Marie's Flowers

Marie told me that tending the garden and the flower garden was one of the things that she really enjoyed all of her life. She still has a garden at her house now, but needs some help with it. However, she does not need help with planning what she is going to plant and where she is going to plant it. She orders a lot of her bulbs and plants through the mail in different nurseries and the other day she even got some from Publisher’s Clearing House. She said you just never know!

This year she had given Fran and I a list of plants to get at the greenhouse for her. She wanted cucumber plants, zucchini plants, cabbage plants and some tomato plants. It had been raining so much we had to “mud” them in, but they are doing really well. She stood on the deck and supervised. She told us where to plant them and how close together etc. Actually she was a big help because everybody does it differently.
Roland wanted to get his mom some flowers that come up every year so Fran and I went in with him and got Marie three azalea plants. When I had her go out on the deck she sucked in her breath and went “Oh, my, they are beautiful.”
I thought you might like to see some of her beautiful plants that she has started and then you can enjoy them with her. There are two pictures of flowers that she had years and years ago when she lived in Massachusetts. Those flowers are just a splash of vivid color. She had me take pictures of those so I could put them on the “internet.” Enjoy.

Margaret Lamont's Doll Shop

I have had a request to hear more about the doll shop, so this morning I went to visit Marie to see if she could tell me more.

There were about twenty girls that worked there. In fact her niece, Phyllis worked there for a time. At the time Marie was working there, there was only one shift running. The doll shop’s owners contracted with the Sayco Company in New York. Sayco sent the doll shop all the cut outs and then the girls sewed them together.
Marie said besides the Mary Poppins outfits, they made clothes for Alice Blue Gown doll, Bozo the Clown, Mortimer, Cinderella even christening gowns for babies.

The lady that owned the shop would always look for jobs if the business was slow. One time she got a job for making a lot of teddy bears. The company paid for it with a bounced check. So Margaret’s shop lost a lot of money on that job.
When Marie started sewing for a wage, she sewed at a trouser shop. She stayed there for eleven years. Then she went to a shirt shop that was poorly run for only three months. From the shirt shop she went to Margaret’s Doll Shop for thirty two years. She retired then but found she needed more money than her social security paid her, so she worked for a garment factory called R&M for three years. They made bathrobes, underwear, smocks and a variety of things. She received some back pay from social security that was a surprise, so she then could retire with more comfort.
Can you remember how many months or years you worked for each job that you had.? I think Marie’s memory is amazing. She was telling me today that one day she came into the doll shop and a new chief operator had put all the sewing machines facing the wall. She pretty much flipped out. She said she asked him if he knew anything about sewing. He said no, but he knew about organization. Marie quit her job. The lady that owned the business had died, she didn’t like the son and just decided to go home and be happier, albeit a little broker.
Note: Through the years I have been told about relatives and other folks that worked at Mrs. Lamont's Doll Shop.

The House On 9 Southshore Road

Marie’s boys want me to tell stories about the house on 9 Southshore Road. It is kind of an interesting house, because of it’s history and some of the antics that the boys did at that house.

The house cost $3500.00. It was a small house, but had four bedrooms. Marie and her husband were both working at the time of the purchase. When they bought it in those days there were no “discovery” papers, but they were assured that everything was fine that went with the house.
In February, Marie couldn’t get the furnace to light. She finally got it lit, but it went out. Anyone that has lived in Massachusetts knows that it is cold there in February. Marie called the furnace repair people and they discovered a hole in the heating chamber the size of a grapefruit. She said she was very lucky not to have blown the house and herself up. A new furnace would cost two thousand dollars, almost as much as they paid for the house.
She went to the bank which had an affiliation with her church and they put the cost of a new furnace in with her mortgage and it only raised her house payments six dollars. That made her payments forty five dollars a month. Wouldn’t we all like house payments of forty five dollars a month, however, those payments were in times where the paychecks were a tenth of what they are now also.
To get the loan for the furnace, the papers had to go through a board of directors similar to now a days, and that took two weeks. Two weeks of being cold and having children. I think she said she was getting sewing done for her daughter’s wedding at that time also. This sounds like where the phrase come from, “when it rains it storms.” I might have just made that up!
All the boys tell me about the terrible snow storms they had when they lived there. The stories vary from brother to brother, but in the end they were all full of mischief.
I am going to tell this story my own way and it will have a little truth from all three of the boys. They had had several snow storms of over two to three feet at a time. They had over six feet in one snow storm one time. Any way, snow makes some people upset because they can’t get out of the house to get to work, and other people think, what the heck, let’s have some fun. I have been told a story like I say with different versions of the boys, tying two ladders together so that they were long enough to get to the top of the roof. The reason for doing this was serious, his mother was concerned that the roof would cave in from the weight of the snow. Well, work was done, what would you do, if you were teenagers with a lot of snow to have fun in and your work was done. Jump! Yes, first one then another, then the one that didn’t spread his arms out and had to be dug out in order to get out of the snow bank. That story has been told and told and told, and always with a hearty laugh.

Rationing During World War Two

My mother told me some about rationing. It didn’t seem to bother her to the extent that it did Marie. Mom and Dad lived on the farm. Mom churned her own butter, had their own milk, meat, and vegetables. Mother talked about the stamps they were issued for coffee, sugar, flour, and gasoline more than she did anything else. The age difference between my mother and Marie was three years.

Marie, however told me things about the rationing that made me wonder how I would do in the same situation.
Marie said that you had to place an order with the meat market for the meat that you wanted. You also had to pick it up when you said you were going to or they sold it to someone else. There was no ration on horse meat so she got horse meat sometimes. She had to cook it longer, but it tasted okay. The market told her to always save the fat from the meat. She said that sometimes she went through the Black Market to get things she absolutely had to have. Marie did a lot of baking cakes for weddings and birthdays. She would trade her stamps for things that she didn’t use that much of for stamps for sugar. She was allowed five pounds of sugar per person a month. She could have four pounds of butter a month for the family. She could have one pound of hamburger per person, and also pork. Marie said that they allowed her one pound of coffee per person a month. She told me that sometimes she would wait for hours for a pound of butter, only to be told that they had run out. I asked her why she thought the government had rationed the butter. She said she didn’t know for sure, but wondered if the majority of it was being sent to the soldiers. She said that margarine was not rationed. She told me it was white and had a little coloring pill in it that a person broke and kneaded the color throughout the margarine to make it look yellow. I was all excited because I remembered that. Marie just shook her head at me and looked at me like “Why on earth would this woman get excited about margarine?” Well I will tell you an example. When we were little we would go to my aunt and uncle’s house that lived in a city and that was our job to “color” the margarine. I just thought it was fun!
The government issued ration books that had stamps inside for different things. Each person in the family received their own book of stamps. To me it is amazing how people were forced to live in our “free” America. Marie also told me that there were sirens that warned people that an attack was eminent; a black out then ensued. Marie said that every one used black or green shades to keep the inside light from showing.
There was a knock on the door one night from a person telling her that her light was showing outside. After that she put a candle inside a tin can so that it would not be seen outside.
Marie said that even heating oil was rationed. She was allowed nine gallons of oil a week for heating and nine gallons of gasoline a week for the car if you had one. Gasoline at that time was ten cents a gallon.
Another thing that Marie told me was that after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor the government froze wages, and rents. Everything stayed at a stand still. People had to give up their aluminum pans and gold coins so the government could melt them down.
Marie has a big thick cook book that her father gave her for a wedding gift. She said he paid a dollar for it. In that cook book she has several of the War Ration Books complete with stamps inside.

Marie's Little Known Tips And Remedies

 Marie gave me tips on how to get rid of bugs in your garden today. Anyone that knows me will know exactly what I said when she told me to put quartered grapefruit in the rows in the garden. I said, “No way!” She laughed and said, “I didn’t have any money to buy things, I had to use what I had. Rotted oranges and grapefruit keep all the bugs and pests out of the plants. Sometimes you need to put a stick through them to hold them still but they work.” Me of little faith came home, got on the internet and lo and behold, the big farmers use extract of grapefruit. It even has a name with initials, like GES or some such thing.

Then she was telling me about Octagon Soap. Has anyone ever heard of that? Once again, I got on the internet. The first thing I told Fran, "Oh, that stuff is still being sold, but it is expensive; almost two dollars a bar." It helps multiple things; it cures acne which Marie told me, kills nits, which she told me. When I was on the internet I got on a chat room and found Octagon soap which is made by Colgate-Palmolive for as little as sixty eight cents a bar. The uses that people have for this soap is just amazing. They say that it stops itching for poison ivy, chiggers, bug bites. Fran says it’s good catfish bait, and so did the computer. It is also a household cleaner and is often used when the children are having carving contests in school. I also found it being sold by Piggly Wiggly stores, Kroegers, and many other grocery stores.
Marie is a untapped resource for knowledge for me. I am so fortunate to have her as a mother-in-law. The only thing I need a computer for is to tell her stories.

From Rock To Gymnastics

When Fran was playing guitar and attempting to sound like the Beatles with his buds, a friend came around and asked him if he would like to go and join the gymnastic team.

Fran had never done this before. Roland joined up too. The boys did different kinds of things on the team, but they both enjoyed it. They played basketball, volley ball, and did gymnastics at Turner Hall in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
On the Fourth of July the gymnastic team members, girls and boys, would take all their equipment to the city park and have a demonstration for the citizens in the afternoon. Then the people would have the fireworks in the evening.
They would have the parallel bars, horse, horizontal bars, side horse, jumping horse, high bar, uneven bars for the girls, the boys did the even bars. They did cartwheels, tumbling, back flips and lots of different things to entertain the folks that came to watch.

Marie was the biggest fan. She went armed with her 8mm camera and took movies of her boys and the people. She showed movies on her projector for her family. I think she really enjoyed those performances, she talks about those times frequently. She wishes so that she had those movies once again so she could relive the “old times.”
Fran and Roland were part of the gymnastic team for about two or three years. I look at Fran’s physique now and think, “no way.”

Top Row: Fran 2nd from the left,  Roland 3rd from the right
Note: At one of the practices Fran's spotter had looked away and wasn't there to catch him. He hurt his shoulder, but it did not stop him from doing gymnastics.