Barbara Rogers life story - Chapter two

Looking back, stories of the elders and ancestors.

1950s -1960s

 Living in St. Louis near our private school, my sister and mother and I would walk the 8-10 blocks over to the campus of Principia. It housed a girls dormatory, Lower School (up to8th gr.) Upper School, Administration building (an old converted mansion) and a gym building with boys and girls gyms, and a pool in the basement. A tree filled campus located on Page Ave. in an area of town that had been quiet and somewhat genteel. But by the late 50's there were changes in St. Louis and the trustees of the school located a new campus area where we would all move in the beginning of my last year of school, 1969-60.

Our family seemed pretty stable, but there were lots of whispered conversations, and no sign of emotion either for positive or negative. My mother was not only working full time, but kept house of cooking, cleaning, laundry and shopping on her own. Laundry was done in the basement, either hanging clothes there in the basement or outside in a tiny back yard. I think I had some simple chores by the time I became a teenager...ironing my father's shirts (all white) and handkerchiefs (also all white). I also did dishes or dried them probably, for which I received maybe a quarter allowance.

I'd gladly take my allowance to the corner grocery, and sit in front of the comics for sale and read my favorites...then purchase my candy. I loved sweets. I never wasted my allowance on comics or magazines. And that carried forward till the time when other girls had record players and records, I was happy to have a little radio that I could listen to for hours.  My love of sweets meant poor teeth, and yet going to the dentist meant not having novocaine thanks to my mother's strict Christian Science ethics. I think she may have relented later after I was miserable when a tooth had to be pulled. I never got braces either, probably not something even considered by my family.

My 11th birthday...myself, cousin Claudette, Mary Beth, cousin Sandra, and my father, George Rogers.

We moved to St. Ann, a suburb of St. Louis, and then all had to drive together into the school. Probably about that time my father was also working there. There were evening activities at school for me, which meant he'd drive back in and park until I was done learning how to dance with young men, then bring me home. 

I got an after-school job when I was 12, just doing some collating and stapling with my mother's office for a while. Then I tried learning the switchboard for all the people running the school. I may have done that just a while, as I think I made some errors as to who was who's secretary...all people I didn't know!

Lily Tomlin giving parody of the many women who did operate switchboards.

Ok I just realized I'd better fast forward so I don't end up having over 8 chapters, since I'm 82 when writing this.

Teen years were hard for me, though I excelled in school. I didn't have that many friends, though later in 2001 I would reconnect with 2 of them for a surprising enjoyment of internet emails almost daily for a while. Besides my love of candy, I devoured books. By the time I was in 7th grade I'd read everything in the Lower School (K-8) library and was given permission to go to the Upper School library (9-12th grades.)

I learned to drive, and my parents each were sure the other didn't do the teaching right. I never had an accident as a teen, and that included when our car had some steering difficulties. I didn't mean to say my mother did all the work of the household, because my father had his tasks as well. He finished building a rumpus room in the basement of the house in St. Ann. He mowed the lawn all summer with a push mower. He took care of all our Studebakers (a Rogers family thing until they went out of business.) And shoveled the walk and driveway when it snowed.

Sophomore in college I had a minor part in "The Boyfriend," and a crush on my partner. I read lots of romances, and had no idea what really happened in relationships between men and women, just lots of sighing, groping perhaps, and promises of things to come! TV shows and movies also gave that same view of relationships.

I was brides-maid to my friend Rosie, who later became my email pen pal.

I went to William & Mary College the summer of 1962 in order to be near my boyfriend in the Coast Guard, who was driving this MG-TD.

My last year in college before quitting in spring break of my junior year, 1963. That was based on my heartbreak from my first true romance, which was doomed from day one. But I was still a very romantic young woman.

I left college, became a stewardess for Pan Am, and dated and traveled in Latin America.

More on that story HERE.

I learned to kiss boys at 14, and loved it. But I stayed a virgin until I was 21 and living on my own in Miami as a stewardess. Let me just say that I had a very healthy sex life for not having any birth control available. Fortunately I was engaged when I did get pregnant. We married soon after finding out and welcomed our first son, Marty into our lives.

Time to go to the next chapter, my married years and becoming a mother.

Barbara Rogers life story - Chapter one.

Looking back, stories of the elders and ancestors.

Earliest home, Meredith, Dallas TX

My mom, expecting me, on running board of Studebaker while Poppy and Gummy hoe a Victory Garden the summer of 1942. I may have been conceived after Pearl Harbor, being born on Aug. 23, 1942. The little two bedroom house had a room for me, with low window sills, so I could wave goodbye to Daddy as he backed out the driveway to go to work at North American Aviation as a bookkeeper. He'd say Cherry-O, but I don't remember what I said, at 2-3 years old. I do remember a linoleum rug on the floor with blocks and animals on it.

Ada PS Rogers (Gummy) my Daddy (George Elmore Rogers Jr.) and Poppy (George Elmore Rogers Sr.) I would have been George III if I'd been a boy! They came from San Antonio to Dallas, and are probably standing by my father's car. I don't think either of them drove, at least in my memory.

As 1946 came along, I then had a baby sister on Feb. 3, Mary Elizabeth Rogers, who we called Mary Beth.

Being born at the beginning of WW II, my life was somehow influenced by the drive to collect metal to be used in the war. So children's toys were not made of metal as much as before the war. I had a wood wagon full of wood blocks, and 2 small chairs, one a rocker. And a little wood cradle for baby dolls. I had been 4 months old for my first Christmas, and I'm guessing this is my second Christmas in Dallas TX.

I loved the nesting blocks (cardboard with pictures from fairy tales on 5 sides of each one.) I probably made some towers with both these colorful blocks and the wood ones which were to teach me the alphabet and numbers. It sure was fun to knock them over and see them scatter, and make a big sound.

Taken from an old 8 mm film shown on TV...my father and myself age 3

I think this is before Mary Beth turned one since its in warm weather. I would have been around  4. We called the contraption she was in a "go-cart." No strollers then!

 

These girls are all cousins, and it was my little sister's frowning first birthday in a little swing. Standing behind her is the oldest cousin, Claudette, then myself in the middle, and Sandra in sweater on right. Claudette and Sandra were sisters who lived in Houston. We moved there about that time.

We lived in Houston in a nice house on Cumberland and I had a set of roller skates and had a friend named Katherine. About that time my cousins' Claudette and Sandra's father died, my father's brother. I didn't understand what was happening as I just went and stayed with neighbors while my parents went to a "funeral."

In Houston, Christmas outfits by Grandmommy Mozelle Miller Munhall

Then a big event was one summer (1948or9) driving two Studebakers with my parents, sis and I in one, and my grandparents, Gummy and Poppy with my Uncle Chauncey driving and Claudette and Sandra in their car. We went through Louisiana and Mississippi and Tennessee, so Poppy could see some of the areas his family were from. We stayed in these cute little cabins in motels along the way (no interstates yet in 1949!) The Studebakers had trouble in the Smokeys and their radiators boiled over. We visited my Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Dotty in Stevens Point Wisconsin, and met cousins Pat and Chris. Then I think my parents went to St. Louis to visit Principia, the Christian Science School, but I'm not sure Uncle Chauncey's car went that direction before heading back to Houston.

In Steven's Point WI, Sandra, Patricia, Barbara, Mary Beth and Claudette.

My parents were impressed with the school, in spite of my falling off the swings and bashing the back of my head when the wood swing came back behind me. They then moved our little family of 4 to St . Louis in  the summer of that year. Perhaps the visit to Wisconsin and St. Louis had been the summer before that...not clear. 

Barbara and Mary Beth, 1950 with the current family Studebaker. Clothes were made by Mozelle Munhall.

So my sister and I were enrolled in Principia, (me in 3rd grade, sis in nursery school) and my father was looking for a job for quite a while, it seemed to me. My mother began working (maybe part time at first) at Principia, which covered our tuition at this private school. She worked there until my sister left college in 1963. And before that my father had also become the comptroller of the school. At one time I think he sold shoes before that, since St. Louis is known for shoes. I had my 8th birthday in 1950 the summer we moved to St. Louis, and it was cold, so we tried to light newspapers in the fireplace, but didn't know about flues and such, so we just smoked up the apartment on the second story of an old house on Cates. (It was no longer there when I took my sons through St. Louis in 1975, it having burned.

The big snow of 53 (St Louis MO) may have been 12 inches, or maybe that was another one. We got a sled, and learned what being cold felt like. Most children don't know when to come in out of the cold. But put mittens on a radiator, and that smell will remind us all of how our feet and fingers burned as they warmed up.

I was happy to get a doll (as usual) for Christmas when I was probably 8 or 10. (I think she marked the wrong date on this one.) Little sis also had a new doll. I'm thrilled to see what knick knacks my mother had on that non-working mantel.

Here are more Christmas dolls (or the same?) and we girls have poodle skirts, with matching collars. I was likely 11 (again her dates might be within a year or two.) This was our second apartment in St. Louis, again upstairs, on Clara St.

Though it looks as if we were with cousins by these photos, we only saw them very infrequently, since we lived so far from each other.

More will follow soon...after all, I'm already a grandmother when writing this. Before the blog lost what I had as premise for this post, I'd asked myself what questions I wish I'd asked my grandmothers. There were some interesting ones, and I'm not sure my story will answer many of them.