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My Early Years
I was born in Edison Park, a suburb of Chicago, On September 30, 1908. At the time, my sister Gwen was 15 months old. We lived in a new house and my mother and dad had many good friends in the area. We lived there until I was almost five and Gwen was 6 and then my folks moved to a thirty-unit apartment building in Chicago on the South side on the corner of 59th and Prairie Ave., with entrances on both streets. My father managed the building for the company that owned it. My mother’s folks, the Cromwells, lived at 61st and Wabash, so we weren’t too far away. We loved to go to their house because they always had an early dinner, or supper, and they would take us to the nickel picture show — movies, they call them now.
We went to the Carter Practice School on the block of 58th and Wabash Ave., a new school. I started in kindergarten and my sister Gwen in the first grade. They called it a practice school because teachers from Chicago Teachers College put in time in all the grades, as practicing teachers. They were there in addition to the regular classroom teachers who taught their specialties — math, English, biology; whatever specialty they wanted. |
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We would go to school a little early and play in the school yard until the bell rang. One day when I was in the third grade and Gwen in the fourth, we were playing on the slide. Gwen was up at the top getting ready to slide down, but hadn’t straightened her legs out. Someone pushed her and Gwen slid down with her leg bent under; the weight of her body hurt her leg. They carried her in to the nurses office. I went to my class where they later sent for me to keep her company until momma arrived. I cried so hard they sent me back to my room. I was no good for her, crying like I did. They got an older girl to stay with her. Well, the doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with her leg, however it still was very painful, so she hopped around on the other foot. My father called her “Mollie Make-believe” because he said there was nothing wrong with her. One day as she hopped down the hall, she fell again. This time they took her to the hospital where they x-rayed her leg and found that it was broken. The poor girl was in a cast for a long time. When they took off the cast, she fainted. That leg was always tender. |
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