Chapter 3
EARLY BOYHOOD
1921-1929
i - East Side, West Side
“Look down my rain barrel,
Slide down my cellar door,
And we'll be jolly friends
Forevermore."
Playmates - Saxie Dowell
From the time I was a baby, my mother went out to work. The first job I was
aware of was at Lasky’s clothing store down town not far from where we lived. I
made up a little song, a parody, which the adults at the house said was cute, but which
may have been a genuine lament over my six-day-a-week separation from my mother.
It went:
My bonnie lies over the ocean,
My bonnie lies down Lasky’s store.
My bonnie lies over the ocean,
Oh bring back my bonnie once more.
But at least by working in the retail district, Mother was able to keep up with
fashion trends and take advantage of sales. If I had little else, I was a well-dressed
youngster. Playing in the mud or dirt, I could be just as grimy and scruffy as any little
boy. For school, however, and for church, birthday parties and Grandma Wallace’s
on Sundays, Mother dolled me up “fit to kill." When I was quite small, I had a velvet
Little Lord Fauntleroy suit for special occasions. Mother must have loved it; about
70 years later when she died, it was still in tissue paper in her dresser drawer. When
I was a little older, there were things she made me wear that I didn’t approve of. For
one, my belted tweed coat, which I thought was “sissy" and I demonstrated that
opinion by sailing its matching cap into Wills Creek when we crossed the bridge one
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