The Rhythm of the Week

                                   

Gin

When I was growing up in Pittsfield in the 50s, it felt like the week began on Thursday night.  Not on Sunday, when the stores were closed, we had church in the morning, and I was finishing up weekend homework.  Not  on Monday which was the beginning of the school week. Most restaurants were closed. Not on Saturday even though it was the beginning of the weekend. No. The week started on Thursday because that was when people who worked at the GE were paid.  The weekly pay cycle determined the rhythm of the week.

Thursday

Thursday night was busy.  The stores on North Street stayed open until 9. That might not seem like a big deal to those born in an era of malls, but when I grew up, stores closed at five each evening including Saturdays. They were never open on Sunday.  Banks closed at three Friday afternoon not opening again until Monday morning. The commercial world was more limited than the 24/7 access we have come to expect today.

By the time I was in junior high in 1956, the era of the one stop supermarket was just beginning. Back in the 50s the prefix “super” meant something.  Here was a store selling all your groceries.  No more buying meat at a butchers, bread at a bakery, milk and butter at a dairy store. What used to be separate shops were now departments in the "super" market. Now you could shop once a week in one store to stock up on everything from hamburg to lettuce, from bread to milk, from canned goods to napkins.  In Pittsfield we had both an A&P and a First National.  My mother’s store of choice was the A&P. 

On Thursday afternoon she’d walk up North Street to the A&P about an hour before my father ended  work for the day at the GE.   He would meet her at the store, sometimes in a cab, sometimes in a car when we had one.  They would arrive home loaded with bags of groceries around six each Thursday night.  This was one reason Thursday was different from the other weekday nights. On those nights we’d eat exactly at 5:30 shortly after my father got home from work. On Thursday we ate when the food was out of the bags.

Eating later than usual Thursday night meant it wasn’t one of my mother’s cooked dinners.  She didn’t have time to do both that and shop, so it meant a more casual meal.  Often hamburgers, something I liked as a teenager.  Sometimes I would start them cooking while my mother finished putting away the groceries. We would empty a can of green beans into a sauce pan, my mother always insisting on a vegetable.  There might be  frozen French fries heating up in the oven. Or we’d just have potato chips. My favorite. Then it was a matter of cleaning up to be ready for the Thursday night TV shows.

Superman, The Cisco Kid, or similar shows were always on at 7 for us kids.  At 7:30 my parents would watch Lionel Hampton on the xylophone followed by the news with John Cameron Swayze from 7:45 to 8:00. I was always impatient for the news to end.  I wanted to watch Dragnet.  The whole family settled into the living room to watch Joe Friday and his partner solve a 641 on the day watch. 

  

Friday

Ah, the wonders of Friday.  With the pantry freshly stocked, Friday school lunches were always good. There were potato chips and Oreo cookies to enhance our baloney sandwiches.  Plus it was the last day of the school week. Trouble was too many teachers seemed to think Friday was a good day for tests which could make for a stressful day. The compensation was there was often no homework after a test. The homework that was assigned wasn’t due until Monday which seemed an eternity away.  Friday after school felt luxurious.  No demands and tomorrow is Saturday.

Friday suppers were typical of meals at my house. My father arrived home at 5:15. We would sit down no later than 5:30 to eat.  Sometimes my parents would have a glass of sherry, once in a while a martini, before we ate.   We always had a salad on the side.  I was a fussy eater.  Salad to me meant a bit of iceberg lettuce and a tomato. The only salad dressing I would even consider was mayonnaise.   An average meal might be pork chops with mashed potatoes and a vegetable.  The vegetable always came out of a can. 

The suppers I most looked forward to were my mother’s own recipes. Chili.  Spaghetti and Meat Balls.  American Chop Suey.  Meatloaf. I loved coming home from school late in the afternoon to the aromas of my mother’s cooking.  Often there’d be a simmering pot on the stove filled with her chili or spaghetti sauce.  She always added a full bay leaf to any of her tomato-based dishes. If you ended up with the bay leaf in your bowl you won a quarter. My father would yell, “Ginny, you’ve got the bay leaf.” He’d jump up to bring me a quarter. My mother’s “secret” ingredient in the meat loaf was a can of Campbell’s vegetable soup. Sometimes the iceberg lettuce was accompanied by a half of canned peach instead of a tomato. My father would be distressed if we didn’t have good crunchy Italian bread at every meal. Vienna bread from the local corner store was a favorite.

We had a dining room or at least a room we could have called a dining room. It was mostly used as a family room.  We’d set up a card table there when we wanted to play cards. On holidays we’d set up a metal folding table for meals with relatives. The kitchen though is where we ate all our regular meals, from breakfast through supper. At supper my mother would always sit at the end of the kitchen table nearest the stove so she could more easily serve the food. 

No meal was complete without dessert.  Weekends often included pie, but weekdays saw Jell-O, pudding, or a piece of cake.   My father always left the table when it was time for dessert.  He would go into the living room to read the paper while he ate his dessert with a cup of coffee.  My mother and I had a bargain.   Before dinner, I set the table while she prepared the food.  After dinner she cleaned up while I entertained my younger brother and sister.  I always felt I was getting away with something with this deal.  Playing cards with Vicki or pushing Chris in his stroller for an after dinner walk didn’t feel nearly as much work as washing and drying dishes.  It wasn’t until I became a mother myself that I realized the pleasure and the sense of freedom you could have when doing household tasks unencumbered by children.

Saturday

Saturday morning the TV belonged to kids.  Even with the few channels we were able to get, there was still plenty to watch.  Mostly live action.  Sky King with Penny, Circus Boy, the Andy’s Gang Show with those Buster Brown Shoe ads were among my favorites. 

Usually my father was gone by the time I got up to turn on the TV.  I don’t recall him ever being in the living room while the kids’ shows were on.  He would go up to North Street, find a place to have coffee, read a couple of papers, do whatever errands he had.  My dad had a sweet tooth.  We kids benefitted.  He rarely came home from a Saturday morning without some kind of sweet.  Sometimes he’d hang a long strip of lollipops from the top of a door which would reach all the way to the floor.  By the end of the day, the strip would be much shorter as we would pull off the bottommost one, one after the other. We were not good at saving such treats. The idea of eating one or two and making them last the week was never considered. They were gone by Sunday night. 

Other Saturdays he’d come back with a bag of coconut-covered marshmallows or gumdrops.  I always liked the spiced ones, not the fruity ones. My mother would make us wait until we had lunch first.  A can of vegetable soup, Campbell’s of course, and a tuna fish sandwich was a typical offering.  Then we’d dive into the marshmallows or gumdrops, whatever Dad had brought home.  Many dentists have benefitted from my father’s largesse.

In the afternoon, there was Science Fiction Theater and I Led Three Lives.  I liked Science Fiction Theatre because it always opened with a current science fact or experiment that was related to the theme of that week’s show.  I Led Three Lives was a tale of a man who was a double agent. He was a spy for the US with  the Communists believing he was a spy for them.  He also had a cover story, a supposedly regular job and a wife. I enjoyed seeing how he would get out of the predicaments the writers created for him.  Just when you thought he would be caught in a web of lies, he found some clever way to divert attention from himself or explain away the inconsistencies.

As I got older, Saturday afternoon usually meant a trip upstreet to walk around the stores, stop in at the library, or just to meet friends.  I have written about walking around North Street and the entertainments it offered in the blog piece, Upstreet.

Saturday supper was always hot dogs, baked beans, and brown bread. Not hot dogs in buns, that was for summer cookouts, but hot dogs on a plate. Unadorned. I loved the brown bread because it came in a can. Bread in a can?  To get it out, you cut open both ends of the can and pushed.  It was made out of corn meal, molasses and raisins.  Many of my friends had never heard of it, but it was a staple at our house on Saturday night.

Sunday

When I was growing up, Sundays were very different from all of the other days. The only stores open were the neighborhood corner stores that sold milk and newspapers. They generally closed around noon. These were the days when the Sunday Blue Laws were enforced. Nothing was open.  No department stores.  No stores up on North Street.  No hardware stores. No drug stores. Certainly no liquor stores. I learned this the hard way one Sunday when I was desperate for a package of white-lined, loose-leaf paper I needed for an assignment due Monday. My father drove me from closed store to closed store.  I ended up calling three friends finally getting my hands on a few sheets of paper. If you didn’t have what you needed in your house, you were not going to get it on Sunday!

On most Sundays, my mother would prepare dinner before we left for church.  She’d peel the potatoes, put them in water, and place the pan on the stove top so all she needed to do when we returned was to turn the heat on.  Then she’d place a roast beef or pork roast or whole chicken in the oven. She’d set the oven timer so the oven would go on while we were at church so the the food would be ready for a one o’clock dinner. I can remember coming into the house on a crisp fall day to the smell of a pork roast as it finished cooking. In this era of food safety I can’t imagine putting meat into an oven allowing  it to sit an hour or two before the heat went on.

For me church was a social affair.  We went to the Unitarian Church on Wendell Avenue in a building that had once been a grand family home belonging to Ben England, a relative of the brothers who established England Brothers’ department store.  As you entered the church, there was a central hall; to the right there was a large room used for social functions; to the left, another large room where the services took place.  Beyond the social room, there was a kitchen. To one side of the kitchen, off a large pantry, was a dimly lit and narrow stairway, probably a servants’ staircase, leading to an upstairs corridor off of which were several small rooms, likely servants’ quarters. Off the central hall was a more grand staircase leading to larger rooms on the left side of the building. These must have been bedrooms for the owners.  It was interesting to think how the building layout reflected what life might have been like for those who once lived there whether they were family members or staff.

The smaller bedrooms above the kitchen were now designated as Sunday school rooms separated by age group, one for ten and eleven year-olds, one for eight and nine year-olds, one for six and seven year-olds, and one for four and five year-olds. Each room was posted with a sign indicating the age group.  Adult volunteers organized the Sunday school.  With the older kids they told stories, read books, and talked about Unitarian Church values. As a teenager I would volunteer as a helper for the younger kids which was more like childcare than Sunday school. 

The four and five year-old room was fun. All those toys. I particularly liked the wooden puzzles. The puzzles I was familiar with growing up were made of cardboard. Putting together those puzzles, pieces were easily damaged, bent or torn.  In contrast the puzzle pieces at the church were thick cut, smooth, wooden pieces.  Though the puzzles were not a challenge for me, I liked watching the little kids try to figure them out. Sometimes I’d step in if I noticed they were getting frustrated to give them a clue as to which piece might fit next.

The room also had a couple of easels with paint sets.  I’d help the kids put on aprons and guide their hands as they painted. I wasn’t much better than they were at actually painting something recognizable, but I was less likely to spill the paint.

When the service was over and most of the little ones had been picked up, I’d go down to the social hour with the adults.  Sometimes I’d stand over by the book table with my father, other times I’d just chat with my church friends.  Since families came from all over Berkshire County, only a few of the friends I had at church were also in my school.  We would talk each week and then not see each other again for another week.There were two exceptions to this. Carole and Nancy. Both of them were in my high school even though they were in different social circles there.  I’ll write more about my friends in a future blog.

Once we had a car, we would spend a couple of Sunday afternoons each month at my grandparents’ home in North Adams. There was always a bit of tension about this. My father didn’t like going up there.  Not sure if it was the driving, the company, or just a sense of wanting to be in his own house, but even as a kid I knew it was my mother’s desire to visit her parents and not my father’s.

My older brother often found a way to get out of this. “I have too much homework.  I can’t give up all afternoon.”  My younger sister found it fun. I was somewhat in the middle.  My aunt and uncle and four cousins lived next door to my grandparents. Sometimes I’d go over there to play cards or board games. 

For a large part of the afternoon we would all sit in my grandparents’ living room. Extra chairs would be brought in since their single couch and easy chair wouldn’t fit us all.   We’d arrange the chairs in a semi-circle.  While the adults talked, I’d entertain the younger kids.  A game of choice was Hide the Button. The game became a fixture at my grandmother’s house; we never played it anywhere else.  All the little kids would go out into the kitchen.  I would literally hide a button somewhere in the living room. Then as the adults talked, the kids wandered about the room crawling behind the chairs looking for the button. Once someone found it, they’d give it back to me so I could hide it again. There were two entirely different things going on in the same space. The adults talking, the kids looking for the button, each group oblivious to the other. Looking back on it this was a pretty simple game.  How did this manage to keep us entertained for so long? Well, they were just little kids.  The bigger question is, how did it keep me entertained for so long?  I was neither an adult nor a little kid so the role I chose for myself was to be in charge of the kids so I could be engaged without needing to sit and pretend I cared about the grown-ups' conversation.

I had other jobs as well. One time my grandmother asked me to go into the living room to see what people wanted for dessert.  “See who wants cherry pie. Who wants chocolate cake? Who wants ice cream?”  I asked my parents, my aunt and uncle, my grandfather, my siblings and my cousins. I came back to the kitchen to report. “Three slices of pie, two people want cake, and all the kids want ice cream.” 

Then with some concern, I noticed she didn't have a whole pie. She didn’t have a whole cake either. Just leftovers.  “But you asked me to ask everyone. What if they all wanted pie?” I was upset.  I had asked each person what they wanted. “What if they all wanted cake?”  My grandmother was not bothered in the least. “Well, I knew the three men would have pie, your mother and her sister would have cake.  I have plenty of ice cream.”  I protested, “What if you were wrong about your guesses?”  She just smiled.  “I’d cut smaller pieces.”

One time just my family was visiting, no aunts, uncles or cousins. No button games. I’m not sure if we even had pie. Somewhat out of the blue my grandmother suggested she play the piano accompanied by my grandfather on violin. While the piano had always been in the room, she had never played it on any of our visits. My grandfather was a shy person; he rarely spoke.  So seeing him standing up by the piano as the center of attention was unusual. That and the fact I didn’t even know he could play the violin made the whole scene surreal.

Leafing through a book of sheet music, my grandmother picked out something for them to play, something classical. While my grandfather played delicately, with finesse, my grandmother’s energetic style was more suited for a boisterous party. Still it was clear they enjoyed making music.  I wondered how often the two of them played like this when they were alone. When they finished, we all applauded. On the way home that night my father turned to my mother and said, “When your mother plays the piano she makes it clear it’s a percussion instrument.” It was a funny line but I don’t remember my mother laughing.

Once we got home from North Adams there was another Sunday tradition to follow. My mother never made a Sunday night supper. We all fended for ourselves. My sister and I loved to go into the kitchen together to prepare our own meal. I’d grab a loaf of white bread from the pantry, get the large jar of mayonnaise out of the refrigerator, sit down with my sister at the table to make mayonnaise sandwiches. Yup.  They are just as they sound. Slices of white bread lathered with mayonnaise.  Nothing else. This was such a Sunday night staple that on the way home from my grandmother’s house we’d start chatting about it excitedly.  “Mayonnaise sandwiches,” once of us would yell.   I don’t know how this started, but it was a Sunday night fixture. With it, we’d finish up whatever was left of the potato chips and cookies, but our main meal, if you could call it that, would be these awful mayonnaise sandwiches.

Another Sunday night fixture was Ed Sullivan.  My parents enjoyed the show because of its connection to New York theatre. Not only did Ed feature actual scenes from Broadway musicals and dramas, he’d often introduce celebrities who were in the audience. “In our audience tonight is Walter Matthau starring in Once More, With Feeling at the National Theatre,” he might say. The camera would turn to the audience. Then Ed would pretty much demand the celebrity stand up and be recognized. “Stand up, stand up and take a bow.  Give him a hand now.”  All this in the classic Ed Sullivan voice.  

I liked the variety show aspects.  If there was a boring singer, you just had to wait a few minutes until a ventriloquist or acrobats spinning plates on long poles would show up.   It really was an old-fashioned vaudeville-type show. One of my favorites among the regulars was Peg Leg Bates, a one-legged tap dancer.  Where else could you see such an act?   After Ed Sullivan I'd sometimes stay up to watch Dinah Shore from nine to ten. “See the USA in your Chevrolet.  America is asking you to call.” I wasn't a big fan. It was just to put off the inevitable going to bed with homework in whatever condition it was in for the start of school Monday morning.

Monday

Monday had a certain sadness to it. Back to school.  New homework assigned and expected the very next day.  All the good snacks, gone. All the Saturday candy, gone.  We had to wait until Thursday for an infusion of potato chips and store cookies.  The saving grace was home delivery. Monday was the day the Jewel Tea truck came. The Jewel Tea guy presented my mother with a list from which she would choose what she wanted off the truck that day.  It probably started with just tea and coffee but by the time I was in junior high, there was a wide variety of non-refrigerated goods to choose from. Even though my mother was a good baker, the ease and availability of things like pancake mix and corn muffin mix won her over. The era pf prepackaged mixes had begun. She would use her Monday Jewel Tea delivery to tide her over until Thursday shopping.

One time, the Monday before Christmas, with school out, I was home when the brown Jewel Tea van parked on Montgomery Avenue outside our door. My younger brother and sister were listening to a record with tales and songs by Hans Christian Anderson. I guess we were in the holiday spirit because we were singing along as the deliveryman knocked on the door.  “Wonderful, wonderful, Copenhagen. Salty old queen of the sea.”  Hearing the music, the Jewel Tea guy exclaimed, “Oh, I love Christmas music.”  No one told him it wasn’t a Christmas record.  We all just went along with his good nature.  My mother placed her order from the list that showed what he had on his truck this day.  My Jewel Tea favorites were pudding cake mix and the corn muffin mix.   Whatever my mother bought on Monday would often show up at dinnertime.

Monday supper was often based on whatever we had had for Sunday afternoon dinner  Leftover chicken was transformed into chicken fricassee or chicken stew. Leftover ham became hash served with poached eggs on top.  Leftover pork roast was ground up and turned into meatloaf. My father didn't eat fish or cheese.  These were never part of our weekly meals.  In fact, macaroni and cheese, a staple of many families, was something I never had until I was an adult in college. In my married life, mac and cheese along with squash, applesauce and spinach was a family tradition on Monday nights. If my children were writing this blog, they would consider that meal their Monday night staple.

Tuesday

Tuesday.  Hmm.  Not that different from Monday really.  Same school. Same homework.  Same weekday suppers.

One Tuesday was different because I was home from school.  I woke up that morning not feeling well. I didn’t have much of an appetite, couldn’t eat breakfast so I was allowed to stay home.  Shortly after school had begun, it was clear all I had was a cold. Once it developed, I actually felt better. I rested on the couch downstairs rather than stay in my upstairs bedroom alone. I snuggled up with a blanket, a box of Kleenex, and lots of reading materials.  While I was resting, I got a glimpse into my mother’s day.  I could see what she did when she was alone just taking care of my baby brother Chris while the rest of us were at work or school.

First she made the beds. I never made my own bed. My mother always said, “Your job is to do well in school.  I’ll make the beds.”  I think it was more than that. I think she enjoyed the feeling of putting the house in shape each morning after we were all gone.  She’d hum or sing to herself as she straightened each of the three upstairs bedrooms, the one I shared with my sister, the one she and my father shared with the crib, and then down the hall, past the stairway to the downstairs, my older brother’s room. In  the kitchen she’d clean up from breakfast.  She put the radio on to Don McNeill’s Breakfast Hour as she did her kitchen work.

Lying on the couch I could hear the local radio station giving its daily report. Part of that was comprised of a reading of a list of names of people who were in the hospital. I found this surprising.  Why would this be important to anyone other than the family who surely already knew if a family member had been hospitalized. Was it really anyone else’s business? Regardless, it was a staple of small town radio news when I was a kid.  Another local item featured the names and ages of young children who were having birthdays.  They played a song about teddy bears having a picnic in the background while an announcer read the list.  I assume parents sent this information into the station and then made sure their little ones were around to hear it.

The rest of my mother’s day was taken up with cleaning, washing, and preparing dinner. I recall watching afternoon TV when I was home sick, something I am sure she never did.

At one o’clock the Albany station played an afternoon movie. This day it was It Happened One Night. I was fascinated thinking how important the scene with the sheet was to the relationship of the two characters  I got that it meant he respected her feelings. But really, how effective was a flimsy sheet?  Nonetheless I understood both the humor of it and the hypocrisy that something as silly as a hung sheet would uphold the mores of the day. Like my engagement with the African Queen, (See the blog Working.) I was surprised my mother was so familiar with this particular film.  To me it was just something to watch that afternoon on TV.  I didn’t realize this was a classic movie that had actually been shown in theaters years ago. I can picture her coming in to check on me, watching parts of the film and commenting on the actors by telling me stories about their lives and other movies they had made.

By three o’clock the telephone began to ring. It had been quiet most of the day. My mother wasn’t one to chat on the phone.  My friends were calling to see why I wasn’t in school and to tell me about the homework assignments. Even sickness went only so far from absolving you of that responsibility.  Besides if you were well enough, better to get it done now than have double the next day.

Late in the afternoon there was a show on TV my mother disliked intensely.  Queen for a Day.  Three women, each with a sad story to tell, of sickness or poverty or family woes, appeared one at a time in front of a studio audience to be interviewed by the host, Jack Bailey. The one with the worst situation, the most wretched, as determined by an applause meter, would become Queen for a Day.  A red robe would be draped around the winner, a sparkling crown placed on her head, and a bouquet of flowers presented to her as they proclaimed her queen for that day. There were prizes awarded to her, maybe a washer, a dryer.

My mother did not approve of the idea of playing up your difficulties in public in order to win prizes. I remember wondering how having a new washer and dryer was going to make the contestants’ sad situation any better. I also wondered about the two women who didn’t win that day.  Did they ever think, “If I hadn’t been up against that woman whose son had Polio, I’d have won?”

Wednesday

Now we are at the end of the weekly cycle, Wednesday.  The term hump day has come into fashion, a sense the bulk of the work week is over. Workers are over the hump. Now its just downhill to TGIF.  But those expressions weren't common in the 50s. For me, Wednesday meant the next day was Thursday with the stores open late and an infusion of groceries.

By the time I came down to the kitchen for breakfast Wednesday morning, as usual my father and older brother were already out of the house. There was rarely a time we all sat down for breakfast together.  Everyone was on their own schedule.  My mother was in the kitchen making lunches while I had my breakfast, usually cold cereal and toast. 

Every weekday I would walk to school. Since we lived quite near North Junior High, it was an easy walk. Back then Montgomery Avenue was a dead end street. I’d walk along the street to the end of the road, literally. Montgomery ended at a little field.  There was a well-worn path all the kids took to Pontoosuc Ave.  Even in the winter, unless there was a big storm, kids would make a path through the snow. Once on North Street you could see the junior high in the distance up on the hillside.  It only took about ten minutes to walk there.

In the winter when it was cold, I would walk fast, not just because of the weather, but also to avoid a neighbor who was a music teacher at the junior high.  If he saw me walking by his house, he’d yell out his window, “Ginny, its too cold to walk today.  Wait in my car.  I’ll give you a ride.” I knew he thought he was doing me a favor and I never knew how to refuse, but I disliked this option because he was always late. I was worried about being tardy.  Besides I didn’t like missing those few minutes of free time before school started when I could talk to my friends, compare notes on homework  and in general get prepared for that first class. As a teacher he had more flexibility.  Maybe he never expected to be late. He just was. I’d be sitting in his car, the minutes going by and no sign of him. Then he would come flying out of his house, a piece of toast in his mouth and a cup of coffee in his hand.  I am referring here to an actual china cup, not the modern travel mug or a cup made of paper.  How he juggled it all I don’t know. Once we got to the school, he’d write something on a scrap of paper to give my homeroom teacher as an excuse for my being late. That prevented me from being assigned detention for tardiness, but I still disliked it even though I realized all he was trying to do was help me out on a cold morning.

After I graduated from North Junior High, my walk changed. Pittsfield High was on East Street all the way to the end of North Street to the east of Park Square.  It was a little less than two miles away.  I know this now because of Google maps. I knew it then because if you lived more than two miles away from the high school, you were entitled to free transportation.  Where we lived on Montgomery just missed out on the two mile mark, but I did purchase reduced price bus tickets at school often riding one of the city busses home. 

To get to the high school in the morning, I walked up Weller to reach North, then continued past the hospital with its wrought iron fencing toward the commercial part of North. I rarely walked all the way on North Street. At some point I’d take a cross street over to First which brought me to East Street. As I walked I'd go through my schedule for the day, thinking about each class and how prepared I felt. Was it going to be a problem I didn’t read the entire chapter in the history book?  I felt pretty good about six of the ten French sentences I translated, but what if she asked me about the ones I wasn’t so sure about?  Was there going to be an unannounced quiz in math today? We hadn’t had one in a while, so we were due.

I began to fantasize.  What would be the perfect illness or injury? One that would get me out of the responsibility of doing homework but not be so bad as to make me miss fun things.  Lets see.  I’d consider a broken arm.  If I can’t write, they can’t expect me to translate ten French sentences. But with a broken arm, I also can't go bowling. Besides a broken arm is going to hurt. No, that was out. 

How about a fever and flu? That doesn’t get rid of homework, only postpones it.  Besides I didn’t want to feel sick. That wouldn’t be any fun. My mother would make me stay in bed. That wouldn’t do either. As it turned out, for the many days I walked to school, I never did conjure up the perfect injury or illness.   I guess I decided it was actually easier to just do the work and go through life unscathed!

Other than its proximity to Thursday, Wednesday had little to distinguish itself.  Except maybe the egg lady.   Each Wednesday, an older couple who owned a hen house would slowly travel the neighborhood delivering dozens of eggs to local housewives, my mother among them.  She would set aside money each Thursday after payday for the egg delivery on the next Wednesday. We frequently had omelets or other egg based dishes for dinner on Wednesday.

Most weeks were like this, the regular habits of my family linked to school and work, structured as well by my family’s personality. My father went to work every day, I went to school. My mother had more flexibility but still her routine was geared, synchronized really, to what her kids and husband did.  This was the fifties after all. But nothing stays the same. Some changes were obvious, others more subtle. Stores began to stay open more hours. My parents stopped attending church. My younger sister and brother had their supper on trays in the living room while watching TV. My older brother went off to college. Checks, not cash, became the routine.  A shopping center opened just out of town. “Who’s going all the way up there to shop,” my father would say. In a few years, however, Coltsville was very popular. Among the people who shopped there was my father. Delivery services like Jewel Tea stopped. The egg lady died. 

Such changes made it clear my younger siblings would experience a different rhythm for their week. I realize patterns change in response to what is happening in the world around us and within our family. Still when I look back on my teenage years, I think of my rhythms as comforting, offering a sense of stability, a feeling you knew what was ahead and were prepared for it. Thursdays were special, and not just because there was a new bag of potato chips in the pantry, but as an anchor to the rest of the week.  Maybe that was part of growing up in the 50s, a sense life was good and was just going to continue along the same path for a while. 

Tomorrow is Thursday.  The week begins again.