Children’s Activities

When roller skates became popular, we would skate all around the block; some houses or apartments had better cement to skate on than others. One day one of the boys had a piece of broken glass. We went up to a third-floor stairway and put pieces of paper under the glass; the sun caused it to burn. We got bawled out for that!

We only lived a short distance from Washington Park. In the winter we skated on the lagoon there. I loved to ice skate. My father played a good bit of tennis there in the summertime. As we got older Gwen and I would take care of Ruth and Llewellyn when the folks went out with their friends. One time we had a big chest like a box, filled with materials and the like, and I put sheets over it and went to bed in it. My folks came home and there I was sound asleep in what looked (to them) like a coffin, with me in it. Wow!

We had a large yard and many children in the apartments would play games around the clothes poles, games like Pussy Wants a Corner, Tag, and Hide and Seek, etc. We had lots of fun. It was so long ago I can only remember a few of the children; there were so many.

One day when we still lived in Edison Park, my mother was having a luncheon. Gwen and I were playing doctor and she fed me some of mama’s pills. I think they might have been Bycloride of Mercury. Anyway, however many I took sent me into convulsions. Later they told me how the doctor beat his horse in order to get to our home so he could pump my stomach into the kitchen sink. I never heard how the luncheon turned out.

Gwen and Edythe, Edison Park 1911
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Ruth, Gwen, Edythe 1914
We had many bouts of illnesses at that time — diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping cough, chicken pox, etc. In those days we were not protected from sicknesses as children are today, and we seemed to catch everything. One of us would get something, and pretty soon the others — one-by-one — would also get it. Sometimes my grandmother Cromwell would come over and help mama take care of us. Sometimes the well ones would stay at grandmother Cromwell’s house; one by one we would get to go home to the sick house.

As a small child whenever there was any kind of crisis in the family — a new baby, an illness — I was sent to my paternal grandparents to stay until the crisis had subsided. It seemed as if I spent lots of time there. My grandmother Hughes was a vegetarian so we had lots and lots of fish, which may account for my dislike of it still today.

My grandmother Hughes was a great walker, and thought I should have a nap each day, as we planned to walk from 3200 Belmont North to 2400 Diversey North, to a certain place where she could purchase a special brown bread she enjoyed — a trip of about 2 miles. I would not sleep, thinking I was too old for naps, so I would do other things until it was time to go. It was a long walk, and if I became tired she would remind me that I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t figure out how she knew.

Edythe and friends, Jackson Park Beach, July 16, 1916
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