A Penny a Kiss
Page 1
A Penny a Kiss
Memoir of a Minnesota Girl in the Forties and Fifties
Judy McConnell
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
St. Cloud, Minnesota
Copyright © 2014 Judy McDonnell
ISBN 978-0-87839-728-0
All rights reserved.
First Edition: June 2014
Printed in the United States of America
Published by
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
P.O. 451
St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302
northstarpress.com
A penny a kiss, a penny a hug
We’re going to put our pennies in a big brown jug.
A penny a kiss, a penny a hug, oh how rich we’re going to be.
I’m going to save a penny every time I hold you tight,
And we’re going to watch the pennies grow.
I’m going to save a penny every time we kiss goodnight,
And darling when we’re married we can build a bungalow.
A penny a kiss, a penny a hug
We’re going to put our pennies in a big brown jug.
A penny a kiss, a penny a hug, oh how rich we’re going to be.
“A Penny A Kiss”
Words and lyrics by Buddy Kaye & Ralph Care, 1951
Dedication
To my children,
Libby and David
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the following people for providing candid feedback on the manuscript:
Instructors Simone Di Piero and Mary Carol Moore; friends Sally Bosanko, Merl Edelman, Nellie Hewitt, Ruth Horner, Ingrid Lund, Judy Proudfit, Ted Seeley, Carol Souter, and Mary Swanson, with added thanks to special friend Marvin Walowitz for tromping the old Los Angeles haunts with me; editors Nancy Raeburn, Lane Rosenthal, and Toni Hull; and members of my writing group and classes too numerous to name.
Also, I am grateful to the friends who have tolerated my holing up for those first two years and my family for noticing my absence.
The experiences related in this book are products of my own perception, based on diaries, journals, letters, and memory. The names of some characters have been changed to protect the guilty and expose the innocent.
Contents
A Penny a Kiss
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Part I: Early Imprints
Chapter 1: Eastern Beginnings
Chapter 2: A Special Case
Chapter 3: Into the Woods
Chapter 4: Family Dynamics
Chapter 5: Neighborhood Antics and Learning to Love Cows
Chapter 6: Boys and Shadow Nights
Part II: Fitting In
Chapter 7: Taking On High School
Chapter 8: Cross Fire
Chapter 9: Sailing for Boys
Chapter 10: Prancing with the Seniors
Part III: Making the Collegiate Run
Chapter 11: Mountains to Climb
Chapter 12: Europe Young American Style
Chapter 13: Los Angeles at Last
Chapter 14: Roommates
Part I: Early Imprints
Me at Virginia Beach—1939
Chapter 1: Eastern Beginnings
Being born was easy. All I had to do was open my mouth and scream, and I was initiated into the world. After that nothing worked. I never paid any attention to growing up or any of that. Life just drifted, carrying me along like an insect floating downstream on the current, upside down, legs in the air or belly flopped and watching the watery scene below move by. It was an easy way to go through life, buoyed and cushioned from the responsibility of walking on hard surfaces.
Even now, memory dim, I look back through a fog and see only feeble outlines. I see the house where we lived in Washington, D.C., and I recognize the upstairs bedroom where my mother sat in a maple rocking chair silently sewing at the window under a print of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy hanging on the wall above her. Her white fringed blouse and rose colored necklace shone soft in the yellow light.
I walked into the room and across the blue carpet flowing like a vast pool of velvet in front of me. There I stood staring at her through the stillness, watching her creamy white hand draw the needle into the air, curve around and pierce the needle into the garment, lengthening a neat row of stitches. I wanted to sit on her lap to soak in the warmth of her bosom and look out the window, but her lap was a flurry of business. Her hand waved back and forth, consuming the space above the lap I coveted. Even at age four, I understood in some visceral way that when she hid away in her room like that, it was a stay-away signal.
No, I couldn’t go to Petey Haines’s house, my mother told me. I was too young to cross the street by myself. Without my playmate there was nothing to do. I was tired of wandering through the house and around its orderly tables and tall-backed living room chairs, and I was tired of sitting on the window sill staring out at one small cherry tree and a sidewalk that wound around two sides of the yard. There was no sign of life. If only something would move.
So the days droned on. One afternoon, when Petey was allowed over, we raced through the house until Mother, who was upstairs in her rocking chair listening to the radio, sent us and our noise outside to play in the yard. We yelled for Thumper, the neighbor’s cocker spaniel, who came running and licked our faces before heading straight for the garage. The dog had a habit of weaseling through the Barberry bushes when no one was around and pooping in our detached one-car garage.
Petey and I followed him inside. We were entranced by the steamy odor he left that clung to the damp walls and the shadows lurking under the opaque window. This time we decided to try it ourselves.
“You go first.”
“No, you go first.”
We stood looking at each other, then out into the shadows of the garage. An uneasy thrill of daring stormed my limbs, and finally I slipped into a dark corner, pulled my pants down and squatted. Petey immediately did the same. We were giggling. The thrill was immediate, like we’d pulled off a bank robbery. We returned to the house savoring the power of a dark secret.
After a few weeks the lumps piled up and my parents started asking questions. “How did all those dogs get in the garage?” Petey and I said nothing. We switched to pulling worms from the garden and watching them wiggle in buckets of ammonia water lifted from the laundry room. But the punch wasn’t the same.
In 1939, we arrived in Minnesota and settled in a small two-story house on Wooddale Avenue in Edina, complete with an attached one-car garage. I was sent to school a half-mile down Wooddale on the corner of France Avenue. There wasn’t a bus for the half-day kindergarten kids, so every morning a taxi arrived at the front door. My mother stuffed me into my long red coat, and I walked to the taxi all by myself. It felt like a real adventure, like I was going to England or someplace, and I pretended that at any time I could turn to the driver and say, “Airport please.”
Afternoons I waited on the school steps and watched as the other kids climbed into cars that pulled up with a parent behind the wheel and drove off. I kept a lookout for the taxi to take me home. One warm spring afternoon the taxi never arrived. I waited, twisting my fingers uneasily as one by one the kids left me sitting stranded on the steps. Cars were motoring back and forth, going about their business. When the school yard was deserted I stood up uneasily, not sure what to do. Clearly, the window of pickup time had passed, and I realized the taxi was not coming. Surrounded by the still, flat emptiness of the dirt schoo
l yard, I felt nervous being entirely cut off and on my own.
Finally—doing nothing was out of the question—I crossed France Avenue and trudged down Wooddale Avenue along the curb, as there were no sidewalks. On the other side of the road the Edina Golf Course stretched into the distance, and I caught a glimpse of six miniature figures inching across the turf between the pine trees like a far off caravan in the desert. I knew exactly where I was. Easy!
An automobile swept by giving off a slight puff of gas. As I walked I nudged stones along the curb with my toes and sent them spraying off into the grass. As the stones flew to my touch, a new sense of power flooded through me and my uneasiness evaporated into the warm air. All at once everything around me seemed sharper and more vibrant than usual, as if I were seeing the row of white clapboard houses and block yards for the first time. This was the first time I’d been away from home, by myself in the world, and every action was of my own making. A vision of our house hidden further down the road was clear in my mind, and, feeling happy and secure, I sent a single stone flying into a nearby tree where I watched it fall with a meek thud. I couldn’t help laughing.
Mother was upset when I sauntered into the house. It was far too dangerous for me to walk home alone. What was I thinking? Where was my common sense?
“But it was easy, there weren’t any cars.” Well, only one or two.
To no avail. I received a serious scolding. With only one car, Mother couldn’t drive me. If the taxi didn’t show up I was to wait. I had clearly done the wrong thing, but in a faraway place in my mind I had doubts. A furtive sense of pride persisted. Hadn’t I gotten myself home on my own? Hadn’t everything turned out fine? Wasn’t that what counted?
The rage at school was trading cards. Kids would gather outside on the steps to haggle, everyone clutching their collection box trying to exchange single playing cards for superior ones. Those who knew how to pull an advantageous deal accumulated beautiful cards of fairies, animals, vivid flowers, portraits—all scenes of interest to an artist. Especially coveted were playing cards of puppies and kittens. Trading became a passion. I had one of Dad’s cigar boxes packed with cards begged from my parents and their friends. Next, I solicited the houses in the neighborhood, knocking on doors and collecting old decks people didn’t want.
It was exciting to get brand new decks, which I stored in a special shoe box. The cigar box held a card from each of the decks, plus the singles acquired from trading and extra jokers. (The cigar box, hinges dangling, still sits on my basement shelf.) These trading cards were divided by index sorters into flowers, people, statues, horses, dogs, twins, scenery. Pairs were either similar in subject or identical but in different colors, and were especially valued.
The best cards were rich in colors and detail. My favorite was a head shot of a proud chestnut horse with a long white star down his nose, gazing intently through his mane with soft brown eyes. I collected elegantly posed roans, sleek collies, colts, and spaniel puppies. These I didn’t give up readily, and insisted on two or three traded cards for each one.
I kept the boxes hidden in a bottom drawer in my bedroom underneath the pajamas—there wasn’t anyone to hide them from, but I wasn’t taking any chances. These cards were a lifeline. I was pretty sure I was accumulating the best collection in school: bright ruby and emerald birds, handsome black stallions, sweeping green landscapes, rare matching pairs and artistic street scenes. Prizes of beauty and variety. Each afternoon in my room I reviewed the takes with a sense of accomplishment and importance, relishing a sense of purpose.
Gloria’s scheming sharpened my trading finesse. I had been at Joanne’s house next door, cutting out pirate paper doll clothes and folding gold swords and swashbuckling hats on sinister black-haired men with crater-pocked faces. When I returned, Mother met me at the door and announced in a low conspiratorial tone that someone was there to see me. I wondered who it could be. No one except Joanne ever came to see me. This was strange.
“Upstairs,” Mother said. “She’s waiting in your bedroom.”
I recognized my visitor right away. She sat on my bed looking like the queen of a ship with her head cocked and her corkscrew blonde curls surrounding her bright, smiling face. Something about the way her hands rested calmly in her lap irritated me. So did the proprietary way she gazed around the room as she sat square in the middle of the bed in a compelling upright posture.
“Gloria!”
“Hi!” she squawked.
It was the same tone of voice that cried out to be first in the Kool-Aid line, pleaded to be allowed to pass out cookies, and pushed kids into line with an air of privilege, as if she were Shirley Temple on the set commanding the crew. I didn’t like her then and I didn’t like her sitting on my bed now as I waited for her sweet voice to assail the room and me.
“I talked your mom into letting me wait here,” she said. “She gave in after I told her we were best friends and that my mother was late for something and would be back to pick me up in an hour. I said you wouldn’t mind.”
Now that she had jumped down from the bed and stood facing me, a whole two inches shorter with thin legs covered by a flouncy red skirt, Gloria seemed to promise something exciting, something to break the monotony stretching ahead until dinner. I softened, overcome by curiosity. Best friends? Here was someone to play with.
“Look, I knew you wouldn’t mind, but I saw your card box on the table and look what I found.” She held out a pack of cards, a new deck I had just gotten from Mrs. Helm down the street.
The cards she held in her hot little hands showed a beautiful golden, chocolate-dotted cheetah sitting regally on a tree stump with a broken branch curved to one side like the horns of a fallen beast. His ears were back and his mouth slightly open, as if ready to fly into action. This was better than any of my other animal cards, a prize I knew would bring me many trading trophies.
Running to the dressing table, I looked in the card box. My blood raced, my toes tingled, my body stiffened. I swung around and glared at Gloria.
“What? You’ve been in my cards?”
Gloria’s smile slackened.
“Oh, I didn’t take anything. Just looking. You know I have the best card collection in school. My mother buys decks just for me at the Hallmark shop. I want these cards.” She held up the deck. “I’ll give you better ones.”
“No way. Give that to me.”
“But Mrs. Helm promised this deck to me just last week. She knows my mother. They’re mine! Why did she give them to you?”
“Maybe she likes my face.”
Unable to contain myself, I snatched the deck from her pasty little hands. Gloria screwed up her nose, shook her shoulders, and walked defiantly out of the room. I listened as the front door clanged shut. Mother was puzzled.
“She got in my cards,” I said.
“But she was so nice and polite,” Mother sighed.
“Mom, she’s a fake.”
After that I’d see Gloria by the swings or pressed against the brick wall of the school. She would be surrounded by admiring kids and flashing her cards, negotiating exchanges with other girls carrying large boxes.
I traded every day. Trading involved hard bargaining, and sometimes I had to give up treasured cards to get a collie or stallion I wanted. At first I offered single cards backed by hidden decks of the same card. The idea was to not let anyone know which cards I had entire decks of (less valued, of course), and to trade these and guard the good singles that I had no more of. Sometimes I had to trade one of my favorite beauties to get a card I really wanted. A few were too prized to trade, so I used them for enticing other traders, allowing the trader to believe they were available, then steering them to lesser temptations.
My collection of prize cards was rapidly filling the cigar box. Even Gloria eyed the most artistic ones with envy. She came running up to me one day.
> “Look what I’ve got,” she smirked, flashing a shiny pair of matching peacocks in front of me. “They’re brand new; my mother gave me the jokers.”
The cards she held were beautiful—rich blue, violet, and orange feathers gleaming against a soft yellow background. I instantly wanted them.
“Will you trade?” I asked.
“Maybe. I don’t really want to give them up. What’cha got?”
I pulled out the stack of my choice duplicates cards, I had plenty more of stashed in my bedroom, and watched Gloria thumb through them.
“None of these, they’re creased,” she observed. “No, you don’t have anything that can match mine.”
I pulled out a pack of cards from the end of the box, a pack I rarely showed. These were the irreplaceable ones I absolutely would not give up. I used them as come-ons. Gloria studied them closely.
“Well . . .” She fingered a pair of palomino stallions that I had given six of my best cards for. “I like these.”
“Not those.”
I didn’t think she was serious about trading her peacocks, but could see she was aroused. After twenty minutes Gloria lost patience.
“You won’t trade any of these! Why do you even show them to me?”
“I never know when I’ll get just the right offer,” I shrugged.
Three days later, when she’d tired of the peacocks, I got them for twelve of my most prized cards—all from the duplicate pile. I was ecstatic. I’d worn her down.
The peacocks were added to my never-to-be-traded pile, which was getting larger and more splendid every week. I carried the feeling of self-sufficiency with me all during the school day. I even got up the nerve to ask Gloria to pull her rug next to mine during snack-time.