that our pets were bred to be infantilized, and that wild animals could not readily be tamed; or if anyone did I didn't listen.

* * * * *

One of my all-time favorite pets was Archie the parakeet. Parakeets (or budgerigars) are small parrots living wild in the drier regions of Australia. They have been bred in captivity since the 1850s, but for some reason a parakeet craze swept the nation in the 1950s and early 1960s. Our Asbury Park Woolworth’s was literally atwitter with colorful creatures awaiting adoption - green (the wild type, like Archie), but also blue and yellow and white that had been bred for variety. I longed for a parakeet the moment I saw their comical little faces, and since in our house longing was usually the prelude to receiving, sure enough, the coveted cage awaited me on Christmas morning.

How I loved Archie!

Although we were familiar enough with marine creatures, birds had never before been part of our family menagerie, so without warning I was introduced to the mysteries of cuttlebone, sandpaper tubes to cover perches, how to hand-feed a parakeet without getting pecked, and (less alluring) the weekly cage cleaning requirement.

But what really excited me was that you could supposedly teach your parakeet to talk. Forget about canaries; I wanted my bird to converse with me, not serenade me. Unfortunately, either Archie wasn’t the brightest budgie in the flock, or more likely we weren't systematic enough to train him properly. For whatever reason, we never succeeded in turning Archie into much of a raconteur.

He did, however, have one notable verbal accomplishment. In those days when you wanted to make a telephone call, you picked up the receiver and the operator (a real human, and always a woman) said “Number, please.” Almost all our numbers began with “Asbury Park two,” the local exchange, followed by four additional digits that uniquely specified the recipient. Archie’s cage hung right over the telephone, and Archie became quite adept at saying the three little words he heard most often, “Asbury Park two.”

Sadly, Archie came to a bad end at the claws of one of our mama cats. I was devastated and insisted on wearing a black armband to school.

* * * * *

The invention of kitty litter in 1947 by a man named Edward Lowe changed cat ownership forever, in ways that went far beyond which side of the door the cat spent the night on. Before kitty litter, cats were workers who earned their keep by keeping rodents at bay; since kitty litter they have become fur babies who, if we’re lucky, curl up with us at night.

In my childhood home and I'm sure in many other homes of the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, this new invention hadn't quite caught on yet. I also don’t remember the practice of routinely neutering male cats, though females were generally spayed. Consequently, there was no such thing then as what we would now call an indoor cat, and life with a tom involved a lot of patching up.

So it was with John Timothy McGoldrick, son of one of the many Orrie's and a wondrous beast with totally contrasting outdoor and indoor personalities. Outdoors, birds feared him, and rightly so. Indoors, he drooled like a baby and happily let Archie perch on his head, purring all the while.

He did, however, have a disconcerting habit of disappearing for days at a time, and as he grew older his absences grew longer. The day my parents finally left the house on Pinewood Drive to move to Long Island, Goldie was nowhere to be found. All the neighbors were asked to watch for Goldie and notify us immediately if he turned up, but he never did.

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A HOLIDAY GIFT FROM SEARS

12/20/2017

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Excitement reigns among nostalgia buffs: As of the 2017 holiday season, the iconic Sears Wish Book is back! Well, sort of. It’s mainly accessible online, but the retailers (subsumed by Kmart in 2005) assure us that “Sears’s best customers will also get a limited edition copy in the mail.” Mine hasn’t arrived yet - guess it would take more than a couple of stops at the Sears watch repair counter to qualify for "best customer" status.

* * * * *

Richard Warren Sears sent out the first flyer for his mail order watch and jewelry business in 1888. He soon branched out into other merchandise, and by 1894 his modest mailer had evolved into a catalog. In 1896 the catalog grew even larger and started coming out twice a year. In 1897 a color section was added. An American tradition was born.

The Sears catalog proceeded to do for mail-order shopping what amazon.com later did for online shopping. In our house, as in many others, the arrival of the Big Book was truly an event. Twice a year, an enormous tome, 2-3” thick, was stuffed into our mailbox, in plenty of time for us to order our back-to-school wardrobe, our Easter finery, and our summertime shorts and halters. My sisters and I pored over its offerings, hoping they would make us look like the models in the pictures. Our choices bookmarked, we measured our chests, waists, and hips (which in fact were all about the same circumference in those days) and traced the outlines of our feet, all in a quest for the perfect fit. Our mom meticulously filled out the order form, which often spilled over onto two or three pages, carried it out to our mailbox, and raised the red flag to alert the carrier to the presence of outgoing mail. Then, biting our nails, we awaited the arrival of our precious cargo.

My all-time favorite was a dress that had also been purchased by the beauteous Ruth Ann, a classmate with an enviable put-together look - not a strand of hair would dare try to escape from her hip-length flaxen braids. The dress featured a quilted blue vest layered over a puffy-sleeved blouse adorned with red polkadots; an enormous red bow at the neck completed the look. It was actually singularly unflattering and made me look like Howdy Doody's twin sister (nothing was ever unflattering to Ruth Ann); but I was proud to share my sartorial taste with this etherial creature and always experienced a frisson of pleasure whenever the two of us showed up wearing "our" dress on the same day.

Although the clothing and toy sections were Sears's little-girl magnets, the catalog also featured sewing machines, sporting goods, musical instruments, saddles, firearms, buggies, bicycles, baby carriages, and oh, so much more. My parents swore by Sears products. As a young adult just starting out on my own, I inherited an ancient Kenmore vacuum cleaner from my parents when they upgraded to a newer model Kenmore. Mine looked like a torpedo, and old as it was, amazingly you could still buy any replacement part you needed. My husband and I used it till we decided we could afford something with more features - disposable bags and a shape better suited to navigating stairs were the big selling points, as I recall. It may have been a mistake; we never had a more reliable vacuum cleaner.

The vacuum cleaner is long gone, but I still have my mother’s Franklin Deluxe Rotary Model sewing machine in its original red-stained wooden cabinet, along with a box full of lethal-looking attachments with names like the Multiple Slot Binder, the Five Stitch Ruffler, the Underbraider, the Edgestitcher, and the Gathering Foot. Alone in an even bigger box is the Adjusting "Famous" Buttonhole Worker. The machine itself is an early electric model with a thigh-operated lever instead of a treadle. I learned to sew on it. Again, I replaced it not because it was broken but because I wanted some fancier and more user-friendly features. I haven’t plugged it in for half-a-century - I now use it to hold my inbox - but for all I know it still works.

They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

* * * * *

Sometime during the fall the Christmas catalog would arrive - the unofficial start of the holiday season, the stuff dreams were made of. This special edition concentrated in one place all the holiday-related merchandise from the Big Book - wax candles for trees, cards, ornaments, stockings, and artificial trees - along with additional items deemed to have an extra measure of gift-appeal. The first edition, in 1933, included the “Miss Pigtails” doll, a battery-powered toy automobile, a Mickey Mouse watch, fruitcakes, Lionel electric trains, a five pound box of chocolates, and real live singing canaries. Yes, it of course included many toys, but even more pages were devoted to gifts for adults. In 1968, in deference to a sobriquet already in wide public use, the book was rechristened the Wish Book.

The Sears folks were well aware that their catalogs were a potential treasure trove for anthropologists. In 1943, the year I was born, the Sears News Graphic referred to it as “a mirror of our times, recording for future historians today’s desires, habits, customs, and mode of living." Producers of Broadway shows and Hollywood movies still turn to the old Sears catalogs for help with retro styles and furnishings.

The Big Book was discontinued in 1993, but Sears was slow (too slow) to introduce online shopping and its fortunes dipped. Wishbook.com was launched in 1998, but the beloved print version wasn’t retired until 2011 - only to be revived this year by popular demand. Whether it will be reissued next year remains to be seen.

* * * * *

Sears's mail order business long preceded the Sears chain of retail stores, which didn’t start opening until 1925 (oddly presaging amazon’s current expansion to brick-and-mortar retailing; been in Whole Foods lately?). There was a Sears store in Asbury Park, memorable to me because my father once “lost” me while shopping in the hardware section. I wasn’t really very lost, of course, but I was frightened enough that a kindly clerk took it upon himself to reunite me with my dad a few aisles away. (My mother never, ever lost track of her children in a store!)

I can't remember why we didn't shop in the store more. I mean, why did we order our clothes from the catalog if we could go and try them on in the store? Perhaps there was no children's clothing department? Or only a limited selection of styles and sizes? All I know is that it never occurred to us not to catalog-shop. Perhaps it's the 20th century equivalent of ordering something on amazon.com that I could easily pick up in the drugstore.

* * * * *

In 1908 Sears outdid itself and started selling prefab houses, to be put together on site by the owner - a process that clearly took "assembly required" to a whole new level. About the only precondition was that the buyer live near enough to a railroad line so that the lumber, asphalt shingles, plaster and lath (later drywall), windows, flooring, hardware, and everything else needed for the project - around 30,000 pieces in all, including 750 pounds of nails and 27 gallons of paint, enough for 3 coats on the exterior - could be delivered in boxcars. Each part was numbered and had to be matched up with the extensive instructions and blueprints that came with the kit. Sears even provided financing; heating, plumbing, and electrical systems were extra. Decorating advice was available on request.

Sears was not the only purveyor of prefab houses nor even the first, but it was the largest and most diversified. Several editions of the 1908 Modern Homes catalog were issued, ending up with a selection of more than 40 house designs, with prices ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. By the time Modern Homes came to an end there were 447 models in all, according to the Sears Archives, in different sizes and architectural styles, stratified into three lines to accommodate different budgets. Some were only offered once; other more popular models were evergreens that reappeared year after year.

After absorbing many foreclosures during the Depression (to avoid giving the impression they were abandoning their customers!), Sears discontinued financing in 1934. In 1940 the last of the Modern Homes catalogs was published, but kits continued to be sold through 1942, including designs from the 1940 issue as well as new designs that had never appeared in the catalog. By then an estimated 100,000 had been built, many of which are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Before my recent visit to Shark River Hills, I emailed my childhood friend Bill to ask if he had any "then" photos to pair with the "now" photos I was planning to take. He responded with two photos of his family's home on South Riverside Drive, taken in 1949. His father later dug out the crawl space beneath the porch to extend the basement and enclosed the porch itself to provide more living space, so the house looks quite different today. But those changes were made after the Stodolas left Shark River Hills; these photos show the house as I remember it. Thanks, Bill!

In his narrative about the house's history, Bill also mentioned - much to my surprise - that it was one of several summer homes built in the 1930's by a developer from Sears kits shipped by rail to Belmar and then transported to Shark River Hills for assembly. Unlike his family's comfortable two-story home, said Bill, most of these houses were smaller, single-story affairs.

"That's the story I heard anyway," he added.

Unfortunately, it is not always easy to identify Sears homes. A few years after Sears stopped selling kits, all sales records were jettisoned. Some homeowners did not want it known that they lived in kit homes and destroyed the evidence. Sears offered reverse floor plans and encouraged buyers to customize - to swap out the siding material, to add a dormer - resulting in a certain lack of uniformity. Competing kit home manufacturers often copied design elements from one another, which can also contribute to confusion.

Still, there are a few markers - stamps on the lumber used for framing on houses built after 1916, shipping labels, a small circled "SR" cast into the lower corner of the bathtub in houses built during the 1930s, etc. - that can help to support or rule out a house's pedigree. Paperwork found in the home and legal documents can also provide clues, as can comparison with published house plans. And of course, unless the house was built between 1908 and 1942, it cannot be a Sears home. (See Rosemary Thornton's fascinating books on Sears houses for more help in verifying authenticity.)

Although New Jersey boasts many kit houses, I have yet to uncover any more information about the would-be Sears homes of Shark River Hills. Wouldn't it be cool to develop a Shark River Hills equivalent of this list of kit homes in my current hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, posted by Rosemary Thornton on her blog? On the other hand, it is well to bear in mind that many family legends are simply that, legends, and more people think they own Sears houses than actually do.

Perhaps a loyal reader will step forward to elaborate on the history provided by Bill and to identify additional Sears homes that might, just might, be hidden in plain sight in Shark River Hills.

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SHARK RIVER HILLS: A MOMENT IN TIME

11/21/2017

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Although people have been living in what is now Shark River Hills since Precolumbian times, its modern era dates back to July 8, 1923, the day that property in this shiny new resort area went on sale. The Shark River Hills Company had actually purchased and platted the 728 acre tract several years earlier, but initial attempts at development had faltered. Now the Company had placed its renewed hopes in the capable hands of Morrisey & Walker, Realtors. The realtors quickly proceeded to live up to their reputation for aggressive marketing, splashing a large ad in the Asbury Park Press on July 7 that proclaimed Shark River Hills to be nothing less than “the LAST HIGH-GRADE DEVELOPMENT NEAR ASBURY.” Parcels could be had for as little as $95, or $10 down and $10/month.

Asbury Park Press, July 7, 1923

Promotional fan, featuring the "Shark River Hills girl"

The pitch was primarily aimed at the summer crowd, who were lured by a vision of a vacation paradise and assured that building “YOUR bungalow on YOUR lot” was a better investment than a series of summer rentals. But those who wished to make Shark River Hills their “permanent house” were welcome as well, so long as their money was green.

* * * * *

"Uppie" Updegraff (Neptune Historical Museum)

A driving force behind this sales campaign was Alice “Uppie” Updegraff, the doyenne of Jersey Shore realtors. For years she commuted from her home in Matawan to her job at Morrisey & Walker in Asbury Park, but in 1924 she decided to set an example for her potential customers by buying - not just any house, but the oldest home in Shark River Hills, built in around 1913, a charming bungalow on Riverside Drive to which a garage was later added. The house appeared in many ads for Shark River Hills property. (Later still, the house was moved to its current location on Glenmere Avenue.)

I knew Uppie from practically the day I was born and have several pictures from a photoshoot on her lawn when I was 4 1/2 months old - me with my parents, me with Uppie's cat - all with her famous house looming in the background, blurred but visible. I suspect Uppie counted my mom and dad as being among a few hundred of her closest friends. More than once I heard the story of her comment when she first saw me as a baby: “Lots of head above the ears - just like her father.” I don’t give her much credit for phrenology; but for finding a way to admire a baby and flatter the baby's father at the same time, she definitely deserved the Dale Carnegie award for knowing how to win friends and influence new parents.

Uppie's home at 645 S Riverside Drive, the first home built in Shark River Hills

"Lots of head above the ears?" Uppie's home can be seen in the background

I remember Uppie as a tiny, wizened old lady though at the time she was probably about the same age as I am now. Living with her in the bungalow were her willowy daughter Virginia - also a real estate agent - and Virginia’s husband, the splendidly mustachioed Alphonse Tonietti.

I always found Alphonse a bit of an enigma, but with the help of my friend Joyce, who has a better memory than I do for these details, and my cousin Alan, who is a better scholar than I am, I've pieced together most of his story. Alphonse was born in 1896 in Basrah (then part of the Ottoman Empire), attended the American College in Beirut, Lebanon, and arrived in the US in 1921, where he graduated from the Columbia University School of Journalism. He went on to have what seems to have been a fairly distinguished career, working as editor of the Literary Digest Magazine and serving on the staffs of the New York World-Telegram and the New York Sun.

Then, in the mid-1930s, Alphonse achieved a measure of possibly unwanted fame when he was fired by the Italian language newspaper Il Progresso, followed by a lawsuit that was widely reported in the Communist and liberal press. Amazingly, he won his case and was reinstated with seven weeks' back pay, the Court finding that he had been discharged not because (as Il Progresso claimed) he didn't write in Italian - that had never been a requirement of his position as editor of the American page - but because of his activities as Chair of Il Progresso's chapter of the New York Newspaper Guild.

By the time I knew him, he had moved on to become the owner and operator of the Holy Land Art Company in New York City, a manufacturer of religious artifacts and fabrics. He died in his office on Murray Street in June of 1958, at the age of 61. Virginia Tonietti lived on for another thirty years; she never remarried.

Two details of more than passing interest are missing here - why Alphonse abandoned his journalism career in favor of selling religious objects; and even more intriguing, how on earth he managed to meet an all-American girl from the tiny hamlet of Shark River Hills, New Jersey and persuade her, in October of 1931, to become his bride.

* * * * *

When my parents decided to give up their rental unit on Clinton Place to buy a home of their own in 1947 or 1948, Uppie and Virginia were close at hand to shepherd them through the process. The house they chose was a modest bungalow on Pinewood Drive at the corner of Hampton Court. It seemed baronial to me at the time although it is currently listed on Zillow as being 1879 square ft, a number that includes two large porches that have now been enclosed and a substantial addition. So - a not-so-big house back then. According to Zillow it was built in 1908.

But wait! Wasn’t Uppie’s house, built in around 1913, supposed to be the oldest house in Shark River Hills? Surely Zillow had gotten the date of the Stodola home wrong.

When I visited Shark River Hills this past August, I had a chance to chat with the current owner of the house, who confirmed that yes, indeed, the house was built in 1908 - that's the date shown on the deed. When I observed that the date seemed too early by several years, he told me that the daughter of the previous owner, the one who had bought the home from my parents, had informed him that the house was originally built not as a residence but as a retreat for Roman Catholic priests, on land purchased by the sister of one of the priests. In fact, he said, the house featured two small prayer rooms, one in the basement, the other a second floor enclosure barely larger than a closet that my father had used as his ham shack!

So far my efforts to track down the previous owner’s daughter or to find any corroboration of the house’s supposed history as a Catholic retreat have failed. If anyone reading this blog can provide me with information about the history of my childhood home I would be very grateful.

Pinewood Drive and Hampton Court - summertime

Pinewood Drive and Hampton Court - winter scene

* * * * *

Although Uppie and others made it their full time home, Shark River Hills remained largely a resort community for quite awhile. Relics of this history were all around when I was a child; across the street from us on Hampton Court was a log cabin (still there!) that was shuttered most of the year, and our closest neighbor was a tiny cottage only occupied during the summer months. Shark River Hills even had its own boardwalk, running from the Club House to the Tucker's Point Bridge, which had doubled the number of routes between Neptune City and Shark River Hills when it was completed in 1923.

The Shark River Hills boardwalk (Neptune Historical Museum)

Crowds gathered on the boardwalk to watch a sporting event (Neptune Historical Museum)

But the little subdivision was on the verge of a sea change. As our friend and neighbor Mary Jane Evers put it, Shark River Hills in the early 1940s was “a summer development, [with] homes not equipped for year-round living, and about three macadamed roads which the Army had done to get to their own properties in the Hills and to allow the personnel to get to work.” My parents' circle of friends were recent arrivals, just as we were, and they were all full timers.

As usual, Mary Jane had it just right, even if there’s no precise demographic term for an old-timey summer resort proceeding peaceably along its journey toward year-round development when it suddenly finds itself host to an Army base and under pressure to make itself user-friendly for a large infusion of military and associated civilian personnel. My father was part of that Camp Evans infusion, and so it happened that this oddly unique moment in the history of Shark River Hills formed the backdrop for my childhood.

The “great hurricane of 1944” demolished the old boardwalk, and no one bothered to rebuild it. The era of Shark River Hills as a summer resort had come to an end.

* * * * *

To all my loyal readers: A very happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours.

Front row: my dad, Aunt June and Uncle Syd (Dad's brother); Back row: my mom holding my sister Sherry, my sister Leslie, me, my grandparents Edwin and Beatrice Stodola

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SPAM

8/8/2017

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I was only two years old when World War II came to an end so have no recollection of the rationing of gas, meat, sugar, or any of the other staples that were distributed to citizens only in controlled amounts because supplies were needed to support the War effort (or for ancillary reasons - but that’s a post for another day). Nor do I remember ever hearing anyone talk about it, nostalgically or otherwise. All rationing ended in 1946, and with a great sigh of relief Americans began consuming with a passion that has only grown since then. Rationing, it seems, was a subject best forgotten.

I do, however, remember two leftovers from rationing that persisted into subsequent years. The first is the zinc-coated steel penny minted in 1943 to conserve copper, which was needed for ammunition and other military equipment. These pennies were lighter in weight than their copper counterparts, and unlike any other American coin ever, they were magnetic. They continued to turn up like - well, like a bad penny - until the 1960s, when the Mint finally succeeded in collecting and destroying most of them. They can now be purchased for a few dollars apiece; only a handful of 1943 copper pennies and 1944 steel pennies, both struck by accident, have any real value.

I had some polished steel pennies made into a chain to celebrate my birth year.

The second is Spam.

Spam is a canned cooked meat product with an almost indefinite shelf life (claims the manufacturer; or 2-5 years if you go by its “best by” date), made with pork, ham, salt, water, modified potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrate. Natural gelatin is formed during cooking and leaves a jelly-like coating in the can. One 3.5oz serving is laden with enough salt (57% of what you should eat every day), fat (41%), and preservatives to make a nutritionist cringe. On the other hand, it has only six ingredients (not counting water), none of them unpronounceable, bringing it close to complying with the "five-ingredient rule" - Michael Pollan's famous criterion for "real food."

Born of the Depression, Spam was introduced in 1937 by the Hormel Foods Corporation of Austin, Minnesota. The name was invented by the brother of a Hormel executive, who won a $100 prize for his submission. Hormel claims that it means something, but exactly what is a closely-guarded secret (perhaps forgotten by now). Speculations include that it is an abbreviation or acronym for "spiced ham", "spare meat", "shoulders of pork and ham”, “Specially Processed American Meat”, “Specially Processed Army Meat”, and a large number of less printable variants.

Although Spam had already been around for a few years, it was during the War that it became a staple of the American diet - because unlike most other meat products it was not rationed. Because of the difficulty of getting fresh meat to the Front, it was also ubiquitous in the military, serving as the WWII version of MRE. The Army found other uses for Spam as well - to grease guns, for example - and the cans were used for scrap metal. Consequently, the majority of Americans old enough to qualify for Medicare probably remember eating Spam. (And like me, they probably remember the distinctive can that opened with a key.)

My mother, true to her New England roots, served it pan-fried with baked beans. I don't know that I ever clamored for it, but I really don't remember it as a penance, either.

* * * * * * * * * *

Having assumed that Spam had long since been sent to the abattoirs of history, I was somewhat surprised to notice few years ago that it could still be found on supermarket shelves (now with a convenient pop-top instead of a key) and on amazon.com, where Spam Classic boasts a 4.5-star rating. (There are also a dozen and a half Spam spinoffs, including Spam Jalapeño, Spam Chorizo, and Spam with Hickory Smoke, not to mention Spam singles and Spam spread.) In fact, it has never gone away at all. For some it’s a cheap source of protein; for others it’s a comfort food. By 2003, it was sold in 41 countries and trademarked in more than 100 countries (excluding most of the Moslem world). Another Spam milestone came in 2007, when the seven billionth can of Spam was sold. It is still manufactured in Austin, Minnesota, where Hormel maintains a restaurant (Johnny's SPAMarama) with a full menu of Spam dishes and a Spam Museum. (Spam is also manufactured in Fremont, Nebraska.)

Over the years, Spam has taken its place in popular culture, turning up thinly disguised in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (in which Cary Grant, who works for an ad agency, is assigned to the "Wham" account); in 'Weird Al' Yankovic's take-off on the R.E.M. tune "Stand"; as well as in many more obscure locations.

But by far the best-known parody of Spam is an iconic 1970 Monty Python skit in which the server in a cafe offers “her” customers “Spam, Spam, Spam, egg and Spam; Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam, or Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy, and with a fried egg on top and Spam." Meanwhile, a group of Vikings who also happen to be eating in the cafe (where else would a Spam-craving Viking hang his horned helmet?) periodically bursts into song in exuberant praise of "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spammity Spam, Wonderful Spam." It would probably be safe to say that the Monty Python sketch is more famous than Spam itself, and that except for the oldest among us, many would never otherwise have heard of Spam. The source for the use of the term "spam" to refer to unsolicited and unwanted email is almost certainly Monty Python and not Hormel.

Is there a connection between spam and Spam, beyond the fact that both are something you might prefer not to appear on your plate? The answer appears to be no. Since the information technology world was (and is) populated by Monty Python fans, the simultaneous appearance of the Spam skit about mystery meat and the felt need for a term for mystery email seems to have been pure serendipity. If anyone has a better answer to this question please let me know!

Will Spam ever make a comeback? Can its humble image be polished? After I learned that some chichi Manhattan restaurants added dishes with tobacco as an ingredient to their dessert menus when indoor smoking was banned, nothing would surprise me. Accordingly, I googled "spam served in fancy restaurants" and sure enough, up (among several entries) popped a 2015 blog post entitled "SPAMalot! Look at How These Trendy Chefs Are Using Spam," featuring such multi-ethnic entrees as Spam Sliders, Spam Sushi Dog, and (in a pairing that startled even jaded diners-out) Foie Gras and Spam Loco Moco.

Shades of Monty Python.

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RAISED BY THE BOOK

6/12/2017

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In 1946, when I was three years old, a book that changed my life and the lives of many of my contemporaries was published. Almost overnight, Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care became the parents’ bible, for many years second only on the bestseller list to that other Bible.

“Trust yourself - You know more than you think you do” was its reassuring mantra. Parents had previously been counseled to adhere to a regular schedule of sleep and feeding, even if it meant leaving an infant sobbing for hours. Picking up and comforting babies would only teach them to cry more, argued such experts as Emmett Holt and the behaviorist John Watson. Not only might it delay sleeping through the night, it could also turn them into failed adults, ill prepared to meet the challenges of the real world. Spock, by contrast, encouraged mothers to rely on their instincts, raising their children not by following a series of rigid rules but by responding to the needs of each child as an individual. What a relief this must have been to mothers, especially those who surreptitiously broke the rules, as I can easily imagine my own mother doing, by soothing their crying infants with forbidden hugs and kisses.

Because Spock lived a long life over which his beliefs and positions evolved, it is difficult not to see the book through the prism of its multiple editions. In addition, his controversial involvement in antiwar activism in the 1960s and early 1970s somehow became entangled in people’s minds with his childrearing advice. The conservative preacher Norman Vincent Peale, in an oft-quoted sermon, blamed Spock's "instant gratification, don't let them cry" approach for the violent demonstrations that occurred during that era. More immoderate commentators went even further, demonizing Spock for single-handedly, through some unholy alchemy of his New Left politics and his supposed advocacy of permissive parenting, causing the sexual revolution, selfishness, lust, increases in crime, and the general moral turpitude they believed was destroying American society.

* * * * * * * * * *

To see the version my mother read - the version born with the Baby Boom and priced at $.25 so everyone could afford it - I purchased a copy of the first edition on eBay. This volume is addressed primarily not to “parents” but to “mothers” - and White middle-class mothers at that. Gay and lesbian families are not anticipated; even divorced and single parents are treated as special cases, tucked away in an Appendix. Worries about childhood obesity are minimal (he devotes 4 pages to “fat children” and 11 to “thin children”), and the vegan diets he later advocated for all children over age two (after crediting such a diet with giving him a new lease on life) are not part of the picture. Circumcision is not yet on the no-list. Sexist language is baked in, despite a certain amount of defensiveness on the author’s part. (He devotes a whole apologetic paragraph to explaining that he’s called the baby “him” throughout, despite his insistence that “girl babies are as wonderful as boy babies.” “Why can’t I call the baby ‘her’ in at least half the book? I need ‘her’ to refer to the mother.”)

Nonetheless, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care was revolutionary. Again, it is difficult to perceive how novel and refreshing it must have seemed to his first readers in Postwar America, because his advice and the version of child development on which it is based have been so thoroughly incorporated into our childrearing thinking and practice. Spock was a pediatrician, not a developmental psychologist, but he was deeply influenced by Freud (he himself underwent psychoanalysis). Indeed, Spock probably did more to smuggle Freud into the popular culture than Freud’s writings could ever have done on their own. (At one point he mentions a little girl who complains to her mother, “But he’s so fancy and I’m so plain” - almost certainly the locus classicus for Mister Rogers’s uncharacteristically graphic song “Everybody’s Fancy.”) As Time's obituary of Spock in 1998 put it, “Surmising that new parents were not yet ready to hear of their infants’ oral, anal, and genital stages, Spock simply advised moms and dads not to get alarmed if a baby sometimes behaved, well, oddly. He had learned from Freud that repression could produce catastrophic adult neuroses. Better, he advised, to wait things out.”

Despite accusations of “permissiveness” (always strongly rejected by Spock himself), his approach can be considered permissive only in contrast with the draconian advice then being offered by Holt and Watson. Dr. Spock expects youngsters to be assigned duties, to put things away, to come to the table when dinner is ready, and to be polite to others. He warns against asking “Do you want to...?” or offering too many reasons when requiring the child to do something. It’s okay for a child to make mudpies (“it enriches his spirit”), but not in his Sunday best. Although no advocate of spanking, neither is Dr. Spock uncompromisingly opposed to it, regarding it as “less poisonous than lengthy disapproval.” The best description is perhaps the one Spock himself chose for the first edition of his book, “common sense.” “Trust yourself,” he told young mothers - and they did.

* * * * * * * * * *

So who was Dr. Spock, and how did he come to be tapped for the job of raising a whole new generation of American children?

Benjamin Spock was born in 1903 in New Haven CT, the eldest of six children of a rock-ribbed Republican New Haven Railroad official and his wife. Both parents held firm views about childrearing but it was left to the formidable Mildred Houghton Spock to carry them out. She followed religiously the regimen of Dr. Holt, with his rigid schedules for feeding, bathing, and elimination. She also believed in the moral and physical virtues of a Spartan lifestyle that included sleeping in an icy bedroom and attending a preschool where lessons were taught outdoors, even in winter.

After preparatory training at Phillips Andover Academy, he enrolled in his hometown college, Yale, for his undergraduate education. Though not a particularly distinguished student, he was a superb athlete and after crewing at Yale became a member of the 1924 Olympic team. Following his graduation in 1925, he entered Yale Medical School but later, over the objections of his family, transferred to Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. He also fell in love with Jane Cheney, a lively and socially conscious Bryn Mawr student, daughter of a wealthy silk manufacturer from Manchester CT, whom he married in 1927. Following an all-too-familiar pattern, Jane worked long hours at Macy's to support her young husband's medical education.

Benjamin McLane Spock

Jane Cheney Spock

Despite coping with various health problems, including the loss of a premature infant, and the onset of the Great Depression, Ben and Jane managed to thrive in the intellectual ferment of New York City, where they were exposed to new ideas and a more diverse society than their rather sheltered lives had previously afforded them. Ben became interested in childhood diseases and in the effects of abuse and neglect. He also discovered a gift for interacting with children. When he graduated from P&S in 1929 he was first in his class. Ben had discovered his metier.

Right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ben volunteered for military service but was rejected because of back problems. So the Spocks remained in New York, spending their summers in the Adirondacks. A few years earlier he had rejected a proposal by Doubleday that he write a child care book, saying he didn't know enough. Now, with a little more time to relax than his winter schedule permitted, he began to think once again about such a book - a book that would embody his ideas on child care, a book aimed not at experts but at the end users, the parents.

In the summer of 1943 Ben began writing, with Jane at his side. Well into the night, after regular work hours, Ben dictated and Jane transcribed (and often rewrote), sometimes suggesting new avenues to pursue; during the day Jane conducted followup research and solicited expert commentary. Eventually Ben was able to join the Navy but even while he was on active duty, Jane soldiered on with the book, carrying out final negotiations with the publishers, indexing, and hammering out last-minute revisions in the middle of the night via long-distance phone calls with her husband.

The book was an overnight sensation - "only...limited," remarked the publisher, "by an inability to get sufficient paper to supply the demand." Revised editions were issued about every ten years. It was eventually translated into 39 languages. Meanwhile, the Spocks, now a family of four, continued to maintain busy lives. Ben traded his clinical practice for an academic career, accepting many speaking engagements and writing additional books and articles. With a more comfortable income they spent more time vacationing. Jane gamely though cautiously learned to sail in her sixties. As the Vietnam War dragged on, Ben grew increasingly political, even running as a third party presidential candidate in 1972.

Then, in 1975, Ben announced to Jane that he wished to begin a "trial separation." He went out and rented an efficiency apartment for himself. A legal separation followed shortly, then divorce, and within a few months he married a woman 41 years his junior. Jane was devastated.

What went wrong? Apparently neither of the two was easy to live with. “Though he was blessed with a great deal of energy and maintained a warm and pleasant public presence,” said one Spock biographer, “he held impossibly high standards for himself as well as for those around him.” As Jane herself put it, "Ben seems like this outgoing, loving, easygoing person, but he really isn’t. He's a stern person.” His two sons remember him as a cold and remote father, devoid of the warmth and affection he advised his readers to bestow on their children. One told an interviewer his father had always made him feel "judged, criticized, scared, beaten down." "I never kissed them," Spock himself admitted. For her part, Jane spent most of her adult life in and out of therapy. She was dependent on alcohol and Miltown (the tranquilizer immortalized by the Rolling Stones as "Mother's little helper") and suffered from intense mood swings. She also harbored a deep resentment about her husband’s and society’s failure to recognize the extent of her role in creating the child care book and did not hesitate to berate him in public.

In the end, Benjamin Spock apparently lost the will to do the hard work of keeping the marriage together. Their sons were horrified - so much so that they adopted their mother’s family name. Although they could hardly have failed to notice the constant stream of bitter arguments, after 48 years they had long since concluded that was just the way of things.

The prospects for a divorced 70ish woman were of course much more limited than those for her male counterpart. Jane did her best to make lemonade out of the lemons she’d been handed, advocating and running support groups for divorced older women. By and large, however, she lived out her remaining thirteen years a lonely and embittered woman, institutionalized for six months after breaking down altogether and railing against her ex-husband whenever she had the chance. "If it had been a co-authorship, like it should have been," she told an interviewer, "I would have been asked [to be] on televisions shows, too, and I would have been asked what I thought about things. I might have been more of a somebody. But I don't think he could stand it, sharing the spotlight.”

In the fourth edition of the book, just as their marriage was on the verge of dissolution, Spock finally included a generous though long overdue notice of Jane’s participation in the form of a full-page acknowledgment at the front of the book. Was that good enough, or did Jane, as she claimed, deserve more? Ann Hulbert, in her 2003 history of childrearing advice in America, actually becomes quite incensed on Jane’s behalf - though as a reviewer of her book in the New Yorker cynically observed, “If we had a nickel for every twentieth-century author whose wife was an unacknowledged collaborator on his books, we could probably pay for the war in Iraq.”

Nonetheless, although there is no universal standard by which to judge when transcribing, performing background research, fact-checking, recipe-testing, editing, consulting experts, rewriting, and more cross the blurry line into full-fledged coauthorship, a case could almost certainly be made for Jane’s claim. Of the two, she was the scholar. Spock did little if any research on his own and claimed the book “really all came out of my head.” A talented writer and prolific letter-writer, he was probably responsible for the genial, reassuring tone for which the book is justly famous, and of course he had the medical creds to back up his words. But Jane appears to have contributed intellectual content as well as technical and stylistic support. She was the source of his interest in psychoanalysis, for example, and persuaded him that personality formation was fairly well established by the age of two.

Given the breadth and depth of Jane's participation, I doubt that anyone could have quarreled with a joint authorship had it been proposed - and the official inclusion of a woman’s voice might even have increased its appeal (if indeed that were possible, given the book’s astounding popularity). So - let’s just say the decision to go with a sole authorship was a call. Who knows if Jane's life, and their lives together, might have taken a different turn had Ben called it differently, either from the beginning or with the publication of a subsequent edition?

* * * * * * * * * *

I have always felt deep down, whatever the demographers may say, that I belong to the leading edge of the Baby Boom. I now realize, however, that I have to temper that conviction a little, because my poor mother had to struggle through my first three years without benefit of Dr. Spock. Her first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage, and when I was born in 1943 (the same year Ben and Jane started working on their book), she feared she was so old (thirty!) that she might never be lucky enough to have another child. In fact she went on to have three more, but when I first arrived she regarded me as little short of a miracle baby. My infancy is so well documented in text, photos, and home movies that I’ve sometimes thought it would be great source material for a doctoral dissertation on child-rearing practices of the World War II era.

So I reviewed my mother’s two baby books on little Cindy for evidence of the childrearing ethos that prevailed before Dr. Spock, and sure enough, there it was: “Cindy started her toilet training on Nov. 19, 1943, her ninth month birthday.” As Spock observed, when a baby appears to be toilet-trained that early, “It’s the mother who’s trained.” Readiness was everything, to Spock's way of thinking. There may be no harm in starting so early; on the other hand, if the mother makes excessive performance demands the child may end up rebelling in his second year. Better to put it off for a few more months.

Standing on the bank of the Shark River with my mom and siblings. I'm on the left, slightly apart from the others - a little preadolescent "attitude", perhaps?

Once The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care came out, it was the first place my mother turned for answers to all her childrearing questions, so much so that I remember sneaking it off her bookshelf to read the chapters on “From Six to Eleven” and “Puberty Development,” just to make sure I stayed out ahead of her. I also remember feeling frustrated and annoyed at her stock dismissal of many issues that seemed desperately important to me (somehow I can’t remember what they were) with the words, “She’s just going through a phase” (her term for what Spock called a “stage”). It felt to me as though she was denying the validity of my concerns in a way that she would never dream of denying her own. I later realized I was probably fortunate that she adopted this relatively relaxed attitude towards my various notions rather than one of worry or revulsion or anger or any one of a number of responses I might have found even less palatable.

As I prepared to write this essay, I was surprised to discover that the man who shepherded me through most of my childhood stages even had a few words of wisdom about my current life stage. In his autobiography Spock on Spock, he described his attitude towards aging as “delay and deny” - an approach I too have found useful.

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TONI's DOUBLE LIFE

3/12/2017

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Of all my childhood toys, only two remain with me today: my Hazel-Atlas “modern tone” tea set (supplemented by eBay purchases to replace pieces that went missing somewhere along the way) and my beloved Toni doll.

My Toni is a model P90 - that is, 14” tall (the smallest Toni; the dolls also came in several larger sizes.) She has blue sleep-eyes lined with a fringe of upper lashes and painted lower lashes, a slightly pouty red mouth, a jointed body, and a platinum wig glued to her skull. Sadly, one of her hard plastic pinkies has broken off, but she is otherwise in pretty good shape. She was manufactured by the Ideal Toy Company sometime between 1949 and 1953, so I couldn’t have been more than ten when she and I began our long journey together, and more likely closer to six. I suppose I should display her on a stand and try to protect her from further damage, but my granddaughter loves to play with her and I love watching my granddaughter at play, so Toni’s fate is to lead the rough-and-tumble life of a child’s toy and not the pampered retirement of a collectible gathering dust on a shelf.

In addition to Toni herself, I have a whole wardrobe of clothes made by my mother using patterns from Butterick or McCall’s and material left over from clothes she made for us on her trusty old Kenmore electric home sewing machine (which I also still have, along with a set of bobbins and a box of lethal-looking attachments for ruffling, zigzagging, buttonholing, etc.). In fact, for a long time I had two of each outfit, one for Toni and one for her red-haired sister Nancy Lee, a slightly larger Arranbee doll with which I foolishly parted with when her arms and legs came off, not knowing at the time how easy it would have been for any “doll doctor” to reattach them. I no longer have Toni's original outfit, detracting from any value she might retain as a collectible, but the ones my mother made for me are far more precious.

Toni looking jaunty in a jumpsuit made by my mom.

As gifts to my sisters, I repurposed a couple of duplicate doll dresses into cushions.

Although to the untutored eye she resembles many dolls of her era, including my poor dismembered and discarded Nancy Lee, my Toni doll has a dirty little secret: In addition to being a charming toy with lots of little-girl appeal, she was also a promotional gimmick for Toni Home Permanents. Designed by the renowned German immigrant doll sculptor Bernard Lipfert, she came packaged with her own home permanent kit that included a sugar-water permanent solution, end papers, curlers, and a comb. Yes, you could actually perm Toni's nylon wig - though if you did it too often her hair could turn into an irrecoverably sticky mess.

In the past women had styled their hair with curling irons and, well, just plain irons, which all too often left their homes reeking of scorched hair. So the development of the permanent wave in the early twentieth century was embraced by many women, especially after the less elaborate cold wave was invented in 1938. But even though the alarming Rube Goldberg machines and strong heat of the old-style perms were no longer needed, the cold wave process still involved serious chemical changes to the protein structure of the hair and required six to eight hours in a salon.

The home permanent, pioneered by the Toni Home Permanent Company of Forest Lake, Minnesota, was thus a breakthrough product, offering a cheaper alternative to the salon perm and bringing hair styling back home again. It also made beauty a social occasion, with Toni parties becoming popular among both teenagers and adults.

In 1948, the Toni Company was acquired by Gillette, an early step towards diversification for Gillette and also the start of more aggressive marketing of Toni products. The best-known ad campaign featured photographs of wavy-haired identical twins and famously asked, "Which Twin has the Toni?" The twins themselves sometimes appeared in touring shows that invited audience participation in making the correct identification.

Less attention has been paid by historians of advertising to the innovative process by which the Toni doll's creators sought to engage the consumer by appealing to her children. I was blissfully unaware not only of being targeted by the advertising industry but also of the delicious irony of having wheedled my mother into paying for this privilege.

Long hair and heavy machinery don't mix, and the employment of women in factories during World War II led to a call for shorter hairstyles. (The sultry actress Veronica Lake cut off her "peekaboo" locks to help promote workplace safety, and although her career suffered as a result, her sacrifice led to a measurable decline in industrial accidents.) The home perm was well adapted to these new styles and helped prolong a preference for soft waves or curls, often swept away from the face or paired with bangs.

Sleeker straighter hairstyles did not become fashionable till the 1960s, popularized by activists like Joan Baez, and my poor sister, who had the most adorable straight hair and bangs, was subjected in the name of beauty to a series of Tonettes, a Toni home perm intended especially for little girls. My own hair, on the other hand, was too curly. I desperately wanted to let it grow long, but my soft-hearted mother couldn’t bear the anguished tears produced by combing out my sausage curls and repeatedly dragged me off to a beauty parlor for a cringe-worthy do called the “cap cut.”

My little sister with her Tonette curls.

The dreaded "cap cut."

I'm not sure when creme rinse - a thin white liquid that magically softened and detangled thick curly hair - became readily available, but when it did it changed my life. (It now seems to have morphed into much thicker “conditioners” that moisturize, volumize, and decrease frizz. Sorry, folks, it's not the same stuff.) Once I discovered creme rinse, I let my hair grow out and didn’t trim it back to shoulder-length until I turned forty.

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JEEPS AND STOCKINGS: TWO ADDENDA

12/31/2016

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In the spirit of tidying up 2016’s loose ends in time for the New Year, I have a couple of follow-ups to earlier posts based on reader responses. Rather than updating old entries and expecting my long-suffering readers to go back and dredge them up, I decided to do a free-standing post elaborating on a couple of interesting bits of mid-20th century Americana.

* * * * * * * * * *

First, in the essay entitled “Out and About on the Jersey Shore,” dated May 3, 2016, I stated “Our friends the Evers had [a car with a rumble seat, a padded bench where the trunk should have been], and we all vied to be one of the two lucky ducks (three, if we wheedled persuasively enough) who got to ride there…. (The Evers family also had a Willy’s Jeep. They had all the good cars!)”

(Courtesy of the Evers family)

When I recently asked Helen and Bill Evers for some photos of their mother for my essay on Pearl Harbor, Helen sent several of their childhood family, including a couple of pictures of the cars I had mentioned in the May 3 post. This one is almost certainly the car with the rumble seat, though that particular feature is hidden by the Evers paterfamilias, Jim.

The other car photo she sent was of the Willy's jeep! Just seeing that iconic car and those two adorable little kids brought a smile to my face.

Bill and Barbara Evers, shown with their family's Willy's Jeep in 1949. (Courtesy of the Evers family)

We Americans loved our Willy’s Jeeps. Brainchild of the industrial designer Brooks Stevens, the Willy’s Jeep Station Wagon first rolled off the assembly line in 1946, just in time to join American families in their wholesale move to the suburbs. I was pleased to confirm my childhood memory: Despite its appearance, it was actually a faux woody made of painted steel, a design that was both safer and better-suited to mass-production than contemporary wood-bodied passenger wagons. Production continued in the US until 1965, when the Jeep Wagoneer supplanted it in our fickle affections. Production continued in Brazil and Argentina for several more years.

Thanks, Helen and Bill, for your generosity in sharing these wonderful old family photos. (I always have a hard time using the term "vintage" about photos of my own contemporaries!)

* * * * * * * * * *

Second, my daughter Julie, upon reading my most recent entry, “A Jersey Shore Christmas,” dated December 25, 2016, asked me if my mother’s legs were really bare in the home movie clip of her sledding down the driveway with me. “Those weren't white wool stockings?” The same comment could equally well be applied to the women’s legs in the photo of the riverside bonfire.

A little clarification is in order. No, I don't remember my mother's ever owning or wearing white wool stockings. But I probably shouldn’t have used the term “bare-legged” (even though to my way of thinking it’s a distinction without a difference) because she was almost certainly wearing nylon stockings - and therein lies a story.

Nylon was developed in the 1930s in the lab of Wallace Carothers, a polymer scientist with Dupont, and patented in 1938. Although Dupont’s vision for their invention - the world’s first fully synthetic fiber - extended far beyond hosiery, they cannily decided to start by offering women an affordable and less delicate alternative to silk stockings. The new product was introduced with much hoopla at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 and went on sale to the general public in May of 1940. Four million pairs were sold on the first day alone. Nylon became a household word and “nylons” a synonym for stockings. They were more than just an article of women’s underwear, they offered hope that modern technology would lift a Depression-weary nation into prosperity once again.

Barely had nylons become one of life’s necessities for the American woman when they were snatched away. In December of 1941 the US entered World War II, and all nylon was diverted to the War effort, used for everything from parachutes to rope to aircraft fuel tanks. The only stockings to be had were bought either before the War or on the black market. To give the illusion they were wearing proper nylons, women painted “seams” down the backs of their legs (probably straighter than it was ever possible to get the real thing!). When stockings were reintroduced after the War, consumer demand outstripped supply, leading to mile-long queues and even “nylon riots,” with women getting into fist fights with one another in the heat of competition. Fortunately Dupont soon rose to the occasion and ramped up production of the coveted garment.

Late in the 1940s seamless nylons became available, but surprisingly they never entirely caught on. (For some, apparently the seams were part of the mystique.) Nylons, with or without seams, along with the garter belts that held them up, remained women’s wardrobe mainstays until the introduction of pantyhose in 1959 - ushering in a trend towards higher hemlines and ultimately the micro-miniskirts that shocked us all a few years later. But that is another story.

I should add that little girls did not wear nylons until they reached their teens or at least their tween years. In the firehouse Christmas party photo, the girls truly were bare-legged, though we usually wore leggings when we went outside during the winter. By leggings I don’t mean either the modified tights that are now called leggings or the leg-warmers worn by dancers and dancer wannabes, I’m talking about thick wooly pants held up with suspenders that were companion garments to winter coats. These leggings were only worn outside, so we put them on and took them off again multiple times per day - going to and from school, for recess, at lunchtime, etc. Synthetics had not yet revolutionized cold-weather gear, at least not for civilians, and we spent much of our outdoor recreation time looking and feeling like the Pillsbury Doughboy - unlike our moms, who simply had to grin and bear it.

Thanks, Julie, for asking a good question and for caring about how cold your grandmother must have been!

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CINDY STODOLA POMERLEAU

I was just shy of 3 years old when the US Army successfully bounced radar waves off the moon - the opening salvo in the Space Race, the birth of radioastronomy, and the first Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) communication. I was born on the Jersey coast for the same reason as Project Diana: my father, as scientific director of the Project, was intimately involved in both events. Like Project Diana, I was named for the goddess of the moon (in my case Cynthia, the Greeks' nickname for Artemis - their version of Diana - who was born on Mt Cynthos). Project Diana is baked into my DNA.

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TO THE MOON AND BACK
(ARCHIVED BLoG)

QUEST OF THE MAGI

ME AND MY UKULELE

DR HELEN JONES

OUR PETS

A HOLIDAY GIFT FROM SEARS

SHARK RIVER HILLS: A MOMENT IN TIME

SPAM

RAISED BY THE BOOK

TONI's DOUBLE LIFE

JEEPS AND STOCKINGS: TWO ADDENDA

CINDY STODOLA POMERLEAU

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TO THE MOON AND BACK ​(ARCHIVED BLoG)

CINDY STODOLA POMERLEAU

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TO THE MOON AND BACK
(ARCHIVED BLoG)