FINANCES

Birren #3

May 26, 2006

Roaring Twenties! Flaming Youth! Too Much Money! Mother took flying lessons, and Father drove a Duesenburg!

These are the stories I grew up with. But I was born in 1927, and the Crash of '29 changed all of that, and I grew up in the Great Depression. So money was always a topic of conversation - though never personal.

My grandfather, William C. Feindt, was a bricklayer, and worked steadily. He and his wife, Minnie, owned the home on South Street where my mother was born and grew up. A brick building, there were two small apartments on the second floor which were rented out. Minnie's brother, Henry Frisch, a police sergeant assigned to the mayor's office, lived just across the street with his family including his son, Harry, and daughter, Dora, who became Will's second wife. Many years later I found that the property was in Minnie's name, and after her death Will had a lifetime interest in the estate, and after his death, the "children of her daughter's body" had an interest for ten years, after which the property was to be sold and the proceeds divided between them and the Red Cross. Obviously someone had to have a certain knowledge of the law to produce a document so detailed.

After Minnie's death in 1924, Will married Dora, and in 1927 they built a large duplex in a new subdivision (Harvard Terrace), again with the idea of an income resulting from this new property. Will, who was a brickmason, built a frame house because brick would have cost an additional $1,000, a large sum at the time, and he regretted it for the rest of his life. But I never heard of a mortgage, and when the Crash came in 1929, the family home was secure.

Will was the oldest of ten children (nine boys and the youngest, a girl), so there were loads of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Although definitely middle class, Will was

the patriarch of the family and certainly the most financially secure. During the Depression, the old home on South Street was rented out: the large ground floor apartment was $25 per month, and the two upstairs apartments went for $11 and $9 each. Tenants were mostly members of St. Lucas Lutheran Church, and if the rent was not paid, no action was usually taken. For a while, the wife of the ground floor tenant did our family laundry in part payment.

When Mother became a Social Service worker she occasionally took me on her rounds so I became very aware of large families living in garages, rooms with no heat or plumbing, and the general malaise of the time. Her income, though not

large to begin with, was steady, and increased as she was promoted; her second

husband was a successful salesman, and provided the ability to have some of the luxuries such as vacations and antique collecting.

The apartment on Princeton provided a good income, and I remember tenants like Mrs. Altar, sister of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Toledo, and the writer, James Warner Bellah, among them.

Dad was one of the few in the family who had an automobile, and usually bought a new Dodge every other year. When the big dinners, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.

came along they were almost always held in our house which could seat 15 or more (very crowded) in the dining room.

When I went to summer camp, Dad paid to have an older cousin go to camp as well to look out for me (though I was unaware of the arrangement at the time). When Dad had a heart attack, and was advised to go to Florida for the winter, we sublet our flat and took off without concern.

In Florida one year Dad and a man from Saginaw, Michigan, whom we had met on our first winter in Dania (The Tomato Center of Florida), decided that they would rent an acre of land and grow tomatoes. Dad was a bricklayer, and Mr. Kerr was a retail grocer, but their lack of experience did not deter them. Twice someone came in and cleaned out the tomatoes the night before they were to be picked, so at the end of the season each of the men had lost about fifty dollars; their wives considered it a good investment since it kept them busy and out of the house.

Thus, while my classmates at Harvard Grade School were generally from more up-scale social backgrounds (business and professional men) I never felt that I would be unable to keep up.

The Great Depression dominated American Life for more than a decade of my early childhood, yet my family was able to give me a sense of security for which I am truly grateful.

rwtf

FAMILY

Birren #2

May 22, 2006

I have two baby books.

That in itself is unusual. Mother filled in both of them; the facts are certainly the same. But there the similarity ends; for while one has all the happy platitudes one might expect, the other is written by a new mother whose husband has deserted her. Many years later I learned that my father had another child on the way by a woman who was then two months pregnant. I do not know if my mother was aware of this, but my parents were divorced when I was less than a year old. And so my father disappears from my family history for many years, and it is only his children who later appear in my story.

I was christened for my two grandfathers, Robert and William, and since my father's surname was Thomas, I began life as Bobby Thomas. At a very early age I was cared for by my maternal grandparents, or rather my grandfather and his second wife, Dora Frisch Feindt, who was the niece of his first wife, Minnie Frisch Feindt. Minnie had been very active in the church, and the pipe organ in St. Lucas

Lutheran Church is dedicated to her as first president of the Ladies Aid Society.

She died in the early 20's, and Will married Dora, who was of course my mother's first cousin (and my first cousin, once removed). Dora and Will built a

large duplex in a new subdivision, Harvard Terrace, and it was there that I was

reared on Princeton Drive (streets were named Yale, Amhurst, Vassar, Kenyon, Dartmouth, etc.)

Mother was working and had her own apartment with her dog, a German Shepherd, "Speed", and I spent week-ends with her, as well as several early evenings during

the week. Now I called Dora and Will, "Mom" and "Dad", and my mother was always "Mother", and though I found nothing strange in this arrangement, others thought it rather bizarre.

Mother had started seeing Russell Fishack, and my very earliest memory is being held by "Fuzz" while sitting on his mother's upstairs porch during a thunderstorm and having him assure me that it couldn't hurt me. We later figured out that I was less than three years old at the time.

In 1930 Mother and Fuzz were married at St. Andrews Episcopal Church, and I attended the wedding (Mother wore blue). Fuzz, a graduate of Kenyon College, had grown up in Port Clinton on Lake Erie, and loved sailing, so when his old family house at Eagle Point on the Maumee River became available, he and Mother decided to move in there so we could have our own dock and eight acres of land. The house had been built around the turn of the century and was in total disrepair so that the first time I saw it, I lamented, "We're not going to move in here?" But the view down the river was magnificent, Mother's taste was impeccable, and I still go back there with joy. Dad, who was a brick mason, built a wonderful fireplace complete with a Dutch oven.

I stayed with Mom and Dad during the school time and with Mother and Fuzz on

week-ends and holidays. In winter the river would freeze solid and Dad would walk me on the ice to the middle of the river, where Fuzz would meet us to walk me back to Eagle Point.

The Great Depression was on, and Mother became a social worker. Dad had a heart attack, and the doctor advised him to get away from the severe winters, so beginning in the third grade, I went to Florida with Mom and Dad. We usually went in November (after the hurricane season) and stayed until April in a small town called Dania just south of Fort Lauderdale, and I went to South Broward School.

Mother became head of the PWA in Toledo, and met Eleanor Roosevelt at the time, but turned down the job of heading the WPA in Ohio, since it meant moving to Columbus. But Franklin Roosevelt called her, and "you just don't turn down the President of the United States". So a new chapter in my life began: Mom and

Dad would take me to the station in Toledo and put me on the train under care of

the conductor, and Mother would pick me up in Columbus (or send her secretary).

I was so proud to be traveling "on my own" at age 8. I doubt very much if this would be permitted today.

In early autumn of 1936, Mother took me away for a week-end on Catawba Island, and looking back, it was the last time we were to spend together. I went to Florida with Mom and Dad in November, this time taking along Mom's father, Grampa Henry Frisch, a police sergeant recently retired after 40 years in the mayor's office. Mother wrote to me that I was to have a new baby brother or sister in the Spring.

On April 2nd Dad received a wire from Fuzz saying Mother had delivered a baby girl, but passed away shortly after midnight. I was in school when they came to

get me and we started driving back to Toledo that afternoon. We made it in

three days (almost a thousand miles), and it was only at the funeral when I was sitting next to Fuzz that I realized the import of what had happened.

Fuzz's mother, Lillian, moved in at Eagle Point to take care of my new half-sister,

Judith, and I remained with Mom and Dad. It was decided that they would adopt me legally, and it was at that time I saw my father for the one and only time - or

so I am told - because I have no recollection of it whatsoever. My father had to give his consent, and he had little choice. Years later I found out that his second wife died the same month as my mother.

A strange year. According to the adoption papers my name was to be Robert William Feindt; at the age of 10 I absolutely refused to drop the name Thomas.

I was willing to add the Feindt, but I was Robert William Thomas Feindt, and have been such ever since. During that year nine members of my family died: my mother was the first, and Grampa Frisch the last. Since the custom was for children to wear white as mourning, I was in white for almost the entire year.

My sister Judy and I saw each other only a few times a year. Since I was 10 years older than she, we had very little in common other than knowing we were related.

When Judy was 6 years old, Fuzz married again (Jean), and a year or so later they

had a daughter, Mary. So now my half-sister had a half-sister who was not related to me. Over the years Mary and I have become close, and we have decided to call each other step-brother and step-sister (her father was my step-father).

No, my friends, we are not through yet.

Dad died my last year in high school, and I went to college, and grad school. Mom died several years later, and I was married. Moved to Paris, and divorced.

I was back in Toledo for a visit when an old friend who was the Society Editor for the Toledo Blade, sent a photographer to snap a picture of me by the fireplace at Eagle Point for the paper.

I returned to New York where I received a letter that began, "Dear Mr. Feindt, I hope that next time I write I can say "Dear Bob". I think I am your sister." Of course, she was. Her name was Lois, and her aunt had seen my picture and told

Lois, "That's your brother." We began to correspond, and I learned that she was the second of three children by my father's second wife, and that he had married for a third time and had a daughter by that marriage. So suddenly at age 30 I had four more siblings.

When birthdays were sorted out we discovered that Katie, my father's eldest child by his second wife, was just seven months younger than I. Even more remarkable was that Katie and I had actually attended Libbey High School at the same time, with no idea that each other existed. Of course, Libbey had 3,000 students, and

I was a Junior when she was a Freshman, so our paths never crossed. I met Lois,

and she made an attempt to get our father and me together, but it never happened.

I moved to Los Angeles and several years later was visited by my ex-wife's Aunt Helen who said that she was sorry to hear about my father. When I inquired "What about my father?" Helen informed me that he had died the previous year. No one

had told me.

Finally, last year I met the youngest of my siblings who now lives in South Carolina; she was 57, and I was 78.

A friend has described my family as "something out of Faulkner". Accurate, I'm afraid, though a thousand miles further north.

rwtf

Turning Point

Birren #1a

June 2006

Although it set my life on a totally different path, I was not at all aware of the importance of a decision made when I was five years old.

When I began kindergarten in Toledo, Ohio, in 1931 it was expected that I would attend for two years: the first year was in the afternoon, and the second year was in the morning. The cut-off date for attendance was a fourth birthday by

December 31, and since my birthday is January 20, I correctly began in September of 1931.

I remember kindergarten with a great deal of affection, with the exception of a nap (we each had our own little rug) which I thought was a bore, though it was for only 10 or 15 minutes. Someone brought in a branch with a cocoon on it, and I was enchanted when a beautiful butterfly emerged.

It seems that at sometime in that year I was given an intelligence test (though I

have no recollection of it) and at the end of the year the teacher recommended that I skip the second year of kindergarten, and go into the first grade the following September. My parents asked if I wanted to move up, and it seemed like a great idea to me. (A playmate in the neighborhood, Jimmy Forester, had a birthday the same month, but was not asked to go ahead, and his mother was quite upset. Jimmy and I were never as good friends after that.)

So instead of being one of the oldest members of my class, I became the youngest in my class, and remained so throughout my entire education.

Probably the most important occurrence in the first grade was my meeting Nancy Lee Boyer with whom I fell in love and married twenty-one years later. (Nancy was three months older than I.)

When I went to high school, I picked up extra credits along the way, and with World War II dragging on, I graduated in three years, shortly after my 16th birthday.

Years later I learned that I had been chosen to be the editor of my high school yearbook my senior year, but was never informed; I wish I had been given a choice, though I am not sure what I would have done.

When I went away to college I was still the youngest in my class though most

of the freshman men were indeed younger than many high school graduates;

but, like me, they were trying to get as much education as possible before being drafted into the army. Since most freshman women were older, and socially far more sophisticated, we really were not easily accepted as part of a normal social milieu, especially since we had Air Corps, Navy, and Marine units on campus.

Incidentally, the war ended after my sophomore year, and i was never drafted.

At Denison, once again I picked up extra credits, and could have graduated at 19, but finally waited until I was an old man of 20; by then almost all my study was individual work with a professor. (My senior year I signed up for a course in Modern Drama given by an old friend in the English department, Professor Ellenor Shannon, and since I had already read most of the plays in the text, she made out a special reading list for me and made me promise NOT to come to class.)

I took a year off in New York, and then attended Northwestern where I received

a Master of Arts degree when I was 22 years old. I then went to teach at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, as head of the theatre program, where many

of my students were my age, or even older.

* * * * *

And now, with few exceptions, I am the oldest member of my social group.

rwtf

Penzance

Birren #1

May 11, 2006

I just ordered two books on the internet from Amazon : "Dawn in Lyonesse" by Mary Ellen Chase, and "Tristram" by Edwin Arlington Robinson. I read both of these books in college over fifty years ago, but hadn't thought of them for years. Why now?

A new tenant in our complex, a recent graduate of Oxford University, now an understudy in the Geffen Theatre production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons", and I have been discussing Stephen Sondheim, one of my favorite composers. She was unaware that in 1990 Sondheim had been the first Visiting Professor in Contemporary Theatre at Oxford. Since I have an extensive collection of musical theatre video tapes, I have been showing her some of Sonheim's work with which she was not familiar; I asked if there was any musical tape which she might like to see, and she mentioned Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance" in which she had appeared in a student production.

I do have "Pirates" with Kevin Kline, and was reminded that I was actually in Penzance - though many many years ago.

In 1950 I had been teaching theatre at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, and

decide to enroll in a symposium on Shakespeare given by the University of Birmingham's noted Shakespearean scholar, Allardyce Nicholl, at Stratford-upon-Avon in England. I sailed on the Queen Mary in mid-June and arrived in London to stay with two friends from Northwestern who were there on Fulbright Scholarships at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

I spent several weeks attending the theartre (including The Windmill) and doing all the usual tourist things, and still had about two weeks before I was due in Stratford; so I decided to tour England. At Denison a beloved English professor, Ellenor Shannon, started me reading about the Tristan and Isolde legend (see above) and Land's End in Cornwall became my prime destination. I caught the train at Victoria Station and went to Penzance where I knew I'd have to get local transportation to get to Land's End.

Now "Penzance" to most Americans seems almost an exotic locale, but it is

probably similar to Rockaway or Atlantic City (before the gambling) to the English. The title "Pirates of Penzance" is really a non sequitor.

So I found a cab, and told the driver I wanted to go to Land's End, and he said "Sure", and started to ask about my wanderings. I had no reservations, and when I told him that, he asked if I wanted a private or a public house; it was then I learned that a private house served no booze, but a pub did. He then suggested that an old inn had newly re-opened in Sennen Cove, a pirate cove (Yep, PIRATE) just north of Land's End, and might be to my liking. What the hell - why not?

So I arrived at the Old Sucess Inn (built in 1492) which had just re-opened and was welcomed by the hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Chatham. Dinner was being served, and by the time I had been to my room, freshened up, and returned downstairs, it

seems that everybody in the place knew I was the first American to stay at the Old Success since the war. Since at that latitude daylight lasts quite late, I decided to go for walk after dinner along the high cliffs, when a car driven by one of the guests stopped and offered me a lift to Land's End.

The sign as we approached the pub announced "The Last Pub in England" and

beyond that one had to cross the Atlantic to find the next. And it was here that I played darts in an English pub for the first time.

When closing was announced (and they were very strict about pub hours in those days), we drove back to the inn where I discovered to my delight that registered guests could order drinks 24 hours a day (very civilized); so I settled down with the Chathams and a few other guests for a nightcap.

The captain of a Dutch cable ship which had laid a cable from America, had been a guest at The Old Success, and had come back to visit with the Chathams, as well as the local "squire"; a honeymoon couple and I were invited to tea the following afternoon by the squire at his estate where he was planning to have a million daffodils ready for the London market by Christmas time. There are no trees along that part of the coast, but warm winds from the Gulf Stream make it ideal for horticulture.

My one night stay had already been extended, so when the Dutch captain invited us to dinner the evening after that aboard his ship which was docked down the coast at Mousehole (pronounced "Muzl") I was delighted.

Sennen Cove proved fascinating. I visited the pub below the inn which seemed to be carved from solid rock, and many of the older denizens were speaking Cornish which has just about disappeared. As for the "pirates", they were now mostly smugglers; French perfumes and many other continental goodies were not available in this country which was still recovering from World War II, but locals

could find them "for a price".

So my one night stay turned into three. I would no longer think of traveling without reservations, but if I had been on a timetable then, I would have missed so much. I went on to Tintagel, the Lake District, Edinborough, and St. Andrews (with adventures all along the way) before arriving at Stratford where I spent six weeks - but all that's another story.

So "The Pirarates of Penzance" brought so much to mind I had to go back to my original source - and order the two books that started it all.

rwtf