We left Champaign just before I turned five years old. My father was invited to go on a long trip with his father and they left for Germany at the same time we moved into my maternal grandmother's house. We called this The Big House and it was big! There was a gigantic attic. Below that were six bedrooms, one bathroom and a huge hallway that were all turned into two apartments that were rented out after my grandfather died.
The main floor was flanked by three Queen Anne porches. One in front with a big wooden porch swing. One on the side (The house was on a corner lot.) that had a couch glider and two metal rocking chairs. One closed in off the kitchen that was a sort of summer kitchen with a stove and my uncle's big tinker toy Ferris wheel filled with people just like the ones in my dollhouse. I loved those people. Their joints allowed them to sit or stand and to raise their arms, which was very up to date for 1954.
My dad called home while he was in Germany and I got to talk to him on the phone in the library. He tried to explain how big an ocean was, that I couldn't just walk around it like I did the lake in Minnesota, I was impressed. The library was one of my favorite rooms. There was an intriguing picture of a dead baby who my mother said starved to death back in the 1880's. He was my grandfather's brother. There were also shelves of books underneath big heavy curtains to keep the dust off and of course, the telephone. Our number was 123 (I think) and we would simply pick up the phone and ask the operator to connect us to other people by number, or even sometimes by name!
Each room had a great big fireplace with marble tiled designs around them and big ornate mirrors above them, but we never used any of them. Instead there was a coal furnace in the basement beside a giant heap of coal. Every night I would go down with my Grandmother to stoke the furnace before we went to bed. I used my own tiny little black coal shovel to fill up the bucket while she used giant tongs to take the clinkers out of the stoker beside the furnace.
There were also heavy ornate chandeliers in the center of every room. Once they had been attached to gas lines, but by then they were all electrical. They just ran the wires through the gas tubes. The rooms were very tall and had doors with transoms that we could open or close to let air pass through.
My grandmother and my great Aunt Lela were sister-in-laws who stayed together after their husbands died. They shared a bedroom next to the downstairs bathroom. There was a big cardboard Donald Duck on the wall in there that I thought was very fancy and also a large sombrero my mother had brought them from Mexico. The bathroom was an add on to the rest of the house.
My uncle, who was only nine years older than me, had his bedroom in the old downstairs music room. My sister and I had our beds set up in two corners of the gigantic dining room. In the third corner was a green velvet lounge that we liked to do somersaults on. We crouched at the top and rolled down to the bottom. Once in a while I was allowed to get out the doll china that had belonged to my mother, or sometimes even the miniature doll china that had belonged to my great grandmother and play with it on the dining room table.
The downstairs front hallway was much bigger than my whole apartment is now and the back hallway had a shaving sink, a closet for coats and a big Gothic hall tree chair with a bench for umbrellas and boots right outside the library door. Both hallways had staircases.The one in front was a fancier one with carved oak balustrades, but the one in back was mahogany with dark wainscoting. There was a sort of secret tunnel hallway under the front staircase that led into the library from the front hall.
There was a big kitchen with a large pantry between it and the dining room and my grandmother stored her wringer washer in that pantry, bringing it out very early on Monday mornings and setting it up in the kitchen to wash clothes before she went to work. I remember she used a big stick to push the clothes down inside of it. Afterwards I helped Aunt Lete hang those clothes on the three lines out back. I had my own tiny wicker basket and I carried the clothespins. Once a line was full we would hoist tall poles under them to keep the clothes from touching the ground.
I used to play in the garden behind the clothes lines. I would help grandma pick flowers for a bouquet to put in her glass basket, or catch butterflies and spiders by sneaking up and grabbing them then letting them fly or crawl away. Sometimes I played in the huge truck tire they painted white and filled with sand for me. And sometimes, in the evenings, we would set up the croquet game in the side yard and all play croquet. Grandma always got the red ball because that was her favorite color, but if she didn't play, I got red!
There were so many things to do. I would climb on the rocks that flanked the back sidewalk, balancing and very proud of myself, or walk down the concrete balustrades in front of the front steps. Sometimes my mother spread a blanket under the shade trees and I played with my dolls there. Inside, if I asked, I was allowed to play with the tiny china figurines on the what not stand, or listen to the player piano play by itself when we put music rolls in it. But sometimes Aunt Lete would play the piano. She played by ear and I was so impressed! And sometimes Grandma would sing. She had a very high soprano voice and people used to have her sing at weddings, but mostly she sang the old Baptist hymns.
Grandma had a television in the living room and I was allowed to watch Ding Dong School with Miss Frances. One day she opened some Russian nesting dolls and I have been fascinated with them ever since.
In the morning when I got up I would go into the kitchen and sit at the big wooden table on my tall tin chair. It had been red when my uncle was little, but they painted it pink for me! Whoever was working in there at the time would make me toast with butter and grape jelly and serve it to me on a black cookie sheet to try and keep the crumbs off the floor. Sometimes they would make as much as I wanted, but sometimes there was a limit. Afterward I got to use the big kitchen broom to sweep the floor and I was proud of that job, but sometimes if I acted up, I had to sit on a chair in the corner by the potato and flour bins and stare out the window thinking about what I had done.
My mother would dress all of us every morning. I remember how she put my socks on then smoothed out all the creases and rubbed my feet to make them warm before she put my shoes on. Some one bought me a pair of real cowboy boots and I loved those! I could put them on myself. Otherwise I would lie on the floor and put my shoe up on my mother's lap so she could tie it. One day my baby brother came by and peed in my face while I lay there. My mother told me if I hadn't dawdled it wouldn't have happened. The only thing I really hated was having my hair combed. My mother would put a comb in a glass of water and then tackle the snarls in my curls until she had perfect long curls all around my head. If I pulled away or complained she would crack me on the head with her comb.
When my father came home from Germany he worked selling cars in St. Louis and only came home on weekends, but on Thanksgiving I had my fifth birthday and he told me we were all moving to a new house. I remember how happy that made me, but some of my other presents also made me very happy. My Aunt Lete baked me a cake with a doll in the middle. The cake was her skirt! My uncle gave me a big blue plastic piggy bank with a red hat. Every time someone put a coin in his back, the hat popped up. I spent the whole afternoon going around getting aunts and uncles to put pennies in my bank.
The next day we moved to Springfield, Illinois.
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