Two
I grew up on Belmont Avenue in Baltimore near the Woodlawn section of town. My
name, Janel, was a combination of my mother’s mother’s name, my Nana who was
called Jennie and my father’s mother’s name, Nellie. I preferred to spell it Jan el. Janel.
Our neighborhood was typical of most tract communities lined
with hundreds of white carbon copy Cape
Cods, built in the ‘50s
with scalloped shingles. Few people had more than one car per household. They
were content to be a simple community and had the blessings and curses that
come with it. A motley assortment of people, the blue collar and emerging white
professionals, aspired to get out of the crab basket and seize the American
dream. One hundred sixty houses, lined
up like desks in a schoolroom, only four streets, one street in front of
another. They were identical in size,
not a Levitt tract home community, but on a smaller scale.
“We’re
like a giant easel,” the neighbors would say. Stock houses, the homeowners
added their special touch just enough to differentiate them from their
neighbor.
Within
these homogeneous Cape
Cods lived a dutiful
generation of people.
Nearly
everyone belonged to the PTA or risked being shunned from the PTA President.
Others volunteered in Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Brownies or Girl Scouts and for
the fire department. And there were many
other organizations as well. It was a
generation of volunteers. Commitment
meant something. They were working to
improve their world.
Neighbors
helped one another complete their basement recreation rooms or pour concrete
from the community concrete mixer that everyone pitched in to buy. When I was young, I thought my family was special
because we were chosen to store it.
The
children in the neighborhood were raised by the community. People knew what was going on in one
another’s lives. You didn’t dare get
into trouble, lest everyone knew what you had done. It was an instant guarantee your parents
would know, too.
Behind
my home was a very large and wooded area.
An escape. I remember the short story
about the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It was James Thurber’s story about
Walter Mitty, a timid person who had a two day daydreaming escapade. Walter
Mitty fantasized about one exciting adventure after another. It was in those woods that I became whatever
the Walter Mitty in me would allow.
There were turtles, some snappers, crayfish in the creek, skunk,
muskrat, and every kind of foliage you could imagine. A large rock pile some several miles in diameter
created a limitless playground for me and her friends.
I’d
would work all day sometimes to clear the foliage to create the special little
ground fort only to come back the next day to do it again.
“You
start out early in the morning when the ground is soft to pull out the
greenery. With a slight squat, you bend
toward the root of the shrubs and give it a firm yank. If you are lucky, you won’t fall backward,” I
remember telling a friend.
“There
is so much work to be done. If we do it
together, we can finish early. Then we can sit back and enjoy it and we can eat
our snacks.”
They
looked a long time to find the perfect spot.
Nirvana means you find a spot near the water where it is cool even if
you are only a child. A large, brown
boulder with marble-like mica running through it became their throne. Upon it we imagined they were bigger, that
they were in charge.
In
the winter, the creek formed a glistening ice skating rink. My friends and I would skate for hours under
road bridges along the abutting psychiatric hospital. No one ever worried about us. Whether we walked along the railroad tracks,
or swam in the nearby rivers, it felt safe.
We
watched with admiration the shanty across the creek the teenage boys were
building. They even had a wood
stove. We longed for a peek in the
shanty, but were too timid to snatch a glimpse.
It was only when the police finally tore down the fire hazard that they
saw the Playboy magazines, Camel and Marlboro cigarettes and the tiny
refrigerator. A few years later, we
would learn that two of the boys, both brothers, went to prison because they
broke into a convenience store.
The
woods were also next to the Meton
Psychiatric Hospital. Once in a while someone would escape. The remains of a troubled man were found near
my fort around my fourteenth birthday. He had shot himself in the head. The Police and Medical Examiner brought his
body through our her back yard on a stretcher.
I never returned to the woods after that.
It
was in that community where everyone knew each other by name and although my
street had some thirty houses, even as a child, I felt that I belonged. I called mother’s friends Miss Tillie, Miss
Mary, Miss Beanie and Miss Madeline, in keeping with Nana’s southern Maryland roots.
Nana,
a petite and warm woman, came to the United
States in the early ‘20s from London, England. Over time she lost most of her accent except
when she would speak of tomatoes. She
pronounced them “toe matt toes.” It
always made me laugh.
Nana
had eloped in her early twenties to marry her handsome boyfriend from Maryland. He then
enlisted in the Canadian military long before the United States got into the first
World War. That is where he lost his
left arm. Nana later learned his family owned the land on which Cape Canaveral is built.
But
in my tightly knit community, the neighborhood had a block party once a month
rotating throughout the community. My
brother, Charles, and I relished the times when our parents hosted the
event. Even though they we were just
eight and ten, I remember well the anticipation we had early each morning after
our parents hosted the parties just waiting to check out the leftovers.
“Charles,
wake up. There are some goodies left.
C’mon down,” I would whisper in his ear.
Down we went into
to the hickoy panelled recreation room.
Still in the heavy double cement sink, they would find Nehi, Grape Soda
and Root Beer, and a few bottles of
Fresca. The ice block purchased
the day before had melted.
Dad’s
family were originally from Wales
although he was born in New Jersey. Most of his family immigrated to the
south. They lived in Virginia
and North Carolina.
It
was Dad who was the social organizer for the community. He started the first baseball league in
Woodlawn, an honor for which he was long remembered.
But
Mom fostered traditions. Like the Friday
afternoon we went clothes shopping, picked up a few items at the local Acme
grocery store in Woodlawn. The final destination was always a stop at the
Rexall Pharmacy. It had a long, 1950s
soda fountain. Mom always took black coffee.
I always ordered Coca Cola, a small one and ate her standard pretzel
stick with dipped on the end with a little dollop of mustard. Sitting at the green counter, Mom continued
with one of her Agatha Christie books while I revelled in her my wardrobe
folded neatly in the Stewart’s bag on the black and white checkerboard tiled
floor.
Mom
was an original. A more than determined
spirit with a Margaret Mead orientation to life and a Phyliss Diller sense of
humor. She could do anything - tune a
car, wire a room, sew a dress. She was a
middle school science and math teacher/supervisor with a masters degree in
physics and was the daughter of a Londoner.
She was also one of Baltimore’s
first sex educators.
Mom
was a phenomenon in the 1960s, the first wave of feminists who were suddenly
single. Although she wanted to be a physician, there was no money for
that. So she went to college while
raising Charles and I.
Sewing
was another tradition among the women in our family. Often Mom, Nana and I sewed together. Once we even made yellow and gray checkered
blouses with matching skirts. I loved
when we wore them together. Nana, who taught Mom the art of needlecraft and how
to sew. Mom taught me sewing. I learned needlecraft in my twenties.
At
ten I was sewing simple crop tops. Working
on the unfinished side of the basement with its painted yellow cinder block
walls, shelves lined with old newspaper upon which fossils were stored, the
room warmth was everywhere.
