Spiritual Crisis in Dogland

Sister Jane sends photos of a new dog Isabelle.

She likes to keep the dog population at her house at four dogs.

When she reads about people who are busted for owning 27 or 38, she says, "There but for the grace of Rod go I." (Rod is her husband, who also likes to keep the dog population at about four.)

We may have to address the heriditary dog affection in the family soon. I know she's not the only McNally descendant who likes to keep it at about four.

When Jane was in the Fourth Grade she had a significant run-in with religious doctrine. Mrs. L. (above top left) was trying to explain the concept of original sin. Jane had a question:

"Why can't dogs go to heaven? They have no original sin."

Mrs. L. told her to sit down. She did but she seethed. She is still confused, although she recently heard that Martin Luther said dogs could go to heaven. She is considering adopting the Lutheran tenets of faith.

A later problem was in Spanish class when pondering the concept of the masculine and feminine pronouns La and El as in el perro. Jane had a question:

If La is feminine and El is masculine, what is a neutered dog?

She's lucky she made it through school.

Snowsuits

Jack about 1940

Joan, Barbara, Bill B.

Pat B

1948

Bill, Barbara, Jane

Cincinnati 1951

Jane and Timmy the Dalmatian 1951

Jane about 1951

The book is probably The Pokey Little Puppy

Tom and Grandma about 1940

Barbara, Joan and Pat

A joke at the expense of Bill

1949

Cowboys

Jerry and Geoff , Barbara

1948

Halesite

The boys had on their Roy Rogers chaps

1950

Bill, Cele, Barbara

Is that a Hopalong Cassidy necktie?

1950

Geoff, John, Jerry and Chris

Bill

Bill and Barbara

Nomadic New Yorkers

475 Adelphi

Census records and old city directories reveal a lot of Brooklyn addresses for the Valentines and McNallys. People seem to have moved from one building to another just up the street, for example moving from 163 Adelphi Street to 225 Adelphi.

Clinton Avenue

I have a faint memory of my father Ben describing this as an unpleasant part of his youth in Brooklyn and the Bronx. He told me that people moved often--- once a year on May 1st, which was called Moving Day. That was when the leases were up and if one moved to a new apartment there was a discount on the rent in the new place.

I asked Ben's sister Edie about it in 1986 and I recently found my notes from that conversation. She remembered it all quite vividly.

Ben (left) and friends in the 1920s

When she was young they moved every year because there were clauses in leases called concessions. If you would leave your apartment after one year's lease the [new] landlord would give you three months rent free. Grandma thought this a very good idea, so they "lived in every house on Pelham Parkway." My Dad and his brother Alec could pack the whole apartment in one night.

Edie and her mother, 1925

Edie and Ben were not the only New Yorkers who viewed that experience as a negative part of their childhood. Marion Meade who wrote a biography of Dorothy Parker noted that in the 19th century Parker's grandparents "lived modestly, perhaps even frugally. Since rents were low and concessions of a month or two free rent common, nearly every spring they would pile their household goods on a cart and shuttle the family to a new flat."

Columnist Walter Winchell also recalled frequent moves. His biographer Neal Gabler wrote: " The family was so poor that they were constantly on the move, presumable to dodge the rent collector or take advantage of the rent reductions that landlords often offered new tenants as an inducement."

The spring migration to a new apartment seems to have colored many New Yorkers' childhood memories of families that were not living in abject poverty, but were too close to its edge.

The back side of the row houses

"A Slum Brooklyn"

Re-photography

September 1950

Steps on Russet Lane

Bill and Jane

Fifty years or so later

Barbara Jane and Will

Things are smaller than you remember them

Messenger Girl

1925

Cele's 8th grade class. Dad drew the arrow.

Dads always draw arrows on photos.

Cele told us that she quit school after eighth grade, a source of embarrassment to her.

She said she earned this set of classics in a spelling bee.

It's one of the few things of hers we still have.

The chrome dog bookend is also hers. I've lost the other.

AT&T Building at 195 Broadway

The story we heard about her leaving school was that she accompanied a friend to a job interview and she got the job instead of the friend. Because the family needed the money (this would be about 1925) she took the job at the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and commuted from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

Most remarkably the job description involved roller skates. She delivered the mail on skates.

I remember Ben telling us he noticed her whizzing around the floor (he was about 17 or 18, she 16 or 17) and here we are....*

Rollerskaters in California, the '40s

Like so many of the other stories we can’t corroborate, this one always seemed a bit dubious. We’d heard of roller-skating carhops but mail girls on skates was a little farfetched.

Messenger girls on skates

I looked around on the internet , however, and found a few memoirs mentioning a job category called a messenger girl. It was an entry level job, one of the few thought appropriate for females.

Here's a job description from an employment manual:

Messenger girls at Douglas Aircraft in the early 1940s

"The messenger girl, as her name implies, carries messages from one part of the store to another and runs errands for nearly all persons on her floor, for example, when a check is to be signed, orders are to be certified, or a transfer is to be carried to another department....The nature of the work depends upon the arrangement of the store and the mechanical devices in operation."

In a memoir a woman named Helen Grottola remembered working as a messenger girl in the same building that Cele did:

"My sister and I both worked at AT&T in New York at 195 Broadway as messenger girls. We made fifteen dollars a week and we paid three dollars and fifty cents a week for commuting to the city. We were just surviving..."

195 Broadway Today

Skates were apparently optional.

 It wasn't a good job, but it was a job. I imagine she moved on to better paying jobs before she quit AT&T in the 1940s to have a family. It's hard to remember how few options there were for women---or 14 year old girls.

Cele (second from left) and some of her friends,

 possibly friends she worked with at 195 Broadway, in 1929

*Jane recalls Ben telling her that he noticed Cele in an AT&T talent show strumming the ukulele. Both memories could be right. She was noticeable.

Happy Birthday, Jane

Chris & John (?) Robinson, Moe and Jane

About 1950

As today is Jane's birthday her older sister will take this opportunity to post a short biography.

I was 4 and Bill was 3 when she arrived. We were thrilled to have a little sister.

She was darn cute from the start.

She had curly red hair, a gift from her Dad.

Dad with hair, about 1913

The only problem was she was crazy.

She told the neighbors her name was Mary. I recall a woman asking me about my sister Mary once. Her name is Jane, I insisted, to little effect.

Worst of all she thought she was a dog, the offspring of this dog, Timmy Robinson.

Her earliest memory is lying on the grass looking up at the enormous cocker spaniel in great contentment.

Our house was full of her imaginary dog pack.

The imaginary dogs spent a lot of time under this stove which had legs.

Cele about 1953

I remember Cele couldn't light the oven because the imaginary dog was living in there.

Jane and Duchess

Jane grew out of this stage and lived a seemingly normal life. I believe she learned merely to stop talking about the imaginary dogs. 

Chienne in the Christmas picture 1964

She got a Ph.D. in dogs and is an expert on how dogs have changed over time. She writes articles popularizing dog science for magazines like Bark and the American Kennel Club's Gazette. She posts comments here under her alterego Dr. Barkman.

Jane and Sophia

Today she lives in Altadena, California with 3 dogs.

She also has two stepchildren and two granddaughters.

Her husband Rod is a tv director.

He won an Emmy for directing E.R. last year.

They have a vintage stove with legs that looks very much like the one we had when we were kids.

Jane, Rod and friend Charles wondering if stove will explode

It never works at Thanksgiving and we always have an oven crisis.

Why doesn't she get a new stove, we wonder.

I know why.

A new stove would not have any room for the imaginary dogs underneath.

Many years ago:

Jane and Rod and the tangible dog pack of Ruth, Mickey and Willy

Hear a 40 minute radio interview with Dr. Barkman by clicking here:

http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/1616534