Happy Homes

Yes, I grew up in a place called Happy Homes. I’ve never questioned the name. After all, I was happy.

Between 1947 and 1953, my family lived in this post war “dream world”. Everyone called it Happy Homes. No one I’ve asked seems to remember its real name.

Far from being utopian, it was nonetheless wonderful for its times. The development was created under the GI Bill to give returning veterans a leg up toward reestablishing their lives.

The rent was incredibly low. Our two bedroom apartment rent was $35 a month, which wasn’t much even for those days.

It was essentially subsidized housing, although I don’t think the term was used or even invented back then in 1947.

Anyway, Happy Homes was located east of Dayton, Ohio and adjacent to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. It was made up of renovated army barracks.

Now before you start imaging Stalag 17 or those dreadful grey cement block warehouses for soldiers, let me tell you the powers that planned Happy Homes did a really nice job of creating one and two bedroom apartments that were bright and appealing. Each one had a brand new kitchen and bathroom and a back yard.

Ours was Apartment 3G. Daddy built a picket fence and Mama planted roses. She happily decorated the rooms with  maple furniture and wallpaper in the then popular Early American style. I can’t find any pictures, but I remember it as warm and pretty. My parents took their wedding furniture out of storage and bought a twin bed for me. I had my own room situated in the perfect position for hiding behind a chair to watch TV when I was supposed to be asleep. The trick was to watch I Love Lucy at 9:00 on Mondays but be asleep before Inner Sanctum’s really scary creaking door began at 9:30.

The center of the apartment was a gas fireplace, which heated the whole place. There we could dry wet gloves and slowly roast the chestnuts and pumpkin seeds my father was so fond of.

There were about a hundred families in the development. Everyone was about the same age.  There were parties, kaffe klatches and canasta clubs. Most of the women didn't work, so they got together and had fun. My mom had been stuck living with her mother during the war years, so she loved having a group of ready-made friends.

Daddy was a produce man, which meant our fruits and vegetable were the best. At the end of the day when he drove his big truck home, he would give away a lot of it to our neighbors but kept the best for our family. We had bowls of fruit all the time. Sometimes too much - like rhubarb. Stewed rhubarb, rhubarb pie and even rhubarb cobbler loses its appeal when you eat it every day for weeks.

I was shocked at the price of rhubarb when I grew up and had to buy it myself. I was even more shocked at how much I wanted it.

As for ethnic diversity – well, that was an unknown concept for the residents of Happy Homes, unless you count the Vacciano, the Bova or the Gentile families and two or three war brides from Britain.

I remember that our next door neighbors had reservations about letting their son play with me, that Italian girl.  I do recall my mother making me play with Brucie,  a glum little kid who stole candy whenever he visited. He did prove useful when we needed a boy for our make believe games. I remember playing brides with a veil made from a parachute quite happily until someone said we needed a groom. We commandeered Brucie for that. He had to marry every little girl involved. He got tired and wanted to quit so we changed it to Scheherazade so he could kill each bride by throwing her on the sprinkler. He found it a very satisfying way to spend an afternoon. 

I remember liking and being liked by our neighbors - with the exception of Helen Collins, Brucies’s mother, who seemed to be hanging around our apartment a lot more than I liked. She had a way of spoiling things, like the time I was eating the last piece of watermelon and she asked for a bite. A look from my mother made me say ok, but then she sprinkled salt all over the whole slice, ate one little piece and left me with what I considered a spoiled treat. Maybe her watermelon needed salt but my watermelon did not.

It wasn't that Helen was so bad, it was just that she was so there all the time, sort of taking over and talking non-stop. She also saw herself as playful and cute. She was the only one of that opinion. Although she was Mama’s friend, she sure seemed to like Daddy a lot.

I remember her watering her flowers one afternoon as he returned from work. “Don’t you look hot and sweaty!” she giggled as she aimed her hose at him. My dad laughed but I could tell this really got to him.

A little while later, Helen was sitting on the patio showing off her new permanent waved hair when my dad, now all bathed and refreshed, called me inside to help him.

I followed and watched him fill a pot with water and go to the front porch where he climbed up onto the roof. I was needed to hand the water up to him.

I ran to the other side of the building where Helen was sitting and watched transfixed as Daddy doused her and her new permanent. It was a great moment. It was better than salting her watermelon, which she would have liked anyway.

Everyone at Happy Homes was allotted a garden plot to grown vegetables. The gardens were in a former cornfield, so the yield was usually lots of corn plus whatever else you planted that could tough it out against the corn. The tomato harvest made it worth while. Lots and lots of ripe, delicious tomatoes seemingly for free.

We kids had the surrounding fields to explore, which ended at the fence separating us from the very active air force base. We watched jets take off and heard the sound barrier broken over and over. When there was an air show in the spring we didn't need to go any farther than our back yard to watch the Thunderbirds do their amazing feats.

There were berry bushes all around the perimeter of the field in the summer. We would bring pockets full of back raspberries home to our moms, who would be equally delighted and aghast at the sight of our purple stained clothes. We would be dumped into our respective bathtubs and our clothes taken to the washroom / play area that served twenty families.

That was also the location of the single pubic telephone. You needed a nickel to make a call so the idea was to give all your friends the signal: Two rings, hang up and wait for them to call back.

Most of the other kids went by bus to a nearby public school, but I went to St. Joseph’s parochial school in downtown Dayton, where I learned all about the threat of Communism and how the first thing those fiends would do when Stalin overran the Ohio Valley was hang all the nuns from the trees down by the Miami river.  

For a period of time the Catholics of Happy Homes got together every evening to pray the rosary before dinner. Attendance dwindled rather quickly.  I guess we weren’t worried enough about the Communists and what they would do to the nuns to eat dinner late.

1n the winter of 1950, a blizzard big enough to close all the roads hit. The snow was up to our windowsills.   No one could get in or out of Happy Homes for a week. It was wonderful. No school, no church, no chores, even no food was fun. We cleaned out the little neighborhood grocery store and ate hostess crème filled cup cakes and popcorn for dinner. I loved it. There was so much snow we built not just snowmen but an igloo big enough to climb inside and happily freeze.

Even with the low rent of 35 dollars a month, saving enough for a down payment on a house wasn't easy. At some point, I decided it was my job to get things moving.  I was enchanted with the prospect of finding the perfect house with all the precise specifications needed for us to be the perfect family. I drew house plans and decorated my room over and over.

It became my mission to get hold of the daily newspaper and check out the real estate ads. Sunday papers were the best. When the post war building boom began, there were giant advertisements of beautiful new housing developments.

Whenever I could get both my parents together I would read them my list of possibilities.

“OK.” I would say, “Listen to this one. There bedrooms with a patio and garbage disposal in a new plat near grandma’s house.” That was vetoed for obvious reasons.

“Or how about this old house for less money? We could fix it up!”

 "No, no. " Both Mama and Daddy agreed. They wanted new. New everything.

Our Sundays were taken up with Mass, lunch and visits to model homes.

After what seemed to be to be an eternity, we found a house we fell in love with. Some astute sales person had charmingly decorated the model home in the Early American style my mom loved. It was in a new neighborhood not too near and not too far from either set of in-laws. It was brick and well constructed.  There was a maple kitchen and an entry hall just calling out for a cute little desk.  I swear the amenity that sold us all was the magazine rack in the bathroom. This was modern living at its finest.

We moved out of Happy Homes the day before Eisenhower was inaugurated. Within the next few years most of the original families also moved out to their own bright sparkly new houses. For most people the dream really come true.

I don't know how long the development lasted. It was long gone when I looked for it 20 years ago.

But I do know that permanent friendships were made there. Anytime we ran into someone who lived there, the one thing we could agree on was how darned happy we had been in Happy Homes.

Eat It With a Spoon

Don't ask me why, but I started to think about spoons very early this morning, 4:30 AM to be more accurate.

I woke up worrying about nothing and tried to change the subject. Nothing worked until I said to myself, “ Write something, stop dithering about nothing." I didn’t say it out loud but I did listen to myself and searched for a topic and somehow I came up with spoons.

I thought about those spoons J. Alfred Prufrock used to measure out his life. Were they his good spoons or the ones he used for everyday. I just know J. Alfred had more than one set of tableware. Probably those spoons belonged to a grand hostess and they were much nicer than the ones he had at home.

And what about the dish who ran away with a spoon? What did they see in each other?  Which was the guy and which was the girl? Did they break the hearts of a happy place setting when they ran off? Or they could have been gay. Was there a lesson in tolerance here? Why should cutlery only intermarry with cutlery? And dishes stick with cups ands saucers?

There is something about spoons I’ve always liked.  I like the feel of their shiny round bowls. They stack nicely in drawers. Knives and forks slip and slide, spoons nestle inside each other. They are the contented cutlery.

Spoons are benign, not at all fierce like forks or knives. As far as I know there has never been a murder by spoon. I base this assumption on my acquaintance with English mysteries where, god knows, almost everything else has been tried.

Spoons are really good at what they do. We couldn't stir our sauces or eat our cereal without them. I suppose we should be grateful to the ancients who invented them. I bet they were invented before forks, I mean forks you could do without. You could grab a hunk of meat or a handful of millet and just chew away. But what about soup or stew?

I think the invention of spoons had to be coincidental with the first pots and consequently soup. A civilizing impulse. A branch would do nicely for stirring, but how do you eat soup? Some smarty probably hollowed out the end of a thick piece of wood and invented the spoon. And then bragged about it and made spoons the latest thing. No Neanderthal hostess would have dared entertained without them.

I also started to count how many different kinds of spoons I have around the house. There are teaspoons, soup spoons, coffee spoons, measuring spoons and a whole variety of sizes for serving including the slotted kind. Then there is the array of spoons for cooking from wooden to stainless steel to plastic. And ladles. What would we do without ladles? Ladles are the sloppy cooks salvation,

I have always liked the quaint term spooning. Cuddling as it were. A nice way to have your lover draped around you like a spoon.

I remember the saying “He’s so cute I could eat him with a spoon.” So do I need to say it wasn't meant pruriently?  It was an appreciative term also applied to chubby babies that I guess just wouldn't sound right nowadays.

There is a rock band named Spoon, in case you are interested. I can’t work up any great enthusiasm.

Fancy spoons said a lot about people then, the fancier the spoon the more money you had.

Sets of Apostle spoons used to be common wedding gifts. Why the apostles? Were other types of cutlery given separately? Knives maybe, but never forks.

Who knows? But a silver spoon was and still is a very popular gift for new babies. Might the intention have been to  make up for the silver spoon this particular baby wasn’t fortunate enough to have in its mouth at birth?

Then there are spoonerisms. This got me out of bed to look up. A spoonerism is a scrambling of letters like Search every crook and nanny. Or I’ll be an unkies muncle. A favorite was the introduction on Inauguration Day of the new president as Hoober Heever. Maybe this jinxed him.

I also found an article titled “What your spoon say about you” from the book  Consider the Fork. My assumption that spoons came before forks was all wrong. Apparently they were first used 18th century. Kind of late in my opinion.

Then there are the spoons of my childhood. I was enchanted with my grandmother’s tea service, which included a set of salt cellars each one equipped with its own miniature spoon. I thought they were meant just for me.

Every summer my grandparents would take the car out of the garage, scrub it down and turn it into a playhouse for the grandchildren. We had a bedroom area where our dolls beds went. We had a set of bunk beds and a bassinet.  There were tables and chairs. No living room though. The kitchen area consisted of a very old miniature iron coal stove. I think it was a salesman’s model although how a salesman could have lugged this thing around is beyond me.

Anyway once or twice a summer Grandpa would put some hot coals in it so we could cook in the little cast iron pots and pans.  We had doll-sized dishes to serve whatever we made but the prize was a tiny set of cutlery I still have. My grandsons aren’t interested but I still keep that fancy fake set in its own plastic imitation silver chest.

The wooden spoon played a part in my growing up: it was the weapon of choice in the parental battle for decorum. When my cousins and I got out of hand running around the house threatening destruction my grandmother would come out of the kitchen yelling “If you don't quiet down I’ll get the wooden spoon.” It usually worked, my grandmother being the no nonsense person she was. I don't remember that that wooden spoon was ever used though.  When Mama brandished the wooden spoon we just laughed.

If J. Alfred measured out his life in teaspoons let me get out my measuring spoons and choose at least the tablespoon or better the ladle for my own. I say eat life in great gulps of appreciation or in tiny coffee spoon of deliciousness.

All Wet

If its raining or snowing or wet in any way, only one newspaper in the daily delivery of the New York Times to my building gets wet. Mine.

If a paper is damaged, ripped or wrinkled, it’s always mine.

Its because I live on the 15^th floor of a 16 story building.

My question is why in all the years that pile of newspapers the lobby has grown with new subscribers, why have the apartment owners on the floor above me never chosen home delivery?

Is this a metaphor? Am I the person who will always draw the short straw or inevitably choose the one rickety chair in a room full of perfectly stable ones? Is it always my shoes that are making that annoying squeaking noise? Why when everyone was talking in my high school classrooms, did the teacher choose me to chastise?

Oh well, I guess by this stage of my life there is not much I can do to change my karma. But I can choose just to wonder about it rather than totally believe in it.

There are plenty of things to contradict this verdict. Sometimes a parking spot magically appears just when I need it. One of my children may call just to shoot the breeze. Or a dog may amble over to me unbidden in the park just to say hello and get it's ears scratched.

I choose not to be too pessimistic because if I did I would be like that Lil Abner character, Joe Btfsplk, who walked around with a dark cloud over his head.

But I do know that if Joe’s cloud bursts into a thunderstorm which newspaper it will rain on.

Phantom Writing

A friend of mine, a recently retired professor of English Literature, has been writing what he calls phantom essays. They are more or less the type of essay you would find in scholarly journals.

He has published his share of books and articles on Victorian poets. I found the books in the New York Public Library catalog.

He has chosen not to publish anymore. He sends his essays to friends and colleagues who have expressed interest in receiving them. This saves him the fuss and bother of going through the publishing process.

His reasoning is that few people would read or remember them anyway.

In one essay he talks about mandalas, the enormous intricately and beautiful, sand paintings Tibetan monks painstakingly create and then destroy upon completion. The monks believe that nothing is permanent. Each creation is a step to a higher state. They believe that the real beauty is in the act of creating the art rather than preserving it.

Beauty is ephemeral. We appreciate art in the moment.

It is the process of production that is important. The creating not the creation that is the their central issue. Think of the poem “Ithaca” advising us to enjoy the voyage not the destination.

The act of writing is a journey. It leads you to places you might not have otherwise explored. To write is to come alive with an idea, an inspiration that you try to express in words. You transcend the ordinary. You are taken out of yourself. You become a writer.

Someone once said that a writer is a person who writes.

There is real purpose in the professor’s phantom essay. It's the act of writing itself that matters to him.

I do appreciate the monks’ courage in destroying their art. But I think I will keep mine.

Ithaka

BY C. P. CAVAFY

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C. P. Cavafy, "The City" from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Reproduced with permission of Princeton University Press.


Source: C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)