Chapter 7 - 4055 Hyde Park

It was quite late when we arrived at 4055 Hyde Park and I must have been asleep because I do not remember going to bed. When I woke up I saw that Jean was sleeping in the same room. I walked into the hall and found my parents sleeping in the room next to ours. I had never seen this house before and did not know why we were here. From the hallway I could hear voices downstairs so went to see who else was in the house. My grandparents, Nana and Dad Shack, also lived in this house. They must have moved into this house while we were living in the cabin. While we were living in our 65th Terrace house, they lived in a house on 66th Street a few blocks away from us. Changes had taken place for other members of our family while we were living in the 8920 Euclid cabin. But someone in the family had the foresight to see that a place must be provided for families to move in together during these Depression years. That “someone” turned out to be my Mother’s brother (my Uncle Ray) who owned the 4055 Hyde Park house.

Nana and Dad Shack explained that we would be living in this house with them for a while. It was an old fashioned house that was probably built before the turn of the century but was still lovely. That day I started a tour of my own starting at the front hall. On my left was the staircase that led to the second floor. On my right there was a small room that was called the parlor. It was like a second living room, but it was used only for special occasions, such as parties or special holidays. At Christmas time it was the room where the Christmas tree would stand and where we opened Christmas gifts. Beyond the parlor there was a larger room called the living room. This was where the family gathered in the evening. I recognized furniture that was in the 66th Street house. There was Dad Shack’s big leather lounge chair and the large desk with many cubby holes and secret drawers. Placed around this room were comfortable chairs and a long table by a window. At one end of the room was a new console radio.

The living room opened into the dining room with the same large dining table, the chairs and Nana’s china cabinet that had been moved from the other house. The wallpaper in that room was new and it was nothing like any wallpaper I had seen before. Above the painted board railing there were pictures of an ancient city with archways, buildings and streets. My eyes followed the scenery around the room. Dad Shack was an interior decorator and owned a paint and wallpaper store. His business had decorated some of the finest homes in Kansas City. I think he wanted some of his finest wallpaper to be present in his own home.

In the dining room there was the door to the kitchen. It was a large room with a kitchen sink, a stove and storage cabinets below the windows on one side of the room. On the other side there were cabinets from the floor to the ceiling. In the center was a large table which served as the breakfast table and work table. The kitchen opened onto a porch and there stood the ice box. A cook using this kitchen would have to move from one place to another to gather the food for preparing a meal. This would require a lot of walking but this is the way they built kitchens in those days.

The second floor tour did not take as long. I was familiar with the front bedrooms and the bathroom at the end of the hall. The other bedroom on that floor was the Master Bedroom where Nana and Dad Shack slept. Across from the Master Bedroom there was another door that opened onto a flight of stairs which led to the third floor. I walked up the stairs and found that there was only one room on this floor but it was a large room that had nicely finished floors and dormer windows that looked down upon the front yard two stories below. There was no furniture in this room.

Since we did not have a home of our own, we were fortunate to be able to live here as long as we liked. There were some good things about this because I was about to learn soon what it was like to be part of a larger family. Living with my grandparents meant that other members of the Shackelford family would come to visit so I got to see my aunts, uncles and cousins more often. I liked them and it was fun to play with my cousins. My Uncle Ray was a builder of fine homes in the wealthier parts of Kansas City and his business was doing quite well in spite of the Depression. He knew that our family was going through a time of severe difficulty. Times would get better eventually but there were things that must be done right away to help us. We could not live in the cabin during the winter months with no heat, no car to get about the city and to a job, no telephone to reach other members of the family no emergency facilities, and no school within walking distance. Fortunately, Uncle Ray and others had worked on a plan to help us while we were living in the cabin. Now Daddy could easily get to his new job as office manager of Dad Shack’s wallpaper and paint Store. Mother could help Nana with cooking, laundry and housekeeping. Her children would remain in a healthy, safe and happy place. And since Nana was willing to watch over us during the day, Mother thought she might be able to use her stenographic skills to find a job during the day. She would always be with us in the evenings to help at home on the evenings and on the weekends.
She applied for a job at Nelly Don’s Dress Factory. These days a job was hard to come by but Mother had known Nell Donnelly, the owner and founder of Nelly Don’s, for a long time. She became acquainted with Nell back in the days when Nell was making aprons and selling them door-to-door to ladies in the neighborhood where Mother grew up. Nell hired Myrtle as a stenographer for Nelly Don’s for $15.00 per week. I think that probably revived her spirits as much as the salary did.

So here we are! Jean and I are sitting on the front porch steps with Nana and Dad Shack. With my parents away at their jobs I spent part of my time accompanying Nana as she went about her day. Her mornings were spent doing household chores and planning the meals. She loved the upscale grocery store called Wolferman’s and chatted talked with the order clerk as she made her list of groceries for the day. This took a while each morning but listening to the conversation helped me to look forward to meals. If this happened to be the day that Tony the huckster came down the street, she would step onto the front porch and wave. He would wait until she walked to his wagon to select fruits and vegetables that appealed to her.

Early afternoon was her quiet time with the Bible. I think she dozed a little too. For most ladies of this period, mid- afternoon was the time for bathing and putting on fresh clothes. For me, this was the time to curl up in Dad Shack’s great leather chair and read Grimm’s Fairy Tales. About four o’clock in the afternoon she went to the kitchen to begin preparations for dinner.

I think she looked forward each day to cooking a meal for family members and friends of the family. She rarely knew how many would show up at the table so she prepared plenty. She didn’t mind having family and friends drop by for dinner. If a friend of one of the family members dropped in at dinner time they were treated as a welcome guest. We could always put on another plate and pull up another chair.

I liked watching her work in the kitchen. She never used a cookbook. When I asked her how much flour she used when making her rolls she would say, “A couple hands full of flour is about right”. ‘’How much butter?”, I would ask. “About the size of an egg is good”, she said. The rolls always turned out exactly right.

When she made rolls for dinner she often made fresh pear preserves to go with them and served them in a special cut-glass dish. She made such excellent lemon meringue pie that no one in the family has ever been able to improve upon.

Every night there was a salad that she called Combination Salad. It contained bite sized pieces of Head Lettuce (iceberg lettuce, the only kind of lettuce we knew about in those days), green onions, celery, tomatoes all dressed with either Wolferman’s Thousand Island Dressing or French Dressing.

Either fried round steak or fried chicken was the customary meat. When at the table if one’s plate was nearly empty, more food was passed with the admonition, “You haven’t eaten enough yet. Fill your plate again”. It worried her if we passed up second helpings. Coffee always accompanied dessert and she made it in a special enamel coffee pot.

We called it Egg Coffee. Egg Coffee was made by filling the pot with nine cups water, bringing the water to a rolling boil, adding a cup of coffee grounds, then finally dropping a raw egg into the coffee pot and removing it from the heat. The egg acts as a congealing agent so that when the coffee is poured there are no coffee grounds. I never got to taste it because I was only seven years old. By the time I was old enough to drink coffee everyone used electric percolators. (After writing this paragraph, I bought an enamel pot, made Egg Coffee and served it to friends. They liked it.)

Mother’s job at Nelly Don’s was not always pleasant. One of the secretaries did not accept her because she got the job as Nell Donnelly’s friend. If the day had been difficult for Mother it entered the conversation at the dinner table. I think it helped her to share this with us. So we listened.

I was not accustomed to having her away from home all day. Her street car stop was at 43rd and Oak Street. So when it was close to the time for her streetcar to arrive at the stop, I walked to meet her and we walked back home together.

During the Depression years some families experienced hunger. One very warm summer night Daddy decided to sleep on the front porch where he might at least get an occasional breeze. He was awakened by the sound of some one rushing out the front door and he was startled. He shouted the first word that he could make come out of his mouth which was, “Shoot!” He meant to say, “Scoot!” The intruder left and never came back. I think he was just looking for food.

Someone gave the Shackelford’s a live twenty pound turkey for our Thanksgiving Dinner. The turkey was kept in the garage until the afternoon on the day before. I went with Nana to the garage and watched as she grabbed that turkey by the neck, swung it around until the head came off its body. The poor headless turkey ran around the garage aimlessly with blood dripping from his neck then finally collapsed in a heap. I stood there watching a sight that I had never seen before. Then I watched as she got the turkey ready for the oven. She had to pluck off the feathers, pull out the pin feathers, and then remove the unwanted innards in order to get the turkey ready for the oven. On Thanksgiving Day, the baked turkey appeared on a platter, filled with stuffing. He was the center of a great feast.

On Sunday evenings, we often gathered around the radio to listen to the Chase and Sanborn Hour. My favorite characters were Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. We all listened to one of Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats if he was speaking that night.

Christmas was another wonderful time with many of the family members present. We opened presents on Christmas Eve in the Parlor. Always before in my own family we waited until Christmas Morning to open presents and my Sydenstricker grandparents came to join us. That was what I was used to doing. This year there was nothing to look forward to on Christmas morning and I was very sad that day.

During the late summer of 1933, there was a World’s Fair in Chicago and the entire Wald family, my Aunt Gertrude and Uncle GA along with their five children went to it and returned with tales about the wonderful things they saw and heard. I was delighted with their descriptions of all the new and exciting inventions that soon would become a part of our world. How I wished they had taken me with them! I hoped that some day there would be another World’s Fair and that my family would have enough money to go.

I always enjoyed playing with my Wald cousins. Richard, the oldest, had his own friends, but Barbara and I were close in age. Jean and the twins, Bob and Bill were the same age. Joanne was youngest but was a favorite of all of us. A year later we were all sad to learn that Uncle GA had been transferred to a new position in Los Angeles. They drove by the 4055 house on the day that they were to begin their journey to California to tell us all good bye. Jean and I did not want Joanne to leave so we decided we would hide her under a table hoping that her parents would not be able to find her and would leave her behind with us. Our plan did not work.

In June of 1934, Jean and I had finished another year in school. Jean would be in second grade and I would begin fourth grade in the fall. Mother was still working for Nelly Don’s and Daddy was still the office manager at Dad Shack’s Wallpaper and Paint Store. Mother was concerned about how we would spend our time during the summer while she could not be with us. She taught us to do embroidery work and we decorated the hems of pillow cases and guest towels. On summer evenings Daddy walked to the Westport Branch Library and brought back books for us to read. I spent many afternoons cradled in Dad Shack’s big leather chair.

During the summer evenings occasionally our parents would walk with us to the shops along 39th and Main Street. Most stores did not stay open in the evening but we could look in the windows. The few places that stayed open were the Dime Store, Milgram’s Groceries and the Warwick Theater. We could wander through the Dime Store and look at things we would like to buy if we had the money. We could walk through Milgram’s and do the same. The theater had matinees on Saturday afternoons and the tickets cost only 10 cents. I remember seeing a movie called “The Invisible Man” and it scared me to death. Broadway musicals were delightful and my favorite star was the singer/dancer Dick Powell.

Living with Nana and Dad Shack was pleasant for me. As a child I never did feel lonesome or neglected or frightened. I think Mother may have felt that the responsibility of looking after two young children was a load that Nana should not have thrust upon her in addition to her other responsibilities. I also believed that Mother missed being with us and was concerned that were spending too much time and too many days on our own. Even though the money she earned was essential to our wellbeing, there was something about the arrangement that did not seem right to her.

We needed an affordable home where we could all live together; where Jean and I could get to and from school safely on our own, where we would have adults to look after us and children to play with after school hours, and where there would be meals served during the lunch period. So she set about trying to find a place like this for us to live.

A suggestion that came from one of her Christian Science friends appealed to her. She learned that there was a private daytime school that also was a boarding school. It was run by a Christian Scientist woman and the teachers offered instruction in Christian Science teachings to the students. The teachers also lived at the school so we would not be alone while our parents were still at work. The school held classes during the day to all students. Some students came for classes during the day only. Other students boarded at the school. Lunch was provided for the daytime students but the school offered three meals a day for boarding students. Requirements for proper behavior in class, on the school grounds and at meals were enforced. All met with Mother’s approval. In addition, since my parents had no place to live at present, the school offered them lodgings.