Gerda's crocheted doilies.

Grandmom was always crocheting something - when she wasn't knitting hats and mittens, that is.

There were dozens of these in her house and the houses of her children.

  Under lamps, under plants, under almost anything set down on a wood surface.

Relatively few are still in the cedar chest.

Ruth Rowles had some, so perhaps there are more with her children.

\

Somewhere there is a little box full of just the pansies, waiting for more centers to be attached to.

The pansy ones are the ones we remember most, but more elegant ones are still around, too.

Polyester heirloom

I was ironing this tablecloth this morning, feeling smug that it would be put away ready to use.
It has been on the table at just about every significant dinner for a long time. 
Besides being washable and long-wearing, this lacy-looking cloth goes over a solid color to elegant effect, and, incidentally, covers small stains and imperfections on the underlying cloth.  Very handy.

I've had it since we lived in Albany, which means that it is as old as Karen!

Uncle Hubbard

This is the only picture of Hubbard Keen that I know of.
Here he is selling tomatoes(?) from the back of his pickup truck in Centerville, Delaware sometime in the 1920s.
Hubbard was my Grandfather Keen's older brother, son of Walter Hamilton Keen and Henrietta.

Uncle Jack Keen recently rather incidentally shared in an email;
"Uncle Hubbard was Dad's oder brother. He would come to our home at Thanksgiving & stay till New Yr. Bring turkey goose plus other produce.I played pinocle with him during Xmas holidays.He was an advanced agent for the Circus, might have been Ringling Bros. & baramun/Bailey circus. He had some great stories."


All we heard about Hubbard while we were growing up was this condensed tale:
Hubbard went out with her on Wednesday;
His father married her on Friday;
Hubbard went West and raised goats.
------------------------
EDIT:  Well, shoot. I just looked up the marriage record.  Louisa and Walter H were married on April 25, 1900, which was a Wednesday.  You'll just have to suspend that knowledge now, and go on with the story as traditionally told.
------------------------

When going through my father's papers, I came across a badly written composition for college freshman English class that told the rest of the story - at least as Newlin knew it.

Here is a 'warts and all' transcription of that paper - complete with the misspelling of both Hubbard and Louisa.

Biography of Uncle Hubbert

Uncle Hubbert was born in Wilmington about the year 1886 – the first of three children. His father was a preacher by gift , and a cabinet maker by trade. Because of limited finances, Hubbert quit school and took up the trade of tin-smith and metal-worker. His mother died just after his fifteenth birthday, and because his father could not afford a housekeeper the neighbors helped him and his father keep house.

After several months an attractive young lady of sixteen years, Miss Louise Hazelhurst, offered to be housekeeper for her room and board. She had left her own home because she did not get along well with her step-mother. She was welcomed to the job, and the family returned to their duties.

Uncle Hubbert, between the age of fifteen and sixteen was very nearly six feet tall, weighed about 170 pounds, and was very neat and manly in appearance. His character was that of nearly all preachers' sons of his time – he was a goody-goody at home and when he was in the presence of his father. The only bad habits he had were smoking and playing cards – the influence of the masters of his trade.

Uncle Hubbert had fallen in love with Louise, but this was not apparent about the house. They had dates, but they never left or returned to the house together. They nearly always met in Shellpot park for their little escapades. The love birds got to a point, on Wednesday evening, where he asked her to marry him. She consented, and they planned to elope the following Saturday. Time during the next two days passed slowly for Uncle Hubbert, as he had everything planned for the elopement on Saturday.

He was planning his life together with Louise. Friday night when he got home from work he got the shock of his life – he found that his father had married Louise in the afternoon. Saturday, after forcing himself to congratulate his father, he took his belongings and went to work, but he did not return.

With an “I don't care what happens” attitude, he headed north until he arrived at Philadelphia. Here he lived in a boarding home, and worked as a trolley car motor-man. During his wanderings at night he happened on a gambling joint. This was just the type of place he was looking for to make him forget his troubles. Being a good card player, he went home that evening with a good week salary obtained within a few hours. This continued for about a week, and then he quit his work and got a job playing cards for the gambling house. This environment just added to his disgust for women and what was right.

One night when he was more depressed than usual he indulged in the drinking of alcohol for the first time. When he got home early the following morning the boarding mistress was waiting for him because she had developed an interest in him, and was anxious about his safety.

She had found out where he was working nights and she could tell from his manner that he was not the type of young man to be in such places. That morning she managed to get him upstairs. He then related to her the story of what had happened at home and gave that as an excuse for being in his present condition. Emma, the boarding mistress, felt sorry for him and suggested that he travel to forget his troubles.

Soon he was bumming his way to California – only spending his money when his hard luck story for a meal didn't work. By the time he got to California, he was a pretty good judge of character because of his contacts with all classes of people. In California he joined the J.L.Barnes circus as a member of the lighting squad. Enthused about his work and pleased with himself, he wrote a letter to Emma thanking her for her kind advice and motherly interest. This letter started quite a correspondence between them. Years passed by and meanwhile Emma had left her husband and was following Uncle Hubbert from town to town. He had advanced from lighting squad to and advance advertising agent, and he made arrangements in the various towns before the circus arrived.

After ten years of service Uncle Hubbert was finally persuaded by Emma to leave the circus and to settle down in California on a goat farm with her.

The years with the circus had made him a shrewd businessman and a good conversationalist. It also created within him a strong desire to wander and gave him further opportunities to study character. Emma's influence, on the other hand, tended to steady him. He stopped gambling and playing cards, and for a while he gave up his wanderings. He was, however, still restless, and he soon became tired of California. They moved about from place to place – never staying long in one town.

At the present time they are living in a small town where they have lived for two years.

Orange - a short mischievous rambling on third grade

No stuff. Just story.
Logan's favorite color for a while was orange.
That reminded me of another little boy who liked orange.
Like everyone else in my first grade class, Peter Hendrickson was issued a box of 8 fat crayons.
He wanted to trade his blue crayon for my orange one.
We didn't trade, but he did manage to negotiate with other kids, and wound up with a majority of his crayons being orange.

Peter was also in my third grade class.  I think I would be embellishing history to claim that he had a favorite orange sweater that year. The sweater I remember could well have been in first grade.

In third grade there was a box in the front of the room where we put book reports. These were not really reports, but rather purple ditto forms that could be completed in five minutes - Title, Author, Main idea.
I don't know if the contest was official, but Peter and I were definitely competing to be the one who had read the most books.  As far as I am concerned, he cheated in a major way by getting chicken pox so that he could stay home and read for days and days.  Ricky McHugh might have been a contender, too, but he only read the skinniest books he could find, so, while annoying, he was hard to take seriously.

Our third grade teacher was Miss Coffin, and I suspect that she was new.  This was long before No Child Left Behind, so there was much more flexibility in the curriculum.
Miss Coffin was taking flying lessons, so her class learned to spell "fuselage" and "aileron" and to label the parts of an airplane on a line drawing.

Also, Miss Coffin mispronounced "mischievous".  She said  mis-CHE-vi-ous.
I have since learned that there has been much discussion of this word, and that she was clearly not the only one who used that pronunciation.  However, I was told at home that this was absolutely not right, and, indeed, on the subject of the extra syllable,  "evidence for the spelling goes back to the 16th century. Our pronunciation files contain modern attestations ranging from dialect speakers to Herbert Hoover. But both the pronunciation and the spelling are still considered nonstandard." (merriam-webster site)

NOTE TO SIBLINGS:  Not nearly as good a tale as "Afaghanstan", I know,but it's all I've got.

Grandmom's Adventure 75th Birthday

In 1993 Karen and I went to Wilmington to celebrate Mother's 75th birthday.
It snowed. Quite unusual.

On Sunday, Karen produced this charming account of the weekend, done in the style of a young grandchild.  (She was 19 and in art school at the time.)

I just found the booklet again today.
The cover is wrapping paper.

The top picture references a picture Sarah drew years before for a Thanksgiving place card, illustrating Grandmom (Grace) after driving to Minnesota for a visit.

I don't remember either issue here, but apparently we were not stars in the kitchen!

"once in a while"...  chuckling.

The Olive Garden was chosen because it was open.  The roads were not plowed, Newlin drove, and the ride was 'exciting.'  That is Lois in the front seat, freaking out.

An academic orientation

It is Mother's birthday.  She would have been 95 today.


Before any of us were particularly aware of Tower Hill School or its motto,
we intuitively knew what Multa Bene Facta meant.  Mother.

And one of the things she was best at was school.

Both The Morning News and The Evening Journal carried articles about the Claymont High School Graduation in 1935. Complete copies of these newspapers exist in The Stuff.
Here are scans of a separate, crumbling set of clippings that have since been recycled, found in a different box.

"At the right is shown Miss Kwick, who won all the honor prizes"

Growing up, while we knew that Mother had been a good student, we were not told of this coup.

Late in her life she did tell me that during the graduation ceremony,  Mr. Stahl, the principal, when calling her name for yet another prize, added an aside to the audience something like, "Lest you think that Grace spends all of her time studying, you should know that she has a very nice boyfriend, too."

Her high level of involvement in everything persisted at college.

With her picture in the yearbook from her Junior year:

                 Class Editor Blue and Gold 1; Business

                 Manager Blue and Gold 3; Class Treas-

                 urer 2, 3; Math Club 1, 2, 3; French

                 Club 1, 2, 3; German Club 2, 3; Science

                 Club 1; Freshman Formal Committee 1;

                 Stunt Night Committee 2; Sophomore

                 Tea Dance Committee 2; Soph-Senior

                  Luncheon Committee 2; Business Man-

                  ager Junior Prom 3.

                 One girl who does well what would

                 enough work for three ordinary girls.

(Stunt night Committee??)

There are other documents that illustrate academic excellence and much careful, if not very interesting work in elementary school -- and a lot of notes and related correspondence about her Masters degree.  Both are out of scope for this post.

Suffice it to say for now that we had an amazing academic role model, and that it was always understood that school work was of utmost importance.

We used to sing

Going through a box of musty sheet music, it struck me that we don't sing much any more. 
Many of the pieces have names written on them: Mary Stuck, Mary E Keen, Marjorie Keen, Marjorie Smith, Grace Kwick, Grace K Keen..
Here is just a small part of the contents of that box.
I don't remember anyone actually playing any of these songs on the piano, but I know that both of my parents sang bits of all of them at one time or another - enough that I could probably still sing them.

It isn't that we sang at family picnics and holiday dinners.  It is just that the songs were around, somehow in the collective consciousness.
Maybe this happened because more people were listening to fewer radio stations, so had more songs in common?

I recently mentioned at Karen's house that my friends and I would sing folk songs* at slumber parties, and the response was, "What a weird childhood you had!"    Apparently my children and grandchildren didn't/don't sing on school bus trips, either.  I'm not sure who is weird. 


I'm sure we all sing along with the radio in the car.
Sometimes that tends toward strange, yes.  I make a point of listening for "Maoz Tzur" every Hanukkah, so that I can sing along.   And "Now Is The Month of Maying" reliably shows up on NPR every May 1.  But I also sing along with oldies and the occasional catchy country song, at least when I am alone.

In a slightly different category, maybe, but still in the class of unofficial singing, one of my treasured memories is of the Tower Hill Vocal Ensemble breaking into four-part Christmas carols (and possibly bits of Britten's Ceremony of Carols) while waiting for a table at Howard Johnson's after caroling at unremembered homes.   We were good, so the customers loved it.

Music makes such strong memories.
Tower Hill music might be its own post sometime.


-----------------
* specifically:  Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Lemon Tree.. 
Probably limited to what could be accompanied by two or three chords on our ineptly played guitars.

Souvenir from New York City, probably 1997

I'm not sure what else can be said.
It is an impressive 16 page menu of drinks and cigars, and I have a matchbox to go with it.

Kinda spooky.

Actually, it was,  Even at the time.  I don't consider myself much of an acrophobe,  but I didn't like being there.  It wasn't a bar I would have liked even on street level, which I'm sure didn't help.  Really just wanted to go back down.

The other World Trade Center connection was a Ben & Jerry's purchase in the PATH train station.
Years later, at Harrah's in St. Louis in 2004, I bought another Ben &Jerry's cup, and realized that the last one had been in New York.. Another weird moment.

Check out the new update to the post about Axel's woodworking.
http://stuffstories.blogspot.com/2011/11/this-pincusion-rocks.html

Kwick comedians

Sometimes when we only know people when they are old, we forget that they were once much younger and less dignified....

Nils/Grandpop, Grace, Gerda/Grandmom (or maybe Alice?), Raymond.  Late 1920s.

A Ruth Berlin work history

Cousin Ruth could almost have a blog of her own.
Rather than make an entry every time I find another postcard,I've pulled together what I have into an almost chronological list. It is a rather dry account, but at least the outline is all in one place.  Supporting snapshots are not particularly informative, but will be scanned into the Ruth Berlin online album at some point.  "Good help" seems to have been passed around among the richest families in New York.  Ruth certainly worked for a number of them.

Ruth Berlin was born in 1892 in Sweden, and came to the U.S. in 1912.
The 1920 census shows her in Manhattan, in the household of J. Clifton Edgar, a professor of Obstetrics st Cornell.

The first of her jobs for which we have documentation was with H.C. Frick.  She worked for that family from the fall of 1920 to May, 1923,  at both Eagle Rock

http://stuffstories.blogspot.com/2012/01/ruth-worked-for-hcfrick-at-eagle-rock.html
and at 1 East 70th in New York, currently The Frick Collection.
(find a picture)

Ruth's cousin Victor sent her a letter to the Frick mansion in New York City.

In the summer of 1923, Ruth went to Sweden.
She returned in October 1923 on this ship, the S.S. Frederik VIII

From April 1924 to October 1926, Ruth worked for John D. Rockefeller.
Here is the reference she got when she left.

Two Residences, it says.  If there was one in New York City, she worked there.  Otherwise, one must have been Kykuit in Tarrytown, in the Hudson Valley (photo from Kykuit website)

The second was The Casements, Rockefeller's winter home in Ormond Beach, Florida

Ruth talked about the staff all getting dimes from John D.   He was famous for doing that.

There is a gap of over a year before the next long-term employment.
I think that means that the undated 4 months at Black Point was during the summer of 1927.


Then from the summer of 1928 to June 1932, Ruth was working on Park Avenue for G.B.Salisbury.

 Who was G.B.Salisbury?
The 1919-20 Annual Bulletin for the Harvard College Class of 1889 reports that he "is doing business as Salisbury, Worth & Sloan, brokers,at 74 Broadway NYC" .   That's all I have found.

Edit 1/28/2013:
The 1930 census has a Ruth Berlin listed as a servant in the house of Charles Pierre on Park Avenue. This must be 'our' Ruth because the nationality, birth date, and immigration year are right.  Don't know how to square this data with the "four years" in Mrs. Salisbury's 1932 note except to notice that the Salisburys and Pierres lived in the same apartment building at the time of the census.
It would be amazing to be able to say that she had worked for Pierre, because he is the Pierre of the Pierre Hotel on Central Park, which opened in 1930



From Park Avenue, Ruth went to Tuxedo Park, to Ledgelands, home of David and Isabelle Wagstaff for several years. All I know about the Wagstaffs is that they were listed in The Social Register.
Ruth left them when they closed the house, it says.

1937 through 1941, we only know what Ruth was doing during the summers.

1937.  The Breakers. A Vanderbilt estate.   One of the largest in Newport.
Ruth was First Housekeeper for the summer.
The Countess Szechenyi, nee Gladys Vanderbilt, inherited the house from Cornelius II.

Summers 1938, 1939, 1940, and 1941 were spent with the W.K.Vanderbilt household.
We know this from the letter here

The summers must have been at Eagles Nest on Long Island.

When she was taken  on permanently, her duties would have taken her, in season, to the Vanderbilt residence on 5th Avenue.  Perfect.

From the Vanderbilts, Ruth went back to Tuxedo Park, to an estate called Kincraig, owned by George G Mason. I have found nothing to enlarge on this data.
Ruth was there for almost four years.

There was a short term of employment with Walter Chrysler in 1949.
I'll bet that she didn't like being away from New York City.

Then in 1950, Ruth started work for Mrs. G. F. Tyler in Bucks County, PA.  This was her last job.
The Indian Council Rock estate was full of art and there were extensive gardens with sculptures.
The estate was left to Temple University, but is now Bucks County Community College.
There are a lot of pictures from this property in Ruth's albums.

Ruth became a U.S. Citizen during her time with Tylers, in 1956.

Ruth worked at this job until the house was closed after Mrs. Tyler died.

Ruth was in Bucks County until 1964, when she was 72.
She moved back to New York City in her retirement.

It's All Yours. 1961. Eighth Grade Operetta

This is the heavily annotated script for our Operetta.  The show was a Really Big Deal for me.
I got to be 'Coordination and Direction', which meant getting out of a lot of classes to go to rehearsals to document blocking decisions, etc.  It also meant staying late at school and going in on Saturdays to work on songs or make stencils and hang out with Mr. B.

It is a subject on which I can bore people to distraction.
At the 25th class reunion, it briefly became a game to try to find something I did not remember about the show. (Not entirely sure it was the 25th.. One of the gatherings at Tepe's that a lot of people attended.)
"What did Dave Conklin do in the Operetta?"
"Dave Conklin was not in our class that year"
"Yes he was! He started in Kindergarten!"
"He was in England for a couple of years.  He was not in the class in 8th grade."

Here is the list of who did what.  Yes, I did re-type it.  The original ditto is really faded.

Obviously, I could go on and on.
I'm proud of knowing the Delaware State Song and being able to add it into the Song of the Underground.  I got to sit with John McDevit in the Gourmet Club scene. I still know all the words to Susie Diver's great song.

I will skip over a rant about the fact that we did not get to have an evening performance (and follow-on party!) because of some scheduling person not paying attention and booking health guru Bonny Pruden to speak at Home and School - or something like that.  We missed out on a party, though.  Not fair.  Wanted that party.

Herewith a bit more of the show.
Feel free to ask me about it.  I'm likely to sing if you do, though.  Be warned.
You can read the whole thing if you want to.  I have scanned all the pages and put them here

Keens sure kept a lot of stuff - 1953 Christmas card

 

I just ran across this card mixed in with completely unrelated papers from 1958.

This is a Christmas Card to me in 1953 from my first grade teacher!

Interesting that it is signed in cursive when we, theoretically, could only read printing.

Her first name was Olive, which I thought was really funny. 

(I did entertain the possibility that the card was from Dorothy Moore, which would have made sense in the 1958 box.  However, this is not Dorothy's writing, and I believe that she would have signed it "Dorothy Moore" and sent it to all three kids, not just me.)

Documentation Mania - 1966 trip

In 1966, the Keens, realizing that there might not be another opportunity for a trip as a family, went to England again.  This time the trip also included Switzerland and France, which we had not visited in 1958.
There is a scrapbook that covers that trip.  Really covers it, but with hardly any commentary or narration. It seems to believe that the stuff tells the story.  Somewhat true.
Of course, there are also lots of pictures - mostly slides - somewhere, too.

I'm just going to put the pages back in the box.  They contain communication with travel agents and Reg Moore about arrangements and some fairly conventional souvenir stuff like programs and postcards.
And more..

Plane tickets over

many Paris Metro tickets

every bit of paper from Hotel InterContinental in Geneva

Movie tickets - American movie with French subtitles

Customs and mailing labels for wool from Scotland

And, perhaps most amazing - 

yes.  ends of film boxes

That's enough.  You get the idea.

If you ever wonder what we had for lunch in Cherbourg the day before we sailed for home you now know where to look.

Hyde Park Hotel, Knightsbridge

The famous Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge.
Today this hotel is the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, a five star establishment.
It was upscale in 1958, too.
My father, Newlin, lived here for the first part of the time he worked on the Hemel Hempsted project 1958-59.
There is a surprising amount of documentation of this time.  Or maybe not so surprising.
At some point, Daddy sent us a brochure with some pictures of the hotel, showing where he ate breakfast...

And here is the breakfast menu.

We also have several weeks worth of itemized bills:

3 pounds for the room, 6 shillings service charge, 9 shillings for breakfast.

By the fall of 1958,  Newlin had moved to a less posh establishment in Kings Langley, close to Hemel Hempsted rather than close to the DuPont office on Jermyn Street in London.