Winds Blowing Through An Open Window

Dear Louie,

Let me take you back to my childhood home.

The house at 39 South Rural St. was old when we lived there in 1940. It is older now. It is 28 feet square, two stories high, was built in 1875 or there about, and was lived in by only two families, the Forbes and the Algiers. We, the Algiers lived there from 1940 to 1951. We lived and died there, rebuilt the house, and found its treasures and its weaknesses. We laughed, cried, sweated and grew in this small house, small by today’s standards, small by the one bathroom, one tub, four bedrooms in a home of 1568 square feet. It was cramped, but it was home.

On day while playing fungo ball in the street the ball was lined through the front windowpane, into the front room. Of course this prompted a lesson in home maintenance and repair. I was instructed in the art of pane removal, caulking, and painting. The pane 12 by 14 inches was removed, the caulking was removed, the base was cleaned and the new pane was fitted into the window. Caulk was applied and the framing was repainted. While doing the work, inspection of the old panes of the window revealed an initializing signature of “Mary Forbes 1885” etched into the windowpane. While reading the etching with the adjacent pane vacated as it was repaired the wind blew in and out of the empty area and in viewing the etching I had a feeling of escaping spirits, spirits of the family Forbes escaping into the outside. And over the years I have thought of the spirits of the Algiers and how they, too, have escaped periodically into free areas from the confines of family, friends, happiness, strife, and oppression.

The Algiers family was of German Catholic heritage. Initially Grandma Algiers lived and on Memorial Day 1940 died in the house with the family of her son, John. She died of congestive heart failure and mild dementia. She died at about ten in the morning, died quietly after the parish curate had anointed her, and blessed her. She was not conscious, but received the benefits of her belief. She was buried, and life went on. Later the grandparents of the Herbes side lived in two rooms upstairs, quietly and unobtrusively. They, too, died at ages of 86 and 84, on the same day, at the same time. They too, were blessed and buried in the “Old Catholic Cemetery” following the black requiem mass of mournful dirges. All the grandparents lie quietly in Old St. Kilians Cemetery. All of their spirits have escaped as the air escaped through the window those many years ago.

But I ask myself, what else has escaped in a similar fashion over the past years and I am impressed how so many accepted habits have changed and blown with the winds. Societal changes have been brought about as quickly as the bursting of the windowpane. Some features of life live as the etched signature of “Mary Forbes.” Mores and religious convictions have changed; religious habits have been greatly modified. No longer do the inhabitants of 30 South Rural Street walk to St. Kilians each Saturday afternoon, examine their consciences, and confess their guilt, each Saturday as the previous Saturdays. The laundry list of “sins’ has been replaced by no-sins. The guidance of the sixty-second direction of the priest has been replaced by a forty-five minute conference with the guidance-counselor; the three “Hail Mary’s” have been replaced by a code of charges rendered against the insurance contract. The effectiveness of confession versus the couch of consultation remains debatable; both sometimes as effective or as ineffective as one chooses to admit. But the lines have shortened, and most of the time, do not exist.

But let’s talk about John, my father. From what I remember he came from Menomonee Wi., Dunn County where he was born, premature and weighing about 2 to 2 and one half pounds. Born in a farm home, placed in a shoebox and he spent the next few weeks in the oven of the stove, a wood burning stove, in the kitchen. How he ever survived is a wonder to me. Now the mode of treatment for a smaller premature infant is to place the infant in an intensive care unit for three to six weeks, have a neonatologist see the child daily and give the best of care. At the time of his birth in 1896 or 97, he was born, placed in the shoebox, suckled at the breast of his mother, kept warm in the oven and somehow survived for 93 years.

During the first eighteen years of his life he lived on the farm, one hundred plus acres of rolling land in Dunn county; land which in the early 1920’s was nearly paid for but was lost and repossessed by the bank, when the family fell in arrears on the payments for one year. No one cared that the farm was nearly paid for, about eighty five percent paid for, no one signed for a second mortgage, the bank took the farm, the family dispersed and John and sister Margaret came to Hartford. Soon, within two years the Father and Mother came to Hartford to work. They worked for a few years and then retired. What was used for retirement, I cannot imagine. I recall hearing that Aloysius, the father, worked at Kissels for a few years and then died. My only recollection of him was of a Sunday visit, which he and Grandma Therese made to our house on forest Street. He was dressed in a Sunday suit, had a large mustache, smelled of chewing tobacco, and spoke softly. He gave me a Hershey bar, with almonds. To this day, whenever I eat a Hershey bar with almonds I think of him. He died from a gastric hemorrhage the cause of which is and probably was unknown.

Grandma, the grandparent who died at 30 South Rural in 1940 played an important role in our lives. She lived with us; John and the three sons for about a year while my Mother Lucy was hospitalized in a T.B. Sanatorium. As I stated in a previous writing, Grandma took care of Norbert, who was 2 years of age, in a special manner. She cuddled him, crooned to him, and coughed on him as she rocked him to sleep each night. During those intimate sessions of caring she inoculated him with the T.Bc. germ and he developed childhood T.Bc. He recovered when Mother came home and took care of him. She brought an understanding of the treatment of T.B. along with her on discharge from the Sanatorium. All of those memories and ghostly vapors escaped out the window on 30 S. Rural St. that fateful day of window repair. But there were more vapors, which escaped. Living there for fourteen years many vapors developed. Much sweat and work occurred, and surprisingly little true tragedy.

One tragedy was piano lessons. We all took piano lessons from the nuns, we all learned to play chop sticks, we all quit. There was no talent in the family, no one sang, no one played the piano, the genes were deficient. But we learned to work. Each of us had a variety of jobs, from paper delivery to working in the Baus Meat Market;from cleaning of the Hartford Theatre to working at Libby McNeil and Libby; from mowing the lawn to mowing the cemetery grass; from scrubbing the floors at home to scrubbing the floors of St. Kilian school; from shoveling the side walk to cleaning hundreds of feet of sidewalk and drive way at St. Kilian Church and School. We all worked, and we all played. We played at the West Park in the summer, at Pike Lake we swam. Later I played golf at the Country Club, much to the chagrin of my Father who stated once or a hundred times that ”life was not a golf course, man was made to work.” We had no car, the three boys had one bike, somehow one was enough. It was used for peddling papers on two routes, alternating days and somehow cooperating. It worked.

The food was plentiful, plain, and tasty. No one, ever, was hungry. Sundays and holidays were special, the dishes were done by the boys, sometimes were broken by the boys; there was no dishwasher, the water sometimes was quite dirty, but all developed tolerance and family immunity. Breakfast was cereal, fruit, and run! Supper was hamburger, soup, potatoes, carrots, peas, and noise. Cookies before bed was expected and honored, crumbs were common in the shared beds. Knickers and jeans, called overalls, were worn, passed down, and always patched. Winter long johns were worn for day and night for a week at a time, and then washed, if need be. Shoes were shined Saturday and Wednesday, boots were kept, after drying in the closet, lined up and findable. Mittens were dried on a rack behind the space heater, an oil space heater which was filled each day after school. The oil was carried into the house from an outside tank, and care was taken not to spill oil on the floor. Each Saturday the wick in the oil stove was cleaned and cut back, twice a year the chimney was cleaned, what a mess. Shoes were lined up on the steps, each night, never thrown on the floor. We all lived, we all grew, we all, somehow, prospered.

Reading was always a high priority. We were introduced to books at an early age, and encouraged to continue to read. I was a plodder, Lawrence was the original speed reader and I have envied him to this day. But I had better penmanship, at least that’s what Mother said. We all were in the top of our classes, not the top, but close. It was an understanding that somehow we would go on to school after high school. How that was to be accomplished was never addressed, but with the G. I. bill and a schlorarship for persons with disability all were educated. Rosalie went to nursing school in Waukegan, met her husband and never returned. Mary never expressed a desire to go to school beyond high school, but became an energetic craftsman, talented seamstress, and a dynamic person. Charles became an architect, Norbert and Lawrence were veterinarians, and I was a physician.

Not too bad for “winds blowing through the open window.”