Opulence,Bathrooms, Happiness

I was trying to think of some new content for my next article. I have written so far for the Patches, CockeysvilleHuntValley Patch and now for Towson Patch in the amount of 464 articles. Also for the Frederick News Post, eleven stories so far. When you think of it, this is a lot of stories. I never knew I was such an ‘interesting person’ with such an ‘engrossing and fascinating life’ full of so many thoughts and happenings. Now I write for my favorite Fairfax Station. Do not be jealous my other Patches, I love you too. My Dad and my Mom were married in 1927 and my Dad was quite wealthy or rather well to do for a young man of thirty-five in that year. He built her a single family home, she had a housekeeper five days a week costing one dollar a day. This must have been a lot of money way back then. Then came the Depression of 1929 and he lost most of it as thousands did. This was way before my birth. My mom’s sister married a man, Uncle Larry in about 1947 and it was rumored that my new uncle’s dad had taken his own life due to losing everything he had then. We never knew him, but that is what he must have told someone. This is so sad. Others, it was said had done the same thing. So Mom had to give up her beautiful home and household help though she still then never went overboard in spending lots of money during the fabulous first two years of married life. She had nice furnishings in the home, but she was not a spendthrift. This was excellent because after 1929, they did not have a lot, but they as others did survived and were still happy and wholesome. My brother came along in 1929 and they then lived in an apartment and when I came along in 1934, they must have still lived in the apartment. A few years later, they bought what is now called a townhome, and then it was called a row house. I lived in that row house until I was fourteen and then we moved away to another apartment. Wherever we lived, we had nice furnishings, modest, but pretty and Mom ran a lovely home. She cooked, baked, cleaned and made us a happy home. We had no car until I was fourteen and Dad indulged into buying his first car since he lost his money in 1929. It was a Plymouth wine colored car, he bought it used, now called pre-owned and he purchased it from his friend Mr. Penn from Penn Motors on Reisterstown Road. I went with him when he sealed the deal and oh how proud he was driving that pretty, shiny new automobile up Reisterstown Road to our home about three miles away. He parked it in the back and kept it clean and shiny with his own hands and elbows. He loved that car and he was a very slow driver. He looked both ways, hesitated and then went on and I disliked driving with him because he drove so slowly. I guess he had not had a vehicle for about nineteen years and that is why he was hesitant to drive fast. He did well; he got around wherever he had to go. He did the grocery shopping; he went to his business office downtown though he worked a lot from home, even without a computer in those days. He went to his doctors, he and Mom went to a few plays and he sang in the choir of the synagogue and went every Tuesday night for practice with his group. On Saturdays, he sang with his choir friends at the Sabbath services. He was a bass singer. He loved it so much. He felt so close to God when he sang there. It was all volunteer and you had to be chosen to be in the group. How proud he was being selected. Mom did her own thing, she volunteered at Sinai Hospital one day a week, Thursdays and she was so proud to wear her yellow and white uniform designating she was a volunteer worker. She went on the transit bus to get there and when her shift was over, one of the other volunteers brought her home. One day, a Mrs.Hutzler brought her home to our modest dwelling. Her husband and his family owned the gigantic and wonderful group of department stores that graced our shopping days. Mom said she was so gracious and kind and that she did not come off as a stuck-up rich lady. Wealthy she was, but she was down to earth and she too volunteered at the hospital. Of course, Mom at one time had been wealthy too, though not as affluent as Mrs. Hutzler, who was a sweet person and very kind to everyone, that came in her path at the hospital. In those days, I as a kid was in the same boat as everyone else in our neighborhood. We had nice clothing, not designer names, nice shoes, not designer shoes, good food made from scratch, no carry-out or buffets in those days, devoted parents us ,to them and of course, them to us. I went to work after high school graduation; I did not then go to college. I went back at age thirty-three to get that college degree. There was no money for college and usually the girls either went into nursing or working in offices. This I did and I worked my way up to become what is now called office manager plus,I was the assistant to the CEO of the company and at age twenty four or so, I was earning the grand sum of ten thousand a year, which was a huge amount of money and especially for a female. I helped Mom and Dad some and it was my privilege and pleasure to do so, since things were tight even then. I had plenty of money left over from my paycheck, there was no state tax yet then and the income taxes were quite less. I spent my money on clothes which young ladies do and did then too and I took taxi cabs wherever I went since I had no desire then to own my own car. My employer often picked me up to go to work, since he did not live far from us and in the evening, if he worked late, I took a taxi home. Other places, I either took a taxi or I walked or took the transit bus. Times had changed and there were no longer streetcars, they had this newfangled way of transit called a transit bus. The street cars ran on overhead wires and the buses were as they are now. There was no air-conditioning on the buses or heat, you just dumped your coins in the entrance box, took a transfer piece of paper they gave you if this bus did not go exactly where you needed to go; you changed buses at a junction or at an intersection. This was the mode of travel for the majority of the people. If someone owned a car, there was one car in the family. This was it, no two car families did I know then. We were content with our lives, we had no cable television, no tablets, no Kindles, no computers, no fancy cellphones that we could take a picture with or play games or listen to music. We had a phone at home and if we could afford it, another phone of the same number so we could be comfortable talking in another room. You could not take the phone from room to room and there were no cordless ones then either. When I was going with my husband in 1957, I had the luxury of obtaining my own private phone number and the phone was in my room at our home. Oh how rich I felt. The number was Liberty xxxx, in those days, numbers had a name in front of the numbers. If you needed a repair, the phone company came out to repair it or to install it. When I was first married, a neighbor got us all in the neighborhoods, extra phones we could plug in and we sprayed them a color to match our room. I had a gold one in the downstairs family room. One day in about 1965, I had to have a repair done to the line and the technician noticed this gold one and he said that he knew I had gotten it somewhere, other than from the only authorized place there was to buy one from and that was from the telephone company. I felt real guilty, like I had committed a crime when he saw the gold one and he said “do not worry, I will not report you. Every house I go to has a spare phone they did not buy from the main company.” Of course many years later, you could , they came in odd colors. When Dad died, Mom moved into a pretty apartment and it was furnished very attractively and one day when my son was about four he said to her “Gingham (her grandmother name) you must be very poor.” She said “why Jeffrey, I live in this lovely home, do you say that?” He replied “because you only have one bathroom and we have three.” So even at that young age way back then, kids and people equated wealth with many material things around. I felt rich when we had the extra gold phone that day. There is a different way of measuring wealth, even today. I also have my ballroom dancing days from 1977 until 2009 and hopefully, one day soon, I will be able to dance once again. At this age, I feel wealthy and appreciative of living to this age surrounded by my lovely home with four bathrooms, only had one when I grew up and that was for four persons, my children, husband and my four grandchildren and a fair amount of good health. Also, we had , that we still miss. Wealth is only a word; it is what you value, adore and the pride you have accumulated during the years and where these things have led you to. Mine is right here at eighty-one and I am still raring to go and to continue to prosper with the important things in life, as it is now. This is opulence and abundance and this is my life and a pretty darn good one at that. By the way, my son has four bathrooms in his house and everyone now who buys a townhouse or a single family home does have four bathrooms, because they are being built this way. Dad had a tremendous closet built in our row house back in the forties and he put in an oil furnace , rather than him having to shovel black coal into a coal furnace. This was his and our opulence and we really felt rich in having these necessary updates to our home. Life is a golden thread in your heart, may you have many threads to keep your heart and soul full of opulence and good health. Title is Opulence, Bathrooms, And Happiness . Comments/p>