January • 2010 • NEWSLETTER

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Life in the Fabulous
50s book »

Check Out Reminisce's 1940s DVD Set »

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Dear ##firstname[Friend]##,

That sound you hear is the silence of post-holiday January, and here’s hoping you’re taking advantage of it. We also hope this month’s newsletter makes the quiet time even more enjoyable.

If you haven’t checked them out yet, take note of the vintage railways tours below and consider hopping onboard for a train trip into some of the finest scenery this country has to offer.

As always, feel free to forward our newsletter on to a friend or family member. If this newsletter was forwarded to you and you’d like a monthly copy of your own, just use this link to sign up yourself. For now, take a soothing sigh and settle into the past with our latest stories, poem and trivia game.

—John Burlingham at Reminisce

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In this issue:

• Reporter Dad Took Them Where Few Kids Went
• Barney the Talking Dog
• Before Ice-Skating, They Walked on Water
• Poem: Wrinkles
• Time Capsule Trivia
• A Thought to Remember

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Reporter Dad Took Them Where Few Kids Went

By Lois Carpenter Anderson
Pasadena, California

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Trips to the city halls and courtrooms of San Bernardino and Los Angeles were part of my childhood, thanks to my father, who was a reporter.

He would cover the San Bernardino evening council meetings and would take my brother, Stan Carpenter, and I along. We could then play in the City Hall.

Except for the council chamber, the building would be empty and we would have the run of things. City Hall was three stories high and had an open stairway with decorative iron railings. Stan and I would go up to the top floor and float paper “twirly-gigs” down the stairwell to the first floor.

We’d also go into the records office and sit on the chairs, which had rollers on the legs, and coast all over the room and around the rows of files.

We also played a game in the courtrooms, where one of us would be the judge and the other would go to the blackboard and make up a story.

My father later became a reporter in Los Angeles covering the courts, and he still took us along sometimes.

One evening in 1936, my sister Anne and I went along with Dad to the courtroom where actress Mary Astor was involved in a child-custody case. We were sitting in the audience section and the superior-court judge, Goodwin Knight, stopped the trial to inquire who we were. Dad claimed us, and the judge had the bailiff take Anne and me to his chambers to wait for a while. Apparently, some juicy bits were to come out at the trial and he didn’t think they were appropriate for our young ears.

Soon Judge Knight adjourned the court and came with Dad to his chambers, bringing along a photographer. He had Anne and me sit on his knee for a picture (at right above), which appeared in the Los Angeles Times the following day.

The picture was to show that he cared about children and was a good photo-op for Judge Knight, who later became the governor of California.

Another time, Dad took us kids to the top of the Los Angeles City Hall, where a balcony ran around the outside of the building. This was the tallest building in the city in the 1930s.

He brought with us a large-size tablet of paper and showed us how to make airplanes from it. We watched our airplanes sail off into the distance. I don’t think most people could go out on that balcony, but Dad could always go where others could not go.

When we were still living in San Bernardino, Dad took Stan and me to the Orange Show. One time, we went up high above the exhibition hall, where a narrow catwalk ran overhead from one side of the hall to the other. The pressroom was situated up there on one end.

Dad took my brother and me across that catwalk. There was no rail to hold onto and we could look down below at all the people and exhibits. I expect it was really quite dangerous, but thrilling.

I was very lucky as a child, because my father was so proud of his kids and liked having us with him.

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Barney the Talking Dog

By Dorotha Faulkner
Arab, Alabama

Many folks will tell you that they can communicate with their pets. Animals, it seems, often know what their owner wants by voice or body language. At other times, pets seem to sense when their owner is high in spirit, depressed or sick.

I’m not suggesting that people can converse with their pets, but I was familiar with a dog that could apparently understand and react to some words.

It happened many years ago when my sister Dessie came to live in a mobile home in our yard and brought her yellow Labrador retriever, Barney, with her.

Once when Barney was accidentally poisoned, he refused to mess up the yard and instead dragged himself to the edge of the yard to do his business. Dessie would then take a quilt out to Barney, and he would crawl onto it so my sister could drag him back to the house. He recovered from that incident and lived several more years.

Another memorable incident occurred when my husband, Raymond, drove home from work in his truck one day. He exited the vehicle as usual and started walking to the house in the rain, but Barney kept whining and returning to the truck. Raymond walked back to his vehicle and discovered that he’d forgotten to turn off the lights. Barney knew the lights were not supposed to be on during daytime and “told” Raymond so.

One day, Barney was accompanying us to a shed in our yard when he suddenly growled and lunged forward. We looked around, and to our surprise, a boy was lying on the ground with Barney standing over him. A second boy was standing nearby, speechless, as he watched.

It turned out that the boys had quietly snuck into the shed to pilfer and steal from us, and Barney was protecting us. The youngsters left in a hurry, and as far as I know, they never came back.

Barney loved animals. He would nibble up and down the backs of the little pigs that we raised. Even after they grew into 200-pound hogs, they’d come running for Barney to nibble their backs.

One day, our neighbor asked if he could put a sick calf in our barn so that it could be treated and kept away from his cows.

After the calf spent a few days in the barn, my husband and the neighbor felt the animal was well enough to be out in the sunshine. Raymond asked Barney to stay with the calf, and he followed it down the hall of the barn and laid down where he could see it.

Later, when they were ready to put the calf back in the stable, Raymond told Barney to bring in the little calf. He got up and guided the calf down the hall, following behind it. Our neighbor was amazed that a dog would mind a person like that.

We’d ask Barney if he loved us, and he’d grunt out, “Uh-huh,” as plain as day.

Barney developed cancer, and Dessie took him to the vet, where he sat quietly beside her while other dogs and cats were going wild in the waiting room. When the young lady at the vet’s office came for Barney, she would ask if he was ready. “Uh huh,” he’d respond before going into the office.

Barney was not the type of dog that you had to yell at or scold. Instead, you could just talk to him like a person.

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Before Ice-Skating, They Walked on Water

By Mary Moloney
Camp Verde, Arizona

One of my fondest childhood memories involves ice-skating at McKinley playground during the late 1950s in Brighton, Massachusetts.

McKinley playground covered a huge area, with two baseball diamonds, a little league diamond and tennis and basketball courts, and the Parks and Recreation Department flooded the entire park with about 3 feet of water after the first good freeze of the season.

As the freezing process began, the water itself would entertain many of the area children. Hip boots were very fashionable, and we could go over to the park and literally walk on water.

We called this exercise walking on the tiddledywinks, which were two layers of thin ice with bubbles in between. When you walked on this surface, it was flexible, and you got the sensation of walking on a choppy ocean. The hip boots were worn in case you fell through.

Hip-booting was usually left to the boys, but we girls managed to get into the act at times when the boys were busy with other activities.

The result of playing on this partially frozen ice was that the ice froze in broken panes, creating lumps on the edges of each broken section. This is where the social structure came in, as it was the responsibility of the younger crowd to skate these edges down.

The hockey players got the nice smooth ice and we could use it only when they were not playing. Skating on the bumpy stuff gave us great balance, though, and we developed into pretty good skaters in a very short time.

The Faneuil Housing Project was directly across the street, so the playground was full of kids of all ages and skating prowess. We would get up early on Saturday morning, eager to get started on the outfitting necessary to get us through the long morning of fun.

We wore wool slacks, leggings and three layers on top, with a wool hat, gloves (with a spare pair in the pocket) and a hood. It’s a wonder we could move at all.

After the clothing was applied, we would go sit on the hall stairs and don our socks. Most of us had hand-me-down skates or a pair that our mothers thought we’d grow into, so we wore as many as five or six pairs of rather thick socks.

The girls all wore figure skates and the boys wore hockey skates. Every so often, a boy would show up with figure skates and suffer the consequences, usually a little razzing.

I learned many tricks once I graduated to the smooth ice. I could do figure eights, little spins and crossovers when skating around a corner.

These abilities came in handy when I started skating at the adult rink and met many young men who appreciated my talents. The adult rink was indoors, which eliminated the need for the outside gear and made it even more fun.

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Poem: Wrinkles

By Erik Braum
Lafayette, Louisiana

Each and every wrinkle
Means so much to me.
They’ve come from living life
And all you’ve come to be.

Your heart and soul have mellowed
To a sweet and ageless glow.
Each and every wrinkle
Portrays the love I know.

There’s deep and heartfelt feelings
In each and every line,
A picture of your character,
A taste of “vintage wine.”

They are the valued footprints
Of what your life has been,
The heartaches and the happiness
That came from way back when.

They are the hills and valleys
Of our journey through this life.
They tell an untold story
Of dreams unlived, the strife.

Let me hold you in my arms
To always let you know.
Your wrinkles are ever dear to me
Because I love you so.

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Time Capsule Trivia

From the decades spanning the 1920s to the 1960s, try to guess what year these historic events took place. Click the link below for the answer, but no peeking!

1. Ernie Pyle, a roving war correspondent from Indiana, dies of a bullet wound on a Pacific Island. His folksy dispatches, carried in hundreds of newspapers, had given people back home a warm, compassionate view of their boys on the front lines of World War II.

2. Hollywood shows its serious side with thought-provoking dramas such as The Lost Weekend, starring Ray Milland as a struggling alcoholic, and Mildred Pierce, featuring Joan Crawford as a woman who clashes with her daughter over the love of the same man.
   

3. Other big movies include the romantic comedy Anchors Aweigh, starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly; The Bells of St. Mary’s, with the big-name tandem of Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman; and Spellbound, with Alfred Hitchcock’s pairing of Bergman and Gregory Peck.
   

4. Harry James and his orchestra strike it big with the song Autumn Serenade and two chart-toppers, It’s Been a Long, Long Time and I’m Beginning to See the Light. Other No. 1 hits include Rum and Coca-Cola, a calypso song by The Andrews Sisters, and On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe, sung by Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers.
   

5. Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie hits Broadway, and Mary Chase wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama for her play Harvey.
   

6. National League MVP Phil Cavarretta helps lead the Chicago Cubs to baseball’s World Series, only to see the Detroit Tigers and American League MVP Hal Newhouser take the title, 4 games to 3.

Click here for the answer to Time Capsule Trivia.

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A Thought to Remember

If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way.

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